Knowledge Production and Policy-Based Evidence Making in the Israel/Palestine Crisis Surrounding Humanitarian Aid.
Palestinian children awaiting life-saving food as Israel wages a war on humanitarian aid. Photo from Arab Center Washington DC titled, “Heartbreak and Heartlessness” in Gaza: Crisis in International Humanitarian Aid”
Introduction:
The goal of any policy decision should be to appropriately reflect the knowledge produced by the expertise within a given situation. In an advanced, democratic society, the knowledge and expert producers should be unbiased and aim to reflect all perspectives for the fairest outcome. However, in many conflicts, it is instead preconceived agendas that determine which expertise and knowledge is acknowledged and acted upon. There can be truth coming from two sides of an argument, yet many policy makers will choose to cherry-pick and legitimize the facts that support their desired outcome, regardless of how much of it is based on the reality of the situation. This is called policy-based evidence making, compared to the desired evidence-based policy making. An appropriate, contemporary example of this would be the Israel/Palestine conflict ongoing in Gaza. This essay will contrast the different expert knowledge coming from international human rights organizations with the Israeli government, and compare it to the policy response from the United States government who is politically active in this conflict. Using different literary analysis from Leander (2014), Boswell (06/2008), and Kostic (2016), I’ll first analyze the role and importance of expertise in knowledge production before giving a brief introduction to the Gaza conflict as it’s escalated from 2023. Then with these scholarly arguments and context of the situation, I’ll first analyze and deconstruct the knowledge production coming from the Israeli Government. I’ll then contrast that with the knowledge produced by expert human rights institutions and humanitarian organizations before finally comparing how these various actors have affected the policy making in the United States government. Furthermore, the claims and knowledge produced will be regarding the controversial humanitarian aid situation within Gaza. Lastly, I’ll argue of the ramifications of policy-based evidence making as evidenced by the increasing tension within the United States as a result of recent policy decisions. I’ll argue that the US specifically has engaged in policy-based evidence making, legitimized by the unverified ‘expert evidence’ produced by the Israeli Government, while discounting the expert knowledge produced by numerous investigations from various international human rights organizations.
1: The Role and Importance of Expertise in Knowledge Production.
Anna Leander produces an exceptional report on the knowledge production arising from the 2013 Sarin Gas attack in Syria and uses different scholars to create a story of the evolution of expertise within policy creation. Given the numerous contesting claims from the attack, Leander claims that the safe days where expertise could guide policy makers with “unambiguous and reliable” knowledge is over. Certainly, higher profile conflicts are going to attract more experts to the policy scene, as well as the rise of the internet and social media means firsthand witnesses and the public can publish their own accounts without professional experience or scholarly education on the subject, in a recent phenomenon called lay expertise. This leads to what Leander describes as the ‘dethroning’ of experts and argues it's a good thing for the democratization of knowledge production but concedes than many could infer this as the beginning of the end for reasonable political debates, where the loudest voices are heard over the most knowledgeable and experienced. There is certainly merit to both arguments, and likely the best outcome could be one where they act off each other. Firsthand and public opinion should inform the experts of what the masses are concerned with in any given conflict and thus guide them on what claims should be further investigated. However, this rarely occurs as it is not the public, or the experts, who control the extraction and dissemination of knowledge anymore, it is the policy makers who hire researchers to find evidence to support their pre-existing notions. Christina Boswell would agree, as she introduces two concepts that will be useful for this analysis; the practice of legitimizing and substantiating expert knowledge for policy making. Boswell states that certain policy makers will rely on expert knowledge to legitimize themselves within the policy field, and at the same time, those organizations can give substantiating support to certain policies within different political debates. The legitimizing aspect is how organizations give themselves epistemic authority, presenting themselves as an unbiased and objective source of information. Policy makers will use the substantiating function to give their policy recommendations more credibility. These two functions are very crucial to policy-based evidence making, as we’ll see governments will carefully choose which organizations to work with when creating new policies based on their effectiveness in legitimizing themselves and substantiating their pre-existing agendas. Lastly, Berit Bliesemann De Guevara and Ronald Kostic add to this argument with their theories of neoliberalism on knowledge production. They state that in Western societies, it is now neoliberalism that determines the research and methodologies produced, placing significance of the pressure on experts to investigate in favor of policy maker’s agendas, rather than in their own interest and autonomy. The two also state that modern limitations like funding and career motivations can contribute to this phenomenon. Where experts used to be given more funding as it was a respected independent career, now funding is limited and competition for authority can indicate some knowledge producers compromising on their research for the opportunity of working with policy makers. This compromise could manifest in researchers agreeing to investigate certain claims and find evidence to support policy decisions instead of producing their own unbiased reports.
2: Brief Introduction to the Gaza Conflict 2023-2024.
