by Michael Hollister
Exclusive published at Michael Hollister on April 12, 2026

3.691 words * 20 minutes readingtime

Part 1 read here:
GAZA-Made in the USA – Part 1 – How American Bombs Are Destroying Gaza

How Washington Dismantled the Last Oversight Mechanism

On February 8, 2024, President Joe Biden signed National Security Memorandum 20. The document entered the world without a press conference, without a Rose Garden ceremony – an internal administrative directive governing agency behavior for as long as the president who signed it remained in office. Not a law. No binding force beyond the term. No independent enforcement mechanism.

What NSM-20 required was nonetheless clear in its text: before the United States delivers defense articles to a foreign government, the Departments of State and Defense must obtain from that government credible and reliable written assurances that the delivered weapons will be used in compliance with international humanitarian law. Additionally, the recipient government was required to ensure that humanitarian assistance would not be blocked or impeded. The State Department was obligated to report regularly to Congress – with specific findings on possible violations. (Biden White House, National Security Memorandum-20, February 8, 2024, https://bidenwhitehouse.archives.gov/briefing-room/presidential-actions/2024/02/08/national-security-memorandum-on-safeguards-and-accountability-with-respect-to-transferred-defense-articles-and-defense-services/)

For the practice of US arms exports to Israel, this meant: for the first time since the conflict began, a formal mechanism tying the supply chain to a verifiable condition. For the first time, a documentation requirement that was publicly accessible. For the first time, a legislative basis on which legislators could request concrete reports and act politically.

On February 21, 2025 – 13 months later, four weeks after the Trump administration took office – National Security Adviser Michael Waltz revoked the memorandum by internal order. No public announcement. No press conference. The Washington Post obtained a copy of the order and was the first outlet to report on it. The White House, the State Department, and the Defense Department initially did not respond to press inquiries. Confirmation came only through several current and former US officials speaking anonymously. (The Washington Post, “Trump repeals Biden directive linking U.S. arms to human rights,” February 24, 2025, https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2025/02/24/trump-israel-gaza-us-weapons/)

Senator Jim Risch, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, welcomed the revocation: NSM-20 had been “nothing more than virtue signaling to the progressive left,” had driven a wedge between the United States and its allies, and had “opened the door to Russia and China.” Senator Chris Van Hollen, who had provided the legislative foundation from which NSM-20 emerged, responded with a precise description of what had just happened: “What the Trump administration is saying is that anything goes.” (Senator Jim Risch, statement on NSM-20 revocation, February 24, 2025, https://www.foreign.senate.gov/press/rep/release/risch-statement-on-trump-nsm-20-revocation) (Senator Chris Van Hollen, statement on NSM-20 revocation, February 24, 2025, https://www.vanhollen.senate.gov/news/press-releases/van-hollen-blasts-trump-decision-to-revoke-nsm-20)

When Bellingcat, in the course of its Gaza munitions investigation, asked about the status of NSM-20, the State Department replied with a single sentence: “NSM-20 is no longer US policy.”

What NSM-20 Was – and What Actually Happened in Its 13 Months

To understand what was lost with its revocation, one must examine in detail the 13 months between signing and revocation. Because what happened in that period is no less revealing than the revocation itself.

In March 2024 – one month after NSM-20 was signed – Israel submitted to the State Department its written assurances, as the memorandum required. Content: Israel would use delivered weapons in compliance with international humanitarian law and would not block humanitarian assistance. On March 25, 2024, the State Department confirmed receipt of those assurances and declared it had not found Israel “in violation of international humanitarian law” – neither in the conduct of the war nor in the provision of humanitarian access.

This finding drew broad criticism from an unusually wide range of directions. The Arms Control Association stated the report “sidestep[ped] the central question” of whether US weapons had been used in compliance with US law and international law – and described the absence of a clear finding as “an abdication of presidential leadership at a moment of crisis.” The Center for International Policy cited a “mountain of evidence” that had been systematically ignored and warned the finding “fundamentally undermin[ed] the credibility of NSM-20.” Amnesty International had submitted to the State Department a statement with specific examples of the misuse of US defense articles – including strikes on civilian infrastructure and documented cases of unlawful killing. (Arms Control Association, statement on the Biden administration’s NSM-20 finding on Israel, May 2024, https://www.armscontrol.org/pressroom/2024-05/biden-administrations-finding-israel)

Eighty-eight members of the House of Representatives had declared in a formal letter that there was “sufficient evidence” that Israel was impeding humanitarian assistance – which would constitute a direct violation of the NSM-20 assurances. Senator Chris Van Hollen led a group of senators who repeatedly wrote demanding that NSM-20 be taken seriously: in March, April, and May 2024. An independent expert panel – the Independent Task Force on the Application of NSM-20 to Israel – identified “multiple restrictions on humanitarian assistance, including IDF strikes,” which triggered Section 620I of the Foreign Assistance Act and therefore required consequences.

