Just after this I saw the report @finallyloggedin posted on one of the threads, about this US army major resigning over Palestine.
The question about whether the YSA provided just intelligence or also ‘boots on the ground’ came up during an interview with the officer in question, Harrison Mann, in which the interviewer cites Jake Sullivan saying it is just intelligence.
It is not clear to me whether or not Harrison skirts the question about whether what Jake Sullivan [Jacob Jeremiah Sullivan is an American attorney who is serving as the United States National Security Advisor] said about the US only offering intelligence is true.
Or maybe Harrison Mann did not understand she was wanting firm confirmation of that.
Or, maybe he just wanted to explain how, for him, ‘just intelligence’ can lead to unexpected harms/hundreds of deaths and woundings.
Or, he may have not known, because of his earlier resignation, if what happened at Nuseirat did involve US boots on the ground, in spite of what Jake Sullivan said.
It could all be top secret and he and Jake Sullivan have signed to keep official secrets.
U.S. Jewish Army Intel Officer Quits over Gaza, Says “Impossible” Not to See Echoes of Holocaust | Democracy Now!
https://www.democracynow.org/2024/6/11/harrison_mann_resignation_gaza_war
In this part of the interview with the army officer in question, Harrison Mann, it comes up whether the US gave just intelligence for the Israeli Nuseirat raid.
(My bolding.)
AMY GOODMAN: I wanted to ask you about more recent events, like this weekend, and as your role as a DIA officer, if you could explain what’s really going on here, talking about the role of U.S. intelligence support in Israel’s war on Gaza. This is national security adviser Jake Sullivan speaking on CNN from Paris.
JAKE SULLIVAN: The United States has been providing support to Israel for several months in its efforts to help identify the locations of hostages in Gaza and to support efforts to try to secure their rescue or recovery. I’m not going to get into the specific operational or intelligence-related matters associated with that, because we need to protect those. I can only just say that we have generally provided support to the IDF so that we can try to get all of the hostages home, including the American hostages who are still being held.
DANA BASH: So, I understand that intelligence, U.S. intelligence, assisted. But will you say anything about U.S. personnel, U.S. weapons?
JAKE SULLIVAN: Well, the one thing I can say is that there were no U.S. forces, no U.S. boots on the ground involved in this operation. We did not participate militarily in this operation.
AMY GOODMAN: So, no boots on the ground, Jake Sullivan says to Dana Bash of CNN. He’s talking about this weekend , when more than 270 Palestinians were killed in the Israeli military operation that freed four Israeli hostages in Nuseirat, in Gaza. Israeli intelligence officials told The New York Times— this is in an article today — that U.S. military officials in Israel provided some of the intelligence about the hostages rescued on Saturday. According to the Times, the Pentagon and the CIA have been providing information collected from drone flights over Gaza, communications intercepts and other sources about the potential location of hostages. While Israel has its own intelligence, the United States and Britain have been able to provide intelligence from the air and cyberspace that Israel cannot collect on its own, The New York Times reports. So, Harrison Mann, talk more about this and what kind of support was, it looks like, provided this weekend. And then go more generally into, well, President Biden more recently said he’s approving a billion dollars more of just outright weapons to Israel.
HARRISON MANN: Yeah, I think the operation this weekend is a kind of unusually public example of the value of intelligence support that the U.S. provides to Israel, which is — you know, we’ve had a long-standing and very strong relationship, and usually it’s not discussed. But I think this weekend we saw how intel support, even if it’s for a goal that I think is nominally, you know, quite — something that’s difficult to dispute, which is rescuing hostages, can nonetheless contribute to operations that kill what looks like a very large number of civilians. And I think it’s also indicative of the value of the intel support that we give Israel. And I just highlight that because that’s the area that I worked in or adjacent to, and it’s another form of valuable support that we give Israel that helps them prosecute this war. And it’s another less discussed form of leverage that we also have over the Israeli government.