Cross purposes?

Or just hypocrisy?

Or, perhaps it's merely a matter of keeping the American arms industry funded.  War profits keeping the economy afloat.

The administration of United States President Joe Biden has once again bypassed Congress to greenlight an emergency weapons sale to Israel, which has only intensified and broadened its attacks on the Gaza Strip despite growing international outrage.

  alJazeera

How much different is that from Ronald Reagan's circumvention of Congress in Nicaragua?

On December 9, the Biden administration made another emergency determination to approve the sale to Israel of nearly 14,000 rounds of tank ammunition worth more than $106m.

[...]

Friday’s emergency determination, which is rare but has been used by at least four previous US administrations, means that a requirement for a potentially lengthy congressional review for foreign military sales will be bypassed.

So, it's legal this way. Was Reagan not afforded that option? Also, maybe before Biden it was, but twice in one month hardly qualifies as rare.

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken told Congress that he had made a second emergency determination in less than a month, covering a $147.5m sale of equipment to Israel, the State Department said on Friday.

“Given the urgency of Israel’s defensive needs, the secretary notified Congress that he had exercised his delegated authority to determine an emergency existed necessitating the immediate approval of the transfer,” it said.

Defensive needs? Is that what this is? Defense?

Ensuring Israel gets weapons to continue its intense phase of the war, while also urging it to lower the intensity of fighting, is “strategically self-defeating” for Washington, according to Al Jazeera’s senior political analyst Marwan Bishara, who called Friday’s decision “astounding”.

[...]

The move was “morally scandalous” given that the war has caused record damage and killed tens of thousands of Palestinian civilians, Bishara said, but it is also “politically suspect in the sense that why would you want to bypass Congress twice in the same month? What is the urgency to bypass your own guidelines?”

[...]

“One really has to look deep to see if there is any meaningful explanation for why the Biden administration wants to bypass Congress in order to expedite weapons to a country that is involved in war crimes,” he said on Saturday.

I don't see it.

The Biden administration has tried to counter criticism over the mounting death toll in Gaza and continued US arms sales to Israel by saying it constantly maintains contact with Israel to stress the importance of minimising civilian casualties.

Yeah, that's working.

By mid-December, Israel had dropped 29,000 bombs, munitions and shells on Gaza, destroying or damaging nearly 70 percent of homes, the report said.

[...]

The Wall Street Journal reported on Saturday that the war “is generating destruction comparable in scale to the most devastating warfare in the modern record”.

[...]

Some Democratic lawmakers have suggested further significant aid to Israel should be contingent on concrete promises by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government to curb civilian casualties in Gaza.

Oooh. I'm sure that would stop him.

More than 21,000 Palestinians have now been killed in the besieged enclave since October 7, most of them children and women, in what has been widely described as collective punishment. Thousands more are missing.

[...]

Philippe Lazzarini, the head of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA), said on Saturday that Israeli authorities continue to impose “severe restrictions” on humanitarian access despite deliveries of aid from Egypt and through the Rafah crossing.

Shameful.  Obscene.

UPDATE :