Media Lie About Weapon Transfer To Israel

 moon of alabama

The editors of the Washington Post have a curious understanding of the process of “selling”:

Trump’s planned sale of controversial bombs to Israel is largest in years (archived) – Washington Post, Sep 15 2026

The Trump administration is preparing a multibillion-dollar sale of 2,000-pound bombs to Israel in the largest single sale of the controversial munition in recent years, a U.S. official told The Washington Post.

The $2.8 billion package, which would be purchased with U.S. taxpayer dollars, includes 40,000 bombs that weigh 2,000 pounds each, including 20,000 MK-84s and 20,000 BLU-117s, said the official, who like others spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss military matters. The sale also includes 20,000 I-2000 Penetrator warheads.

Among the most destructive munitions in Western military arsenals, an MK-84 explosion sends metal fragments in every direction for thousands of feet, can rip through metal and thick concrete, and often creates large craters in the earth.
…
Though described as a sale, the transaction is financed through a mechanism known as Foreign Military Financing, in which the United States provides the money that Israel uses to buy the weapons.

To be fair, despite the false headline and opening paragraph the Washington Post is way better than the New York Times in describing the issue:

Trump Approves $2.8 Billion Arms Sale to Israel (archived) – New York Times, Sep 15 2026

The Trump administration has approved a $2.8 billion sale of heavy bombs to Israel, according to a U.S. official, in what would be among the largest deliveries of U.S. munitions even as American public support for the country declines.

The proposed sale would include 40,000 one-ton bombs whose use by Israel in Gaza and Lebanon has drawn international anger because of the civilian harm caused by their wide blast radius.
…

With no word does the NY Times mention that the fake “sale” is paid out of the U.S. government budget.

But it does point to a decent text by Tucker Carlson, the Times calls it  a “tirade”, which rightly points out the problems with this:

How big is this shipment? It amounts to 40,000 tons of bombs. For perspective, the largest American air raid of World War Two was the Eighth Air Force’s attack on Berlin in March of 1945. Combined, the 2,023 Allied aircraft involved dropped about 3,000 tons of bombs. That’s 7.5 percent of what Trump is sending to Israel. That same month, March of 1945, the US Army Air Forces began the single most destructive bombing raid in human history, Operation Meetinghouse over Tokyo. More than 100,000 Japanese civilians were killed. By the end of that operation, the US had dropped 1,600 tons of bombs. That’s four percent of what Trump is sending to Israel. World War Two ended five months later, when the US dropped an atomic bomb on the city of Hiroshima. The shipment Trump is sending to Israel amounts to more than three times the destructive power of that nuclear explosion. There is no precedent for what the Trump administration is doing.

Nor is there a justification. ..

Carlson even rightly predicts that U.S. media would lie about this:

So far none of this has received public scrutiny. At some point, inevitably, it will be described in media accounts as an “arms sale.” It is not an arms sale. It is a gift, funded by American taxpayers through the Foreign Military Financing program, an arrangement designed to disguise welfare as capitalism: Congress appropriates money to the executive branch, which transfers the cash to Israel to “buy” American-made weapons, in this case from General Dynamics.

The media is doing here is what it likes to accuse others of. It is spreading out right disinformation.

Posted by b on September 16, 2026 at 15:23 UTC | Permalink

https://www.moonofalabama.org/2026/09/media-lie-about-weapon-transfer-to-israel.html