None of this produced a change in the US position. NSM-20 remained formally in force – and was formally never applied.

What the memorandum nonetheless accomplished was not nothing. It compelled documentation where no reporting obligation had previously existed. It gave legislators a concrete lever – requesting reports, insisting on findings, publicly dissenting. It generated friction in the political debate that would not have arisen without the formal mechanism. Van Hollen stated retrospectively that NSM-20 had “at critical moments created pressure that caused Israel to allow additional aid into Gaza.” That may sound modest. It is more than nothing.

Since February 21, 2025, even that mechanism no longer exists.

The Architecture of Failure: Three Laws That Were Not Applied

NSM-20 was neither the oldest nor the most powerful instrument that could have regulated the supply chain. US law contains at least three older, statutorily anchored instruments – not presidential memoranda but federal statutes – that would have created a different baseline if consistently applied. None of them was applied in the case of Israel.

The Leahy Law

The Leahy Law – named for longtime Vermont Senator Patrick Leahy – has existed since the 1990s in two versions: one for the State Department (22 U.S.C. 2378d) and one for the Defense Department (10 U.S.C. 362). Both prohibit the provision of US military assistance to foreign security units against which there are credible allegations of gross human rights violations – including extrajudicial killings, torture, enforced disappearances, and rape as a weapon of war. The law applies not to armed forces as a whole but to specifically identifiable units.

The Leahy Law is not a theoretical instrument. It has been applied: against units in Colombia, Mexico, Bangladesh, Egypt, Nigeria, and Sri Lanka – each time on the basis of credible reports of serious violations. The State Department maintains a dedicated review process, so-called “Leahy vetting,” which screens units for allegations before military assistance is authorized.

Since October 2023, Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International have identified specific Israeli units against which credible allegations of serious human rights violations exist – including extrajudicial killings, disproportionate strikes on civilian infrastructure, and the use of starvation as a weapon of war. A formal Leahy vetting process for these units was not initiated by the State Department. No public explanation for that decision exists.

Foreign Assistance Act, Section 620I

This provision of the Foreign Assistance Act prohibits US assistance to governments that actively obstruct or prevent the delivery of US-funded humanitarian goods. The text is unambiguous: once such obstruction is established, assistance must be stopped. No discretion. No balancing against national security interests.

The UN, the World Food Programme, UNICEF, Médecins Sans Frontières, and numerous other organizations have documented with increasing urgency since fall 2023 that humanitarian access to Gaza was being systematically restricted – through control of border crossings, attacks on aid convoys, and bureaucratic obstruction. In April 2024, a World Central Kitchen aid convoy was struck despite coordinated route clearance with the IDF; seven aid workers were killed. Eighty-eight legislators declared in writing that there was “sufficient evidence” of a Section 620I violation. The Independent Task Force identified “multiple restrictions” triggering the provision. The State Department made no formal finding to that effect at any point.

Arms Export Control Act

The central US statute governing arms export oversight – the Arms Export Control Act (AECA) – requires that delivered weapons be used exclusively for agreed-upon purposes. Those purposes are defined in the individual sales agreements: typically self-defense, internal security, and training. When credible reports of divergent use arise, the State Department is obligated to initiate a review and, if warranted, suspend deliveries.

The Biden administration’s own NSM-20 report had found that it was “reasonable to assess” that US weapons had been used in ways “not consistent with international humanitarian law obligations or with best practices for minimizing civilian casualties.” That formulation – cautious as it is – could have triggered an AECA review. It did not. A formal compliance review under the AECA that could lead to a delivery suspension was initiated neither under Biden nor under Trump. (Congressional Research Service, U.S. Review of an Arms Sale to Israel – Issues for Congress, https://www.congress.gov/crs_external_products/RL/HTML/RL33222.web.html)

All three instruments exist. All three were applicable to the case at hand. None of the three was applied. The political decision not to apply them was not made in secret – it is documented in official statements, in the sequence of approval decisions, and in the silence of the responsible agencies. That makes it an institutional finding.

