Biden’s threat to halt U.S. weapons to Israel draws immediate GOP blowback

09/05/2024

President Biden’s threat to halt the shipment of American weapons to Israel if the country goes forward with a long-planned ground invasion of the city of Rafah has jolted American and Israeli politics, forcing Israel to recalibrate its next steps in its war against Hamas and broadening a divide on the issue among members of Congress in the United States.

Biden’s remarks marked the first time he has threatened to withhold U.S. military aid from Israel since the country began its military campaign in Gaza seven months ago. The president’s newly drawn red line triggered blowback from Republicans — including former president Donald Trump, the presumptive GOP nominee Biden will probably face in November — and mixed responses from Democrats, who have been divided on how the United States should respond to Israel’s war against Hamas in Gaza.

Biden said Wednesday that he would halt the shipment of U.S. offensive weapons to Israel — acknowledging that such weapons have been used to kill civilians — if the country moves ahead with its invasion of Rafah, a southern Gaza city harboring more than 1 million Palestinians, many of whom fled their homes amid the war.

House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) expressed surprise at Biden’s comments in a Wednesday interview with Politico Playbook, saying he hoped the president was having “a senior moment” when he drew an apparent red line on Israel aid.

“My reaction, honestly, was, ‘Wow, that is a complete turn from what I have been told, even in, you know, recent hours,’” Johnson told Politico. “I mean, 24 hours ago, it was confirmed to me by top administration officials that the policy’s very different than what he stated there.”

Johnson added that he would feel betrayed if Biden had not simply been “off-script.”

“We’ve been very deliberate. We’ve been very open — very much in good faith,” Johnson told Politico. “The Congress expressed its will through that vote. And so for the administration to make such a huge deviation in policy without, you know, any consultation with us — and in defiance of what we quite literally just voted on here days ago — to me, it raises a lot of alarm.”

Trump seized on the issue Thursday morning, calling Biden’s move “disgraceful.”

“If any Jewish person voted for Joe Biden they should be ashamed of themselves,” Trump told reporters outside the New York courthouse where his hush money criminal trial is ongoing. “He’s totally abandoned Israel, and nobody can believe it.”

Trump has previously attacked Jewish voters who vote for Democrats, saying he thinks “they hate Israel.”

“Any Jewish person that votes for Democrats hates their religion,” Trump said in March.

Trump’s comments lean on the familiar antisemitic trope that American Jews have a dual loyalty to Israel.

Biden has long signaled his unwavering support of Israel during its military campaign, sparked by an Oct. 7 attack by Hamas that killed about 1,200 people in Israel and with another 250 people taken hostage. But in recent months, he’s faced growing political pressure over his administration’s handling of the conflict, as the Palestinian death toll has climbed to more than 34,000 people, according to the Gaza Health Ministry, and Israel’s siege has created dire humanitarian conditions in the territory.

As the campaign season heats up, Biden has been increasingly boxed in politically on Israel, squeezed by Republicans and some fellow Democrats who are pushing him to remain steadfast in support of country, and the activist base of his party, which has pushed him to condition or suspend military aid altogether.

And as Biden and his top aides have in recent months tried to reach a cease-fire agreement that would halt the fighting for several weeks and provide for the release of the remaining Israeli hostages held by Hamas militants, Netanyahu has vowed to forge ahead with a Rafah invasion regardless of whether a deal is struck.

Since the war began in October, Biden has faced protesters at nearly every public event and even at his home in Delaware, pushing him to draw down support for Israel. Students at college campuses across the country have set up encampments and barricades to pressure their universities to sever any ties to Israel.

Rep. Mike D. Rogers (R-Ala.), chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, and Rep. Michael McCaul (R-Tex.), who chairs the House Foreign Affairs Committee, said in a joint statement that they were “appalled that the administration paused crucial arms shipments to Israel,” asserting that “this disastrous policy decision was undertaken in secret and deliberately hidden from Congress and the American people.”