Since October 7th, 2023, there has been increasingly more coverage of Israel and Palestine, yet not all the knowledge production arising from the conflict can be considered objective and unbiased. There are few claims that those on both sides of the conflict can agree on, but it seems to be that firstly, the Western-designated terrorist group Hamas attacked Israel on October 7th, and within their attack took approximately 240 hostages and killed 1200 people, most of which were civilians, with some being Israeli military members. Secondly, Israel has responded by sending the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) into Gaza, Palestine, which has been under Israeli occupation since 1948. Israel states the goal of sieging Gaza is to recover the hostages taken and eradicate Hamas, Israeli President Benjamin Netanyahu posted to the public on October 8th, “All of the places which Hamas is deployed, hiding and operating in, that wicked city, we will turn them into rubble. I say to the residents of Gaza: Leave now because we will operate forcefully everywhere.” That is about all the facts that both sides of the conflict can agree on. Past that point, human rights organizations and international institutions will claim many more civilian deaths than Israel will agree with, and within those numbers, there is discrepancies on how many victims are Hamas members, civilians, children, and other designated groups. Furthermore, Israel denies claims of genocide and collective punishment, despite being accused of all acts by South Africa who have opened a case with the International Court of Justice, which will be utilized later as having legal and moral authority over the conflict.
Pro-Palestinian protestors outside the Hague during the ICJ Genocide Ruling on Israel.
Given these contestations, the knowledge production within the conflict is controversial, with actors on each side not able to agree on much. Despite this, one side has been much more active in passing policy decisions, that is the Israeli and United States government. However, human rights organizations and international institutions have prioritized producing expert knowledge through investigations. This is because the Israeli and United States government are attempting to create policy-based evidence, whereas the opposing institutions strive for evidence-based policies.
2.1: Knowledge Production from the Israeli Government.
The Israeli Government is likely the largest and most influential knowledge producer within the Gaza conflict. The majority of their information comes from their IDF troops on the ground in Gaza. Since October 7th, there has been many unverified and contesting claims coming from the Israeli government, particularly surrounding Hamas. The first major claim was that Hamas was operating and holding hostages within tunnels underneath Gaza, with many attached to hospitals in the city. This has also been tied to the claim that the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestinian Refugees (UNRWA) had Hamas operating underneath its headquarters and members of the humanitarian agency were active members of Hamas. However, UNRWA has refuted this, and many independent research investigations outside of Israel would also discredit this claim, coming from organizations like the UN, NPR, Reuters, Al Jazeera, and many others. Israel has yet to provide any evidence to the international community, making their claim one against many oppositions. Additionally, Israel has claimed that Hamas has been diverting humanitarian aid into Gaza. Yet a US Middle East envoy for Biden’s Administration, David Satterfield, said that Israel has also not shown the US any evidence of this to be true either. This suggest that the information coming from Israel is unreliable as there is no other source that can back up their numerous, fleeting, unproven claims. However, as Leander argued, with the contemporary phenomenon of dethroning expertise, it is now the loudest voices who get the most attention in policy deliberations. Therefore, it had seemed that human rights organizations would need to be more direct and intentional with their claims to get the support of policy makers, yet even then they have been ignored.
2.2: Knowledge Production from International Human Rights Organizations and Institutions.
Firstly, let’s contrast the claims made by Israel regarding UNRWA workers being active members within Hamas to UNRWA’s actual statements and investigations. In a publication from UNRWA titled, “Claims Versus Facts,” they state, “UNRWA has not received any information, let alone any evidence, from the Israeli authorities or any other Member State about the above claim...at all times, host states and Israel are fully informed and aware of the details of all staff members working for UNRWA. The names of the 12 individuals against whom allegations were made were all shared multiple times with Israel and other Member States.” Normally, the opinion of human rights institutions is held in high regard with their moral capital and expert authority, but given the intensity of Israeli claims, the international community has done little to protect or support UNRWA from this slander. There have been claims, backed up by the UN, Oxfam, Refugees International, and other human rights groups, stating that Israel, not Hamas, has been blocking humanitarian aid from reaching Palestinian civilians. This is a war crime, and one of the main arguments for genocide found to be plausible from the ICJ given the evidence presented at the South African case against Israel. Israel has repeatedly stated its objectives: retrieve the hostages and, more importantly, eradicate Hamas. Throughout the conflict, Israel has shown little dedication to protecting civilians or assisting in the administration of humanitarian aid, and a major tactic Israel has used to justify this blockage has been the dehumanization of Palestinians, rather than verifiable expert evidence. Early statements from Israeli officials compiled for the ICJ trial proved this, when in the beginning of the conflict, Israel’s defense minister Yoav Gallant ordered an entire siege on Gaza stating, “There will be no electricity, no food, no fuel...We are fighting human animals and we act accordingly,” while the energy minister Israel Katz agreed in a press statement, “Humanitarian aid to Gaza? No electric switch will be turned on, no water tap will be opened, and no fuel truck will enter until the Israeli abductees are returned home."
