Trump: Biden took Hamas’s side
Republicans paint president as ‘terrorist-sympathizer,’ capitulating to swing-state voters, campus protesters
NEW YORK – Former president and current Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump took to his social media platform Truth Social on Wednesday night after President Joe Biden confirmed that he’d halt US weapons shipments for Gaza if Israel embarks on a major military operation in Rafah where the last Hamas battalions remain.
“Crooked Joe Biden, whether he knows it or not, just said he will withhold weapons from Israel as they fight to eradicate Hamas Terrorists
in Gaza,” Trump wrote. “Hamas murdered thousands of innocent civilians, including babies, and are still holding Americans hostage, if the hostages are still alive.”
According to Trump, “Crooked Joe” is taking the side of Hamas just like he sided with the “radical mobs” taking over college campuses.
Trump said Biden was “weak, corrupt and leading the world straight into World War III.”
Trump also wrote that the war in Israel and in Ukraine would never have started had he been in the White House.
“But very soon, we will be back,” Trump wrote. “And once again demanding PEACE THROUGH STRENGTH!”
Meanwhile, Senate Republicans deplored Biden for bowing to protesters and threatening to withhold arms shipments to Israel pending a major Rafah operation.
At a news conference Thursday afternoon, Republicans took turns calling Biden a “great friend to Hamas and Hezbollah” and a “mouthpiece for Hamas” with “schizophrenic national security policy.”
This is all about Biden and Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin trying to take over the war
sided with the “radical mobs” taking over college campuses.”
Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) said that Biden has long had a bitter history with Israel, as he recalled that as a senator, he had threatened to cut off military aid to Israel over its actions in Lebanon.
Cruz recalled how former prime minister Menachem Begin famously responded, “Don’t threaten us with cutting off your aid. It will not work. I am not a Jew with trembling knees. I am a proud Jew with 3,700 years of civilized history.”
“Even though Joe Biden wants to abandon Israel and even though the Democrats in the Senate and House apparently support him in wanting to abandon Israel, America does not and we should not let him. We should stand together and say America stands united with Israel and Hamas should be utterly destroyed,” Cruz stated.
In Israel, Defense Minister Yoav Gallant and Minister Benny Gantz vowed to press forward with the Rafah operation.
“We have no choice,” Gallant stated. “We have no other country. We will do whatever is necessary, and I repeat – whatever is necessary, to defend the citizens of Israel, to remove the evil threats against us, and to stand up to those who attempt to destroy us.”
“We will work to crush the Hamas terrorist organization,” he stressed.
Gantz underscored the strong bonds between the US and Israel but said, that the Jewish state “has a moral and security obligation to continue to defend itself to ensure the return of the hostages and remove the threat Hamas poses to southern Israel.”
“The US,” he stressed, “has the moral and strategic obligation to supply Israel with the necessary tools to complete its mission.”
President Isaac Herzog came to Biden’s defense, calling Biden a “great friend of the State of Israel, and who proved as such from the first day of the war.”
Kirby defended Biden’s record on Israel, in talking to reporters in Washington, stating, “The arguments that somehow we’re walking away from Israel fly in the face of the facts,” Kirby said as he touted Biden’s record in support of Israel, particularly since October 7.
This included, Kirby explained, visiting Israel and sending massive amounts of military aid as well as defending it from the first-ever Iranian drone and missile attack, together with a coalition of armies from France, Great Britain, Jordan, and Israel.
Biden has long stressed to Israel that he believes a military operation in Rafah would create a humanitarian disaster given that over 1.3 million Palestinians are in that area. Many of them fled there in the early stages of the war to avoid bombings in the North.
“We propose alternative methods of defeating Hamas that do not involve a major ground operation in Rafah,” Kirby said, adding that talks with Israel on those options were ongoing.
He clarified that the US has not yet withheld the shipments of certain kinds of weapons but that it would
do so if Israel proceeded with the operation.