The Acceleration: How the Trump Administration Systematically Dismantled Oversight

The revocation of NSM-20 was the first step in a sequence, not an isolated decision. What followed in the subsequent weeks shows a consistent pattern: dismantle oversight mechanisms, accelerate approval processes, reduce congressional review.

One day after the revocation of NSM-20, on February 28, 2025, the Trump administration invoked the emergency provision of the Arms Export Control Act – Section 36(b). This provision allows the president to bypass the normal congressional notification period for arms sales upon declaring a national security emergency. The notification window being bypassed ranges from 15 to 30 days depending on transaction size – a brief but politically significant period in which legislators can raise objections, build public pressure, or initiate hearings.

The emergency provision is not a routine instrument. It has been activated rarely in the history of the AECA – and when it has been, in situations of acute military crisis requiring closure of a supply gap for an allied state in immediate danger. The Trump administration used it to push four FMS cases with Israel totaling nearly $4 billion past congressional review. Among them: general-purpose bombs, JDAM guidance kits, and Caterpillar D9 bulldozers. An acute military emergency on the part of Israel that would have justified this mechanism was not discernible at the time of activation.

Representative Gregory Meeks, the ranking Democrat on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, stated that the Trump administration had “openly disregarded longstanding congressional prerogatives” and was refusing to involve Congress in “critical questions about the Gaza strategy and broader US-Israel policy.” The invocation of the emergency provision had occurred without the customary informal advance notice to committee chairs – a break with years of established practice.

In April 2025, an executive order followed titled “Reforming Foreign Defense Sales to Improve Speed and Accountability.” Behind the word “accountability” lies its opposite: the order directed the State Department and Defense Department to propose to Congress a raising of the notification thresholds. Higher thresholds mean concretely: more transactions pass below the congressional radar. Fewer deals must be reported to Congress. Fewer opportunities for legislators to raise objections or build public pressure.

The direction of these measures is consistent and unambiguous: the mechanism that enabled oversight was eliminated. The emergency that would have allowed a parliamentary pause was bypassed. The thresholds that compel transparency are to be raised. The result is an arms supply chain to Israel that runs faster, is less visible, and is subject to less democratic oversight than at any previous point since the conflict began.

Germany: The Second-Largest Supplier Before the Courts

The question of accountability for arms deliveries to Israel is not exclusively an American question. It presents itself with equal institutional sharpness for Germany – with the difference that it has already reached multiple courts there and could compel concrete legal consequences.

Germany is Israel’s second-largest arms supplier after the United States. Items delivered include gearbox components for Israeli Merkava battle tanks deployed in Gaza. Current media reports – cited in ECCHR court filings – show that these components are installed directly into tanks in the combat zone following delivery. They are not “simply sitting on shelves in Israel.” The material connection between export authorization and combat use is documented.

The European Center for Constitutional and Human Rights, together with Palestinian partner organizations, supported a constitutional complaint before Germany’s Federal Constitutional Court in Karlsruhe, heard on February 12, 2026 – eight days after the Bellingcat article appeared, without that connection being noted in German reporting. (ECCHR, “Federal Constitutional Court decides on German arms exports to Israel,” February 10, 2026, https://www.ecchr.eu/pressemitteilung/bundesverfassungsgericht-entscheidet-diese-woche-ueber-deutsche-ruestungsexporte-nach-israel/)

The complainant is a Palestinian civilian from Gaza who lost his wife and child in Israeli strikes and continues to live in Gaza with his surviving family members. He is challenging German export authorizations for gearbox components destined for Merkava tanks. German administrative courts had dismissed his interim injunction applications on grounds that have themselves become the subject of the constitutional dispute: he had no legally cognizable interest in legal protection. A person who lost family members to weapons possibly equipped with German components has no legally recognized right to challenge the export authorization for those components.

The Federal Constitutional Court must now decide whether this denial of legal recourse is compatible with the Basic Law. The ECCHR has articulated the stakes clearly: the decision will show “the extent to which German courts can enforce human rights protection against political and economic interests.” As Israel’s second-largest arms supplier, Germany bears “concrete shared responsibility for the human rights consequences of these exports.”