Human Rights Watch response to Yoav Gallant’s statement.
Not only has numerous human rights organizations charged Israel with the crime of obstructing humanitarian aid, but the ICJ who has much more moral and political authority, have agreed. Despite this, Israel has not made any changes in response to these charges, and aid is still not reaching those who need it. Additionally, third party countries like the United States have cherry-picked expert information to justify their support for Israel, funding them and providing the IDF with missiles and bombs being used on civilians. This is where, finally, we see policy-based evidence making in action.
3: The Ramifications of Policy-Based Evidence Making as Seen from the United States Government Support for Israel.
The United States has been a lifelong ally of Israel, supporting them in every UN Security Council Resolution criticizing them, and using their veto power to singlehandedly protect Israel at least 33 times since the nation’s birth in 1948. I wrote about this in my first blog post titled, “US Hegemony: A Threat to Global Democracy,” that you can read here.
This is because the United States has strategic interests in an allyship with Israel, being the only Western country in the Middle East where many of American’s adversaries are. Additionally, Israeli lobbyists, particularly the American Israel Policy Action Committee (AIPAC), has funded many politicians' campaigns in return for Israeli protection within Congress. In a compilation created by data experts, founded that US President Joe Biden was the top recipient of Israeli blood money, receiving more than $6,100,000 during his time in the Senate, with 280 other congressmen being paid off as well. As De Guevara and Kostic argued, in modern Western liberal countries, it is now politics and money that determine which evidence will be extracted and disseminated for policy decisions, and the US is proving this by ignoring the actual expert evidence coming from human rights investigations. This can specifically be seen in the US’s response to the Israeli attack on the humanitarian group World Central Kitchen on April 1st, 2024, that killed 7 workers, many from Western countries including the United States. The World Central Kitchen investigated the attack and provided evidence that their team had acted in accordance with international humanitarian law and in full cooperation and communication with the IDF. This evidence included investigations from different news sources, such as ABC news, Al Jazeera, and others, and showed satellite images of the WCK vehicles following a pre-determined safe route, as well as traveling in 3 clearly marked convoys, all of which were attacked.
Satellite imagery from human rights investigations into the Israeli attack on WCK convoys.
Yet despite these expert investigations, the response from the United States government to these attacks and obstruction of humanitarian aid has been to continue funding Israel while allowing them to investigate themselves, stating “Israel has pledged to conduct a thorough investigation into why the aid workers’ vehicles were hit by airstrikes.” This is also an obstruction of justice on America’s part, allowing alleged perpetrators to investigate themselves when they’ve shown no respect for international humanitarian law throughout the conflict. I have also wrote about this in a more recent blog post titled, “The Biggest Threat to the International Human Rights System,” that you can read here.
However given the United States' longstanding alliance with Israel, it proves that the US is acting through policy-based evidence making. By substantiating unverified claims from Israel, as Boswell would argue, and allowing them to investigate themselves for their own international crimes, while also discounting expert knowledge from human rights investigations, the US is acting in its own interests at the expense of Palestinian civilians. Despite the Israeli government providing no evidence for their claims of tunnels operating underneath UNRWA hospitals and that humanitarian workers have joined Hamas, the US and other Western countries have stopped funding to UNRWA while continuing it to Israel. The ramifications of this result in more civilian deaths and an erosion of legitimacy in international law.
4: Conclusion.
After a scholarly comparative analysis of the challenges facing knowledge production and the comparison of expert knowledge from both the Israeli Government and international human rights organizations, we can see through response of the United States, that it is policy that rules the extraction and dissemination of knowledge in politics. Knowledge should be objective, based on moral capital and expert authority, yet in neoliberal Western countries, it is instead political strategy that determines policy decisions. Additionally, the ICJ with its legal authority, has found Israel plausibly guilty of blocking humanitarian aid, with independent investigations also proving Israel of having intentionally targeting the WCK convey. Despite the plethora of expert knowledge, the United States has continued to fund Israeli operations due to their strategic interests in the region and political funding from Israel. Not only is it an erosion of democracy and international law, but the outcome is thousands of innocent civilians and children dead based off unverified claims. This is the dark and deadly side to policy-based evidence making, it justifies crimes committed based on illegitimate evidence, while simultaneously discounting expert knowledge from those considered to be adversaries. It should be evidence-based knowledge that drives policy dissemination, not the other way around, otherwise, humanitarian law and human rights organizations risk losing their authority in the international community, and we further risk the loss of innocent lives.