Israel has understood that this is Biden’s position for some time, he said. Kirby stressed that the US would continue to provide Israel with other weapons that it needs to defend itself “against all of its enemies, including Hamas.”
The Biden administration wants to provide Israel with all the assistance it needs to defeat Hamas, Kirby said.
“Smashing into Rafah, in his view, will not advance that objective,” Kirby stated.
The US will help ensure that the Egyptian border is not used to smuggle weapons into Gaza and would help Israel target the Hamas leaders, including Yahya Sinwar, Kirby said.
The Biden administration would also work with Israel to create an alternative governance structure in Gaza, that does not include Hamas.
“Whatever post-conflict Gaza looks like, it can’t look like what it does now with Hamas in control,” Kirby said.
He also noted that a Rafah operation would strengthen Hamas’s hand at the negotiating table for a hostage deal and would weaken Israel’s,’ he said.
The high civilian casualty count resulting from an IDF military operation in Rafah would also feed Hamas’s anti-Israel narrative.
“It could cast Israel in the worst possible way” and would give Hamas “more ammunition for its twisted narrative,” Kirby said.
would be deterred for the coming years, not even the upcoming months.” He elaborated on the challenges faced in densely populated areas, “We tried, and it’s difficult. In populated, dense areas, it is tough.”
Discussing the potential for future conflicts, Kohavi predicted, “I believe finding a pretext for `War 2.0’ would not be difficult. Achieving absolute victory within months is unrealistic. It will take many years.”
He also commented on the political influence on military strategy, saying, “We know that [political dynamics] influenced [Yahya] Sinwar’s decision to attack the State of Israel,” pointing out how internal Israeli politics might be perceived as in Israel, Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC), who organized the news conference, said.
“I got one message for Israel,” Graham said. “Don’t let them do it.”
Graham drew a comparison between Israel’s need for the bombs being withheld to the United States’ bombing of Dresden and dropping the atomic bomb on Japan, adding there were no red lines in WWII.
“All I can say if somebody had told us you’re doing too much to destroy Germany and Japan after what they did, it would have fallen on deaf ears,” Graham said. “Israel is trying to lower civilian casualties, Hamas is trying to increase civilian casualties. Therein lies our problem.
Graham and his fellow Republicans blamed every civilian death in Gaza on Hamas, absolving Israel from any fault.
“What is the right response to a group that rapes your women, puts your babies in an oven and threatens to do it again?” Graham said. “Drop bombs if you have to.”
While the White House said an invasion of Rafah would embolden Hamas, Graham proclaimed the opposite.
“Sinwar is feeling pretty good right now,” Graham said. “The reason why they’re not dancing in Iran is they just don’t dance.”
Graham said the daylight between the US and Israel will make the hostage deal harder and the deal between Saudi Arabia and Israel less likely.
The likelihood of Iran taking this as a sign of weakness is
stronger, he added.
The Republicans are accusing Biden of withholding aid funded by the national security supplemental bill Congress passed last month, however; the White House confirmed in a press call on Thursday the $14.1 billion of defensive supplemental funding for Israel will not be impacted by this pause in arms shipments.
Graham said he’ll wait to see what’s in the impending State Department report which assessed Israel’s assurances of adherence to US and international law, calling the IDF a well-regulated militia that prosecutes people who violate the rule of law.
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and House Speaker Mike Johnson penned a letter to Biden on Wednesday questioning the in-progress reviews of Israel’s wartime conduct following the announcement of a delay in arms shipment to Israel pending its operation in Rafah.
McConnell and Johnson said they have not been able to obtain pertinent information from the Department of State or the Pentagon regarding the ongoing review of Israel’s assurances that it’s following US and international law.
The State Department was slated to release its review of Israel’s assurances to Congress on Wednesday but said the report will be out “in the coming days.”
The letter said the American public deserves to understand the “nature, timing and scope of these reviews.”