In parallel, Germany faces a separate case before the International Court of Justice in The Hague. Nicaragua has brought a claim against Germany before the ICJ on the grounds that Germany continues to supply Israel with weapons during an ongoing genocide proceeding, thereby providing assistance. The case is legally complex – Nicaragua relies on the obligations that the ongoing ICJ proceedings create for all signatory states of the UN Genocide Convention.

Germany’s own position in this context has proven difficult to sustain. At the outset of the South Africa v. Israel proceedings, the German government had announced its intention to intervene on Israel’s behalf – the genocide allegation was “entirely without foundation,” government spokesperson Hebestreit declared, and Germany felt itself “particularly bound” to the UN Genocide Convention by virtue of its history. This position, however, collided with Germany’s own argumentation in the Nicaragua proceedings, in which Berlin contested Nicaragua’s standing to sue. The announced intervention in support of Israel in the main proceedings was ultimately not filed.

Two Scenarios – An Open Question

Anyone who analyzes the full structure of this supply chain – the approval decisions and their timing, the systematic dismantling of oversight mechanisms, the institutional silence of agencies and companies, the activation of the emergency provision one day after the NSM-20 revocation – confronts a question that admits two fundamentally different answers. Both are plausible on the basis of the available material. Neither can be conclusively proven from publicly available sources.

The first scenario is institutional failure. The responsible agencies – the State Department, the Pentagon, the Defense Security Cooperation Agency – did not adequately fulfill the review obligations imposed on them by law. Not from bad faith, but because the institutional incentive structures, the political dependence of agencies on the current administration, and the historically established special status of Israel in US foreign policy led to the omission of reviews that were in fact legally mandated. That would be a finding about structural weakness in the American arms export system – and would justify reform: stronger statutory anchoring, more independent review bodies, harder consequences for non-application of existing law.

The second scenario is political decision. The oversight mechanisms were not accidentally left unapplied – they were deliberately deactivated. NSM-20 was revoked 13 months after signing, immediately after a new administration took office that wanted no more reports capable of becoming politically inconvenient. The emergency provision was activated not because of an acute threat situation but to avoid congressional review. The executive order on threshold increases targets not efficiency but opacity. The State Department’s response to Bellingcat – “we are not in a position to make such determinations” – in this reading is not a statement about technical incapacity. It is a political decision, formulated as an administrative impossibility.

The difference between the two scenarios is not academic. It determines whether the solution lies in better laws – or whether better laws would also go unapplied, because the political will to apply them is absent.

What Remains When Oversight Falls Away

The question of who bears responsibility for the use of weapons that one state delivers to another is not a new question. It has been the subject of arms export law, international tort law, and public international law for decades – without a definitive answer, but with growing precision in its formulation.

What the Bellingcat dataset accomplishes is not to answer that question. It makes the question unavoidable. It transfers it from the abstract to the concrete and incontestable: not “US weapons are killing civilians in Gaza,” but this bomb of this type from this manufacturer, delivered via this program, authorized by this agency, killed these people at this location at this time. With names. With coordinates. With photographic documentation. With cross-checked weapons identification.

At that point, the argument of non-jurisdiction fails. The State Department declares it is “not in a position to make such determinations.” Boeing and Lockheed Martin do not respond. The Pentagon is silent. But the determinations have been made – by independent OSINT analysts, by an external weapons expert, by an investigative network without government funding and without political agenda. The determinations exist. The institutions nominally responsible for them refuse to acknowledge them.

What remains when the institutional framework falls away are three arenas.

The first is the judiciary. The Federal Constitutional Court in Karlsruhe is deciding whether a Palestinian civilian even has the right to challenge German export authorizations – whether the legal avenue for those affected is open at all. The International Court of Justice in The Hague is addressing in South Africa v. Israel whether Israeli military operations in Gaza fall under the UN Genocide Convention. Nicaragua is simultaneously suing Germany before the same court for complicity through continued weapons deliveries during an ongoing genocide proceeding. Multiple Senate resolutions of disapproval have been introduced in the US Congress to block specific sales – without a parliamentary majority so far, but with legal effect as formal objections. These proceedings are slow. Their outcomes are uncertain. But their mere existence changes the political space: they generate documentation, they set deadlines, they compel governments to take public positions.