“At a time when Israel continues to negotiate in good faith to secure the release of hostages, including American citizens, the administration’s shortsighted, strategic error calls into question its ‘unshakable commitment’ as an ally,” Rogers and McCaul continued.

The response among Democrats has been divided, with some defenders of Israel within the party, such as Rep. Ritchie Torres (D-N.Y.) and Sen. John Fetterman (D-Pa.), expressing disappointment in the administration.

“As the leader of the free world, America cannot claim that its commitment to Israel is ‘iron-clad’ and then proceed to withhold aid from Israel,” Torres wrote on X. “The mixed messaging makes a mockery of our credibility as an ally. No one will take our word seriously.”

More-liberal lawmakers who previously called for a cease-fire in Gaza, however, praised the move. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) wrote in a post on X that Biden’s shift “makes the world safer and our values clear.” And Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) in a statement called the president’s decision a “first step.”

“The U.S. must now use ALL its leverage to demand an immediate ceasefire, the end of the attacks on Rafah, and the immediate delivery of massive amounts of humanitarian aid to people living in desperation,” Sanders continued. “Our leverage is clear. Over the years, the United States has provided tens of billions of dollars in military aid to Israel. We can no longer be complicit in [Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin] Netanyahu’s horrific war against the Palestinian people.”

In a video posted online Thursday, Netanyahu did not mention Biden’s threat to withhold military aid directly, but said that Israel was strong enough to fight alone.

“If we have to stand alone, we will stand alone,” Netanyahu said in the video, adding that if Israel had to, it would “fight tooth and nail.”

Yaakov Amidror, a former national security adviser to Netanyahu, told The Washington Post that the warning caught Israel off guard and will compel the war cabinet to reconsider whether and how it will enter Rafah.

Israel’s envoy to the United Nations, Gilad Erdan, described Biden’s decision as “disappointing and frustrating.”

Multiple polls continued to show Biden and Trump, their parties’ respective presumptive presidential nominees, locked in a tight race for the November election. A CNN poll released late last month showed that Biden’s handling of Israel’s war against Hamas was the issue on which he received his worst approval ratings, with 28 percent of respondents saying they approved and 71 percent saying they disapproved. (Among those younger than 35, the disapproval rating jumped to 81 percent, according to the poll.)

However, the same poll also showed that most Americans ranked Israel’s military operation in Gaza low on their list of election priorities, with only 26 percent saying the war was an “extremely important” issue. By contrast, 58 percent of voters said protecting democracy was an extremely important issue. More than 40 percent of voters described several other issues — including immigration, crime, gun policy, health care and abortion — as similarly important, according to the poll.

Groups have organized voters to lodge protest votes against Biden in some state primaries in recent months, including in the battleground state of Michigan — where about 101,000 people voted “uncommitted” in February’s Democratic primary.

The Uncommitted National Movement is one of those groups urging voters to express their displeasure with Biden’s response to the war. Layla Elabed, a spokesperson for the organization, said in a statement that Biden’s recent move was “propelled” by the growing antiwar movement.

Elabed added that while the threat to withhold military aid “marks a step forward … Biden’s actions will always speak louder than his words.”

She also said Biden must go a step further and “end weapons aid for Netanyahu’s war now.”

Intense pro-Palestinian protests on dozens of college campuses across the country in recent weeks have led to police crackdowns and more than 2,000 arrests, according to a Washington Post tally. After remaining largely silent on the unrest, Biden addressed the demonstrations last Thursday at the White House, denouncing violence and the destruction of property while also maintaining that Americans have a constitutional right to peaceful protest.

“We’ve all seen the images [of campus protests], and they put to the test two fundamental American principles,” Biden said on May 2. “The first is the right to free speech and for people to peacefully assemble and make their voices heard. The second is the rule of law. Both must be upheld.”

At the time, the White House denied that Biden had addressed the issue because of political pressure.

Speaking at the end of his May 2 remarks, a reporter asked Biden whether the campus protests had forced him to reconsider his policies regarding Israel.

“No,” Biden replied quickly.

Yasmeen Abutaleb and Shira Rubin contributed to this report.