A deadly Israeli attack on a school in Gaza has renewed calls for the United States to stop providing unconditional support to Israel, including arms transfers that rights advocates say are fuelling atrocities in the Palestinian enclave.
Gaza's civil defense agency said more than 100 Palestinians were killed and dozens more wounded on Saturday when Israel launched an attack on the al-Tabin school in Gaza City.
“The United States and its allies claim that a ceasefire is coming, but all Palestinians see is more death, displacement and despair. The genocide continues,” wrote James Zogby, co-founder and president of the Arab American Institute, on social media.
“It is time to put an end to this farce. Israel does not want peace or a ceasefire. Why do we continue to send weapons to Israel?”
On Saturday morning, CNN journalist Allegra Goodwin said in a message on X that the American news network had confirmed that a “US-made GBU-39 small-diameter bomb” had been used in the deadly Israeli attack on the Al-Tabin school. Al Jazeera was not immediately able to verify that report.
The attack comes as US President Joe Biden faces months of public pressure to cut off arms supplies to Israel amid its war on Gaza, which has killed more than 39,700 Palestinians since early October.
Israel receives at least $3.8 billion in U.S. military assistance annually, and Biden approved $14 billion in additional aid to the U.S. ally earlier this year.
Human rights groups have also documented Israel’s use of U.S.-made weapons “in serious violations of international humanitarian and human rights law, and in a manner that is inconsistent with U.S. law and policy” during the war.
But a US State Department spokesman announced on Friday that Washington would send an additional $3.5 billion to Israel to spend on US-made weapons and military equipment.
'Shattered'
The assault on the Gaza City school, which had served as a shelter for thousands of displaced people, also comes amid a renewed push by the United States, Qatar and Egypt to get Israel and Hamas to agree to a ceasefire deal.
But experts have said continued Israeli attacks on Gaza risk derailing those efforts, with some accusing Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of trying to sabotage any potential deal to end the war.
The attack on the Gaza City school was described by paramedics and others at the scene as horrific, with “mangled bodies.”
Al Jazeera's Hind Khoudary, reporting from Khan Younis in southern Gaza, said Palestinians sheltering inside the school compound were praying when Israeli forces targeted them with at least three airstrikes.
“The civil defense team said they were able to find 100 bodies, but they say there are more bodies trapped. Most of the bodies are so disfigured that they cannot recognize who these Palestinians are,” Khoudary said.
“People who survived this attack say that this is one of the worst days they have witnessed since the war in the Gaza Strip began.”
Israel has claimed, without any evidence, that Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad fighters operated from the school, a claim rejected by Hamas.
U.S. National Security Council spokesman Sean Savett said in a statement Saturday that “too many civilians continue to be killed and injured” and called for a ceasefire and a deal on hostages.
Echoing Israel's claims without providing evidence, he added: “We know that Hamas has been using schools as meeting and operational sites, but we have also repeatedly and consistently said that Israel must take measures to minimise harm to civilians.”
The same day that@SecBlinkenordered new arms sales to Israel, @idf bombs a school in Gaza City, killing 100 people. The victims are “in pieces.” Pavlovian conditioning for a savage army.
—Sarah Leah Whitson (@sarahleah1) August 10, 2024
'No more bomb shipments'
Meanwhile, a spokesman for Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas has urged the US to end its “blind support”. [for Israel] leading to the deaths of thousands of innocent civilians, including children, women and the elderly.”
Nabil Abu Rudeineh said in a statement that US arms transfers to Israel made him “directly responsible for this massacre.” [at al-Tabin school] and the continuation of the Israeli attack on the Gaza Strip for the tenth consecutive month,” the Wafa news agency reported.
Human rights advocates in the United States also renewed their pressure on the Biden administration to end its arms transfers to Israel following the school attack.
Sarah Leah Whitson, executive director of the US-based advocacy group Democracy for the Arab World Now, criticised the arms sales as “Pavlovian conditioning for a savage army”.
The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), an American-Muslim civil rights organization, also said the attack on Gaza City deserves a serious response from the Biden administration.
“If President Biden cares about human life, he will respond to this act of state terrorism by immediately stopping the flow of weapons to the Israeli government and forcing Netanyahu to accept the ceasefire agreement he continues to sabotage,” CAIR wrote in X.
“Enough of asking Israel to investigate itself. Enough of sending bombs. This US-facilitated genocide must end now.”
Former Israeli government adviser Daniel Levy also told Al Jazeera on Saturday that the $3.5 billion US military funding package for Israel showed the “dishonesty and duplicity of the US administration.”
Levy said Washington showed “humiliating weakness” when it claimed Biden “got very angry” on a recent call with Netanyahu but then handed the Israeli prime minister another $3.5 billion in arms funding.
“We have to see that it is not just about weakness. It is also about ideological alignment. The US government is the guarantor of the axis of Zionist extremism,” Levy said. “They may not like some details, but this is what they are supporting.”
