Knowing and Politics

In a September 8th story on NPR's "All Things Considered," it was reported that, "Dozens of Syrian migrant farm workers were killed in one village [by Israeli air strikes], and Lebanon's largest milk plant was destroyed. When it was disabled, the plant was attempting to renew its contract to supply UNIFIL troops -- a contract it won over an Israeli firm several years ago." The story further went on to suggest that the bombings were motivated by a conflict of interest created the aforementioned contract.

This raises an important question in the knowledge created by this occurrence. As we do not know the true reasoning for the air strikes, and probably will not be able to know the reasoning behind the attacks for quite some time (until information currently kept in classified Israeli documents are released), can we form a knowledge claim about the morality of the subject? Is it ever possible to make an accurate knowledge claim when such conditions exist? As most of us have grown up and been educated in the United States for all of our lives, how can we be certain that we are not being effected by the biases caused by nationalism?

Neither the administration, nor either of the legislative branches made any effort early in the conflict to intervene and stop the violence, nor did they condemn the aforementioned attacks on civilian establishments. Assuming that the events did indeed occur; could one make an accurate knowledge claim that we, as the electors of the US's representative government, are partially culpable for the attacks on these civilians?