The U.S. Ignored Early Warnings About Israel’s Assault on Gaza

Days after Hamas’s October 7 attacks, U.S. government officials were warning about the potentially dire humanitarian cost of Israel’s reprisal in Gaza—warnings that were ignored and that have sadly since come true.

Reuters reports that only a few days after Hamas’s attack on Israel on October 7 last year, a senior Department of Defense official warned that the early Israeli bombing of the area could lead to war crimes, in an email to senior White House officials.

Dana Stroul, then the deputy assistant secretary of defense for the Middle East, relayed concerns from the International Committee of the Red Cross that Israel’s order of mass evacuations of more than one million Palestinians from Gaza would be a humanitarian disaster, which left her “chilled to the bone.”

“ICRC is not ready to say this in public, but is raising private alarm that Israel is close to committing war crimes,” Stroul said in her October 13 email, describing a conversation with the ICRC Middle East director. “Their main line is that it is impossible for one million civilians to move this fast.”

Reuters gained access to three sets of email exchanges between U.S. government officials from October 11 to October 14, showing that both State Department and DOD staffers had early concerns about the civilian death toll in Gaza, violations of international law, and increasing the flow of humanitarian aid. There were also internal warnings that a perceived lack of sympathy with the Palestinians could hurt ties with Arab countries.

After Israel bombed hospitals, schools, and mosques in Gaza, the top public diplomacy official at the State Department, Bill Russo, told his superiors that the U.S. was “losing credibility among Arab-speaking audiences,” according to an October 11 email.

Later, Russo wrote that Arab media reports being monitored by U.S. diplomats in the Middle East were accusing Israel of genocide and the U.S. of being complicit in war crimes.

“The U.S.’s lack of response on the humanitarian conditions for Palestinians is not only ineffective and counterproductive, but we are also being accused of being complicit to potential war crimes by remaining silent on Israel’s actions against civilians,” emailed Russo.

In another email, he said that if the Biden administration didn’t change its policy of unconditional support for Israel and its war in Gaza, “it risks damaging our stance in the region for years to come,” he wrote. Russo would later resign in March for personal reasons.

While White House officials say that their pressure on Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu early on prevented a worse disaster in Gaza, the death toll today exceeds more than 42,000 Palestinians, including 16,500 children. The Biden administration continues to reject calls to use its billions of dollars in aid to Israel as leverage to push for a humanitarian cease-fire, even though an arms embargo could end a conflict which has since expanded to southern Lebanon.