McConnell and Johnson called on the White House to respond by the end of the week on the timing of the report, and if other shipments will be similarly delayed, what office is responsible for conducting the review and when the review is anticipated to end to allow the arms assistance to move forward.
“Israel faces an existential and multi-front threat as recently demonstrated by the direct attack by Iran and Iranian-backed terrorists, and daylight between the United States and Israel at this dangerous time risks emboldening Israel’s enemies and undermining the trust that other allies and partners have in the United States,” the letter said.
The Republican leaders noted that while the assistance funded by the supplemental appropriations bill will not be impacted, security assistance to Israel is an urgent priority that must not be delayed.
“These recent press reports and pauses in critical weapons shipments
call into question your pledge that your commitment to Israel’s security will remain ironclad,” the letter said.
The leaders said they expect the Biden administration to push “departments, agencies and industry” to expedite contracting, production and delivery of weapons and munitions “critical to defense of the United States and free world.”
Earlier Wednesday, during the Senate Republican leadership’s news conference, McConnell said he spoke to both Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant and National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan in the past 24 hours to express his concern that delaying the shipment of weapons to Israel is just another way of trying to govern how an ally conducts its war.
“This is obviously an extremely challenging situation,” McConnell said. “I think the last thing we ought to be doing is telling our Democratic allies you ought to have an election or you ought not to conduct this war
Gaza, and it needs to eliminate them for its own security.
One of the displaced, Mohammad Abder-Rahman, said he feared the Israeli bombardments presaged an invasion of the city.
“It reminds me of what happened before Israeli tanks stormed our residential areas in Gaza City,” the 42-year-old told Reuters via a messaging app. “Heavy bombardment usually allows tanks to roll toward places they intend to invade.”
Ceasefire talks in Cairo made some headway, but no deal was reached, according to two Egyptian security sources.
The Hamas delegation left for Doha for consultations, blaming Israel for the lack of an agreement so far.
Israel has said it is open to a truce, but it has rejected demands for an end to the war and has vowed to demolish Hamas.
Biden, who says Israel has not produced a convincing plan to safeguard civilians in Rafah, issued his starkest warning yet against a full ground invasion.
“I made it clear that if they go into Rafah... I’m not supplying the weapons,” he told CNN in an interview on Wednesday.
Israeli tanks seized the Gaza side of the Rafah border crossing with Egypt on Tuesday, cutting off a vital aid route and forcing 80,000 people to flee the city this week, according to the United Nations.
“The toll on these families is unbearable,” the UN agency for Palestinian refugees said in a post on X. “Nowhere is safe.”
An IDF statement about its Gaza operations on Thursday morning did not refer to Rafah.
Israel kept up tank and aerial strikes across Gaza, and tanks advanced in the Zeitoun neighborhood of Gaza City in the northern Gaza Strip`, forcing hundreds of families to flee, residents said. The IDF said it was securing Zeitoun, starting with a series of intelligence-based aerial strikes on approximately 25 “terror targets.”
Deir el-Balah in central Gaza received many people who had fled Rafah in recent days. Palestinian medics said two people, including a woman, were killed when a drone fired a missile at a group of people there.
The closure of the Rafah crossing with Egypt has prevented the evacuation of the wounded and sick and the entry of medical supplies, food trucks, and fuel needed to operate hospitals, the Hamas-run Gaza Health Ministry said Thursday.
The only kidney dialysis center in the Rafah area had stopped operating due to the shelling, it said.
“There used to be medical aid coming in, and now there is no medical aid,” said Ali Abu Khurma, a Jordanian surgeon volunteering at Al-Aqsa Hospital in Deir el-Balah. “The entire medical sector has collapsed.”
The IDF on Thursday announced the appointment of commanders who will investigate the events of October 7 in IDF Southern Command and the Gaza border communities. The commanders will be responsible for investigating all aspects of the events of that day in the communities, including dialogue with residents and collecting relevant documentation and evidence of the fighting from October