In May, the State Dept published a report saying it was “reasonable to believe” that Israel could have used American weapons in violation of international law. But he also said he could not definitively link American weapons to specific cases.
“It's hard to get that kind of information in an active combat zone,” Miller said. “But I would also say that we haven't worked very hard to try to get information.”
US law prohibits sending military aid to countries that restrict the supply of Americans helplike food and medicine. Experts tracking aid, including from numerous international organizations and the State Department itself, have found that Israel has consistently blocked aid to the people of Gaza.
Brett McGurk, the White House's Middle East coordinator and one of President Biden's closest advisers, declined a request for an interview with 60 Minutes. But a senior White House official told 60 Minutes that government lawyers have not determined that Israel violated the laws of armed conflict, which is why American weapons continue to flow.
The official said Hamas could end the war by returning the roughly 95 hostages still in Gaza. Miller sees the war as ending when Israel says it's over.
“Absent intervention from the United States or someone else forcing a decision, it's over when Netanyahu says it's over,” he said.
Destruction in Gaza
America's stamp is all over the destroyed Gaza. Hala Rarit, a US diplomat who resigned in protest, said she believed what happened on the 25-mile strip of land would not have been possible without US weapons.
Rarit spent nearly two decades in Asia, Africa and the Middle East, where she worked in human rights and counter-terrorism. She was working in Dubai as deputy director of regional media when the war broke out. Part of her job at the time was monitoring the Arab press and social media to document how America's role in the war was perceived in the Middle East. Rarit sent daily reports to the top brass in Washington, containing gruesome images and warnings.
“I would like to show the complicity that was indisputable. Fragments of American bombs next to mass killings of mostly children,” Rarit said. – And this destruction.
Rarit said that on some occasions she was cut off when she tried to speak.
“I would show images of children who starved to death,” she said. “In one incident, I was simply scolded: 'Don't put that image there. We don't want to see her. We don't want to see children die of hunger.”
But others told her to keep the images, stressing that they needed to be seen.
US support for Israel affects America abroad
The White House is convinced that halting Israel's armaments would lead to a longer, more deadly conflict, and that America's military support and diplomacy have prevented a wider war in the Middle East.
But FBI Director Christopher Wray told Congress in November 2023 that the war in Gaza had raised a threat terrorist attack at home.
Acting Director of the National Counterterrorism Center, Brett Holmgren, told 60 Minutes that anti-American sentiment fueled by the war in Gaza is at a level not seen since the Iraq war. Groups like al-Qaeda and ISIS are recruiting on that sentiment, issuing the most specific calls for attacks on America in years, Holmgren said.
The anger across the Arab world and beyond is palpable, Rarit said. She documented the protests and the burning of US flags.
“(It's) very important because we've worked so hard since the war on terror to strengthen ties with the Arab world,” she said.
Rarit believes that US support for Israel has put a target on America's back.
“And I say this as a survivor of two terrorist attacks myself,” Rarit said. “I say this as someone who has worked intensively on these issues and observed the region intensively for two decades.”
Rarit says that three months into the war, she was told that her reports were no longer needed. She resigned last April. She said one of her turning points was the death of a little girl named Sana al-Fara, whose photo she included in one of her reports – one of the thousands of children killed so far in Gaza.
“She's wearing a princess dress and she's waving her wand in the photo with a huge, beautiful smile,” Rarith said. “In this child I saw my child.”