Last week, ProPublica detailed how the government’s two foremost authorities on humanitarian assistance concluded in the spring that Israel had deliberately blocked deliveries of food and medicine into Gaza and that weapons sales should be halted.

The records and interviews also show that the pressure to keep the arms pipeline moving also comes from the U.S. military contractors who make the weapons. Lobbyists for those companies have routinely pressed lawmakers and State Department officials behind the scenes to approve shipments both to Israel and other controversial allies in the region, including Saudi Arabia.

When one company executive pushed his former subordinate at the department for a valuable sale, the government official reminded him that strategizing over the deal might violate federal lobbying laws, emails show.

In one previously unreported memo from November, a group of experts across multiple bureaus said they had not been consulted before several policy decisions about arms transfers immediately after Oct. 7 and that there was no effective vetting process in place to evaluate the repercussions of those sales.

That memo, too, seemed to have little impact. In the early stages of the war, State Department staff worked overtime, often after hours and through weekends, to process Israeli requests for more arms. Some in the agency have thought the efforts showed an inappropriate amount of attention on Israel.

The Israelis, however, felt different. In late December, just before Christmas, staff in the arms transfers bureau walked into their Washington, D.C., office and found something unusual waiting for them: cases of wine from a winery in the Negev Desert, along with personalized letters on each bottle.

The gifts were courtesy of the Israeli embassy.

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