Well, this really is the ultimate proof that Bob Gates was right.
Gabby Deutch reports for Jewish Insider (emphasis mine):
President Joe Biden told CNN in a Wednesday interview that he will withhold certain weapons transfers to Israel if the IDF mounts a major ground operation in Rafah, the first time Biden has explicitly stated that the U.S. is conditioning arms transfers to Israel.
Last month, the White House threatened to shift its policy toward Israel if it didn’t take additional precautions to protect civilians — and Wednesday’s interview confirmed that was not an empty threat.
“Civilians have been killed in Gaza as a consequence of those bombs and other ways in which they go after population centers, and I made it clear that if they go into Rafah — they haven’t gone into Rafah yet — if they go into Rafah, I’m not supplying the weapons that have been used historically to deal with Rafah, to deal with the cities, to deal with that problem,” Biden said. It was also the first time the president acknowledged that U.S.-supplied weapons have been responsible for the death of civilians in Gaza.
“We’re going to continue to make sure Israel is secure in terms of Iron Dome and their ability to respond to attacks like [those that] came out of the Middle East recently, but it’s just wrong. We’re not going to supply the weapons and the artillery shells that have been used,” said Biden. Israel has “not yet” crossed Biden’s red line on Rafah, he said, even as the IDF began a more limited operation in the southern Gaza city this week. But Washington has already held up one shipment, Biden acknowledged.
In a speech one day earlier, Biden said at a Holocaust memorial event at the Capitol that his commitment to the “security of Israel and its right to exist as an independent Jewish state is ironclad, even when we disagree.”
(The Associated Press reported that Biden waited to weigh in on Rafah until after he delivered his Holocaust remembrance address.)
Ah. That last part is the most craven. Biden and Blinken had already held up a shipment, they hadn’t announced it yet, so they waited til he could get the praise he got from the media for a strong Holocaust remembrance address to announce that he was going to totally undermine Israel and block aid passed by Congress.
What an absolute disgrace. And if you want to see who Biden’s kowtowing to in this moment, it’s these people, who he wants to not hate him.
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