In a recent interview, Matthew Miller, who previously served as the spokesperson for the U.S. State Department during President Joe Biden’s administration, accused Israeli forces of committing war crimes during their military campaign against Hamas in Gaza. Speaking on a podcast with Sky News, Miller stated, “It is without a doubt true that Israel has committed war crimes.”
Despite making this accusation, Miller clarified that he does not believe the Israeli military is carrying out a campaign of genocide in Gaza.
Miller explained that war crimes can be assessed in two main ways. “There are two ways to think about the commission of war crimes,” he said. “One is if the state has pursued a policy of deliberately committing war crimes or is acting recklessly in a way that aids and abets war crimes. Is the state committing war crimes?” He continued by noting, “That, I think, is an open question [in regard to Gaza]. I think what is almost certainly not an open question is that there have been individual incidents that have been war crimes where Israeli soldiers, members of the Israeli military, have committed war crimes.”
The Israeli government has consistently rejected these kinds of accusations, maintaining that its military operations are conducted with efforts to minimize harm to civilians, despite facing an enemy embedded within civilian areas.
Nonetheless, international observers have questioned Israel’s actions, particularly pointing to the scale of civilian deaths and the strict controls on humanitarian aid entering Gaza as evidence that contradicts its claims of protecting noncombatants.
Miller added further context by discussing how democracies should be judged based on their response to misconduct within their armed forces. “In almost every major conflict, including conflicts prosecuted by democracies, you will see individual members of the military commit war crimes, and the way you judge a democracy is whether they hold those people accountable,” he said.
He added, “We have not yet seen them hold sufficient numbers of the military accountable, and I think it’s an open question whether they’re going to.”
Miller also touched on policy differences within the Biden administration regarding how to manage the Gaza conflict, including the question of halting weapons shipments to Israel. He suggested that such actions might have inadvertently encouraged Hamas to continue the fighting rather than negotiate a ceasefire. “It was clear to us in that period that there was a time when our public discussion of withholding weapons from Israel, as well as the protests on college campuses in the United States and the movement of some European countries to recognize the state of Palestine… All of those things together were leading the leadership of Hamas to conclude that they didn’t need to agree to a ceasefire, they just needed to hold out for a little bit longer, and they could get what they always wanted,” he said. “And maybe a widening of the war where Hezbollah could come in, where Iran could come in.”
He confirmed that the Biden administration did stop the delivery of large 2,000-pound bombs to Israel in the spring of 2024. The reason, Miller said, was concern that Israel might not use them in a way that was “appropriate in Gaza.” He noted that this decision was later reversed by the Trump administration.
Reflecting on the period from late May 2024 to mid-January 2025, Miller expressed regret about the lack of stronger action from the U.S. to push for a ceasefire. “The thing that I look back on… is in that intervening period between the end of May [2024] and the middle of January [2025], when thousands of Palestinians, innocent civilians, were killed… was there more that we could have done to pressure the Israeli government to agree to that ceasefire? I think at times there probably was,” Miller said.
He concluded by pointing out that blame for stalled negotiations could not rest solely with Hamas. “Israel was not the only party to this negotiation. You saw Hamas repeatedly move the goalposts, but you saw [Prime Minister Netanyahu] move the goalposts as well, and I do think there are times we should’ve been tougher on them,” he added.
{Matzav.com}
Wasn’t October 7th the first of their war crimes?
Are the Geneva War Crimes agreements also applicable when hedious genocide is perpetrated unto your people and you are drawn into the brutal war of guerrilla fighters who booby trap buildings and set up headquarters in schools and hospitals? Are such a foe protected by the Geneva Act? Only a Biden government can think so.
May Matthew Miller get hit by a bus
Did American troops commit any war crimes in Iraq or Afghanistan?