Congress Must Block F-15s, JDAMs to Israel

IMEU Policy Project Memo #10

On June 17, the Washington Post reported that Sen. Ben Cardin, Chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, and Rep. Gregory Meeks, Ranking Member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, lifted their holds on a proposed package of $18 billion of weapons to Israel, including 50 F-15 fighter jets, Joint Direct Attack Munition (JDAM) kits, and air-to-air missiles.

The lifting of these holds clears the way for the Biden administration to formally notify Congress of this proposed sale. 

Once the president notifies Congress of this proposed sale, Members of Congress should introduce or cosponsor a joint resolution of disapproval (JRD) to halt this weapons package.

Topline

Congress must act to stop this weapons deal from proceeding because:

• Israel is engaging in a systematic pattern of airstrikes targeting Palestinian civilians in Gaza, potentially amounting to war crimes. In May, Amnesty International reported that since October it has investigated “16 Israeli air strikes that killed a total of 370 civilians, including 159 children, and left hundreds more wounded.” Amnesty International found “evidence of war crimes by Israeli forces, including direct attacks on civilians or indiscriminate attacks, as well as other unlawful attacks and collective punishment of the civilian population.”
  
  Israel heavily relies on war planes from the United States to carry out bombings and has a reported 66 F-15 fighter jets in its current fleet of aircraft. Although F-15s do not leave behind physical evidence like bombs or artillery shells, these fighter jets could have been used in the commission of war crimes documented by Amnesty International.   

• Israel’s use of JDAMs has been linked to potential war crimes against Palestinian civilians in the Gaza Strip and civilians in Lebanon. For example, in December, Amnesty International found that Israel used JDAMs in “two deadly, unlawful air strikes on homes full of civilians in the occupied Gaza Strip,” which killed 43 people, including 19 children.
  
  And in May, Human Rights Watch documented that Israel targeted a residential building in Lebanon with JDAMs, killing seven Lebanese aid workers, in an “unlawful attack on civilians.”
  
  Of note, JDAMs – including those attached to the 2,000-pound bombs that have devastated Gaza – are compatible with F-15s.
  

• Potential Israeli war crimes already committed with US weapons, whether or not specifically committed with US weapons notified to Congress, make Israel ineligible for ANY weapons deliveries. The Arms Export Control Act (AECA), the law under which Congress can introduce a JRD, limits the use of US weapons “solely for internal security, for legitimate self-defense,” and for a few other scenarios not applicable to Israel’s attacks on Palestinians in Gaza. No sales or deliveries of any weapons are permitted to a country in “substantial violation” of these limitations.
  
  In addition, under the Biden administration’s Conventional Arms Transfer (CAT) policy, weapons are not supposed to be delivered to a country when it is “more likely than not that the arms to be transferred will be used by the recipient to commit, facilitate the recipients’ commission of, or to aggravate risks that the recipient will commit:  genocide; crimes against humanity; grave breaches of the Geneva Conventions of 1949, including attacks intentionally directed against civilian objects or civilians protected as such; or other serious violations of international humanitarian or human rights law, including serious acts of gender‑based violence or serious acts of violence against children.”     

Details

In the case of weapons to Israel, the president must notify Congress 15 calendar days before proceeding with either a major Foreign Military Sale (FMS) or Direct Commercial Sale (DCS). 

In the Senate, JRDs can be discharged from the committee after 10 calendar days and can be brought to the Senate floor for consideration as a privileged resolution. In the House, JRDs cannot be discharged from committee and are not privileged. For more details, see the Congressional Research Service report Arms Sales: Congressional Review Process.   

JRDs are common oversight tools to promote human rights, and they have been used in recent years to raise concerns about arms sales to Egypt, Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates, and Bahrain. Members of Congress have also introduced JRDs for weapon sales to Israel. In 2021, Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Mark Pocan, and Rashida Tlaib introduced a JRD to block JDAMs and Small Diameter Bombs Increment I to Israel. Sen. Bernie Sanders introduced a version of this JRD in the Senate. And last November, Rep. Ilhan Omar introduced a JRD with five cosponsors to block the sale of $320 million of Spice Family Guided Bomb Assemblies to Israel.  

The limitations on the usage of US weapons as defined by the AECA are applicable globally. Israel must not be singled out for special treatment and exempted from human rights standards that apply to all countries under US law and Biden administration policy.

Members of Congress should introduce or cosponsor a JRD to block this sale of F-15 fighter jets and JDAMs to Israel to ensure compliance with US law and policy. Congress must not allow the sale of any additional weapons to Israel in order to end US complicity in Israel’s plausible genocidal acts against Palestinians in Gaza.

Photo credit: Wikimedia Commons/Ahmetyst. Creative Commons license