A private letter from Antony Blinken and Lloyd Austin to Benjamin Netanyahu gives Israel 30 days to act

The Biden administration has warned Israel that it faces possible punishment, including the potential stopping of US weapons transfers, if it does not take immediate action to let more humanitarian aid into Gaza.

A letter written jointly by Antony Blinken, the US secretary of state, and Lloyd Austin, the defence secretary, exhorts Benjamin Netanyahu’s government to ease humanitarian suffering in the territory by lifting restrictions on the entry of assistance within 30 days or face unspecified policy “implications”.

The four-page missive, dated 13 October, was sent to Yoav Gallant, the Israeli defence minister, and Ron Dermer, the strategic affairs minister, and came to light after being posted on social media by Barak Ravid, an Israeli journalist who works for Axios, after apparently being leaked.

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Edit: changed from NYT to Guardian. Same story, no paywall.

  • GrymEdm@lemmy.worldEnglish
    54·
    2 months ago

    I’m not a weapons expert, the article I linked identifies what it’s meant for by the 2nd paragraph, and if you want to be pedantic THAADs exclusively fire missiles. Unit cost: $1.25 billion per battery $12.6 million per missile. Same page has diagrams detailing the “THAAD missiles”.

    Also: “Although the actual figures are classified, THAAD missiles have an estimated range of 125 miles (200 km), and can reach an altitude of 93 miles (150 km). A THAAD battery consists of at least six launcher vehicles, each equipped with eight missiles…”

      • GrymEdm@lemmy.worldEnglish
        72·
        2 months ago

        Nowhere did I say it was offensive. If you skipped the article and assumed, that’s on you. Yes you are being pedantic because you’re trying to discredit me on a technicality that does not have any merit to anyone who spends even 30 seconds reading the details I explicitly provide. By any reasonable definition it’s a multi-billion dollar set of batteries that use missiles, and no one who reads the article thinks it’s being used for offense.

        Edit: I see that you changed the post to say it screams bias/agenda. My bias is against huge amounts of funding enabling the slaughter and starvation of some of the poorest and most desparate people in the world. Given that US military aid is at 17.9 billion since Oct. 7th, and the conservative death toll is over 42k + starvation, abuse, etc. that’s not even hyperbole. My agenda with that post is to point out the escalation of US involvement which this deployment definitely is, and how it’s happening simultaneous to the strongly worded letter. I’m fully willing to own both.