The second arena is legislation. In the US Congress, several legislators have introduced concrete bills that would do what NSM-20 only attempted by memorandum: enshrine the conditions for arms exports in statute, make review obligations binding, and establish consequences for non-compliance. These proposals have so far failed for lack of a majority. They document, however, that the political will for statutory regulation exists in portions of Congress – and that the debate over the legal basis for arms exports is not closed. (Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, “U.S. Military Aid and Arms Transfers to Israel, October 2023 – September 2025,” October 2025, https://quincyinst.org/research/u-s-military-aid-and-arms-transfers-to-israel-october-2023-september-2025/)

The third arena is public accountability. Investigative journalism, OSINT networks, human rights organizations, and international media are doing the documentation work that state institutions refuse to do. Bellingcat’s dataset is the most precise instrument of this kind for this conflict to date. It is reproducible. It is falsifiable. It is publicly accessible. And it exists independently of whether the State Department is prepared to “make such determinations.”

Whether accountability is still a functioning concept – that is not a rhetorical question. It is an open one. And its answer will depend on which of these three arenas proves capable of actual effect in the years ahead: whether courts recognize standing to sue, whether parliaments pass laws stronger than presidential memoranda – or whether documentation from the outside remains the only form of accountability that still functions within this system.

Michael Hollister
is a geopolitical analyst and investigative journalist. He served six years in the German military, including peacekeeping deployments in the Balkans (SFOR, KFOR), followed by 14 years in IT security management. His analysis draws on primary sources to examine European militarization, Western intervention policy, and shifting power dynamics across Asia. A particular focus of his work lies in Southeast Asia, where he investigates strategic dependencies, spheres of influence, and security architectures. Hollister combines operational insider perspective with uncompromising systemic critique—beyond opinion journalism. His work appears on his bilingual website (German/English) www.michael-hollister.com, at Substack and in investigative outlets across the German-speaking world and the Anglosphere.

Sources

1. The Washington Post: “Trump repeals Biden directive linking U.S. arms to human rights” (February 24, 2025) https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2025/02/24/trump-israel-gaza-us-weapons/
2. US Senator Jim Risch: Statement on Trump NSM-20 Revocation (February 24, 2025) https://www.foreign.senate.gov/press/rep/release/risch-statement-on-trump-nsm-20-revocation
3. US Senator Chris Van Hollen: Statement on NSM-20 Revocation (February 24, 2025) https://www.vanhollen.senate.gov/news/press-releases/van-hollen-blasts-trump-decision-to-revoke-nsm-20
4. Biden White House: National Security Memorandum-20 (February 8, 2024) https://bidenwhitehouse.archives.gov/briefing-room/presidential-actions/2024/02/08/national-security-memorandum-on-safeguards-and-accountability-with-respect-to-transferred-defense-articles-and-defense-services/
5. Arms Control Association: Statement on Biden Administration’s NSM-20 Finding on Israel (May 2024) https://www.armscontrol.org/pressroom/2024-05/biden-administrations-finding-israel
6. Congressional Research Service: U.S. Review of an Arms Sale to Israel – Issues for Congress https://www.congress.gov/crs_external_products/RL/HTML/RL33222.web.html
7. Hogan Lovells: U.S. Directorate of Defense Trade Controls – FY 2025 Q1 (July 2025) https://www.hoganlovells.com/en/publications/us-directorate-of-defense-trade-controls-releases-list-of-fy-2025-q1-proposed-commercial-defense
8. Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft: “U.S. Military Aid and Arms Transfers to Israel, October 2023 – September 2025” (October 2025) https://quincyinst.org/research/u-s-military-aid-and-arms-transfers-to-israel-october-2023-september-2025/
9. ECCHR: Federal Constitutional Court decides on German arms exports to Israel (February 10, 2026) https://www.ecchr.eu/pressemitteilung/bundesverfassungsgericht-entscheidet-diese-woche-ueber-deutsche-ruestungsexporte-nach-israel/
10. Lawfare: “Biden’s New Policy on Security Assistance, NSM-20, Will Not Save Gaza” (February 2024) https://www.lawfaremedia.org/article/biden-s-new-policy-on-security-assistance-nsm-20-will-not-save-gaza
11. IMEU Policy Project: “Biden’s NSM-20 Report Must Hold Israel Accountable” https://www.imeupolicyproject.org/memos/bidens-nsm-20-report-must-hold-israel-accountable-for-violating-assurances

© Michael Hollister – All rights reserved. Redistribution, publication or reuse of this text requires express written permission from the author. For licensing inquiries, please contact the author via www.michael-hollister.com.

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