U.S. Army Sgt. Quandarius Davon Stanley died earlier this month of injuries sustained last spring in the building of the Gaza pier. Rest in peace, soldier.
He died for a useless exercise in American arrogance. Disturbed by reports of “famine” in Gaza — the United Nations never said there was and admitted there never was such a famine — the Biden administration authorized the U.S. Army to build a floating pier in the Mediterranean Sea at the cost of either $320 million or $230 million U.S. taxpayer dollars, depending on which Department of Defense report you read.
The U.S. was going to swagger in and do what the administration said Israel was unable to do. But the pier was swamped and towed to Israel’s Ashdod port and repaired at a cost of $20 million. It was canceled in July.
Fast forward to October, when Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin, demanded that Israel ramp up food aid to Gaza, and blamed Israel for the ongoing lawlessness in the northern area. If Israel didn’t meet U.S. conditions, they threatened, there could be delays or cancellations in U.S. military assistance. Israel had one month to comply. The State Department designated staff to audit Israel’s delivery of aid.
After the ultimatum, Blinken visited Israel to demand that Israel “capitalize on” the killing of Hamas’ leader, Yahya Sinwar, by “ending the war.” As if Israel didn’t want to.
I wrote at the time: “The ‘dire humanitarian situation’ in northern Gaza is a function of Hamas stealing aid which it sells at enormous profit (watch the video here or see @Imshin on X). Is (the U.S.) proposing Israel return to northern Gaza and carry out police functions against Hamas to protect the shipments?”
Whether it was or was not, Israel did indeed return to northern Gaza in late October, where Hamas had reestablished itself in the Jabaliya refugee camp, firing rockets at Israel and hiding once again behind Palestinian civilians. When hundreds of Gazans headed toward the safe zones in the south, Hamas shot at them. According to the IDF, hundreds of Hamas and PIJ operatives were killed or captured in an operation designed to help ensure that Hamas a) would no longer be able to fire rockets at Israel from Gaza, and b) would no longer be able to dominate, steal and sell humanitarian aid.
In other words, in the middle of the larger war, the IDF returned to a presumed civilian place to root out the terrorists responsible for the shortages of food and medical supplies.
Not good enough, according to some. Headlines are now screaming that Israel failed to meet the U.S.-imposed standard and “time is up.”
Some statistics. According to COGAT, Israel’s department for coordinating aid, on November 12 — “deadline day” — 125 humanitarian aid trucks entered Gaza: “98 through Kerem Shalom and 27 via Erez crossings. Twenty-seven trucks went to northern Gaza carrying food, shelter equipment and medical supplies, including a truck carrying vaccines against the flu, for the upcoming winter.” On November 11, however, COGAT noted: “only 26 trucks were collected from the Gazan side of Kerem Shalom by international organizations. Approx. 900 trucks worth of aid are waiting for collection. Click here to see what that looks like.”
Yes, do click — aid agencies, including UNRWA, the World Food Program, World Central Kitchen, the ICRC and others, are either a) choosing not to deliver in order to make Israel look bad, or b) have decided they can’t deliver in the middle of the battle zone. The second is the kinder thought, and likely partly true. When terrorists implant themselves among civilians, someone has to root them out — and make them surrender — before the people can safely eat.
What does this have to do with Sgt. Stanley’s death?
A report from the Government Accountability Office (GAO) found that US Army watercraft — which carried out the pier mission — are poorly maintained and experiencing a low state of readiness due to “aging vessels, supply shortages, and obsolete parts.” The four-month boondoggle had an operational life of 20 days across four months, delivering an estimated 19.4 million pounds of aid. For comparison purposes, 25,155 tons of food aid entered Gaza in October.
The Biden administration arrogantly believed that the pier would obviate much of the border crossing trouble the agencies were having — there is no Hamas navy to stop them, and the shoreline is not defended by Hamas. And it believed it would show up Israel by doing it ourselves. It should have worked. Maybe it could have worked. But it didn’t.
In other words, despite the lag of the delivery agencies and the ongoing battle against entrenched terrorist forces, Israel was/is doing a lot more than we were able to do.
Does it matter that, at the end of all of this posturing and carping and threatening, the Biden administration has decided not to sanction Israel under the terms of the October 13 letter?
Yes.
Because we sent Sgt. Stanley and his comrades on a fool’s mission. It shouldn’t have happened to him.
Shoshana Bryen is Senior Director of the Jewish Policy Center and Editor of inFocus Quarterly magazine.
The views and opinions expressed in this commentary are those of the author and do not reflect the official position of the Daily Caller News Foundation.
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