More than two dozen House Democrats blast Biden holding back Israel military aid, say it ’emboldens’ Hamas

Politics

By Josh Christenson

More than two dozen House Democrats led by Rep. Josh Gottheimer told national security adviser Jake Sullivan on Friday they were “deeply concerned” about President Biden’s decision to withhold military aid from Israel.

Gottheimer (D-NJ) and 25 of his fellow lawmakers wrote in a letter to Sullivan obtained by The Post that “withholding weapons shipments to Israel … only emboldens our mutual enemies, including Hamas, Hezbollah, the Houthis, and other Iranian-backed proxies.”

“Seven months after October 7, the deadliest day for the Jewish people since the end of the Holocaust, Iranian-backed terrorist proxies continue to fire rockets and mortars into Israel and at Americans from all directions,” they wrote. “At the same time, antisemitism is spreading globally like wildfire.”

Biden, 81, announced Wednesday he would not supply arms to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s war effort if his military forces moved forward with an invasion of Rafah, the last stronghold of Hamas in the Gaza Strip.

“I made clear that if they go into Rafah — they haven’t gotten 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,” he told CNN’s Erin Burnett.

White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre told reporters Thursday that the paused shipment included 1,800 2,000-pound bombs and 1,700 500-pound bombs.

“He does not want certain categories of American weapons used in a particular type of operation in a particular place,” she said. “We have to make sure that we protect those 1.5 million civilian lives [in Rafah].”

“We are especially focused on the end use of the 2,000-pound bombs and the impact they could have in dense urban settings as we have seen in other parts of Gaza,” she added. “We have not made a final determination on how to proceed with this shipment.”

Netanyahu, in a video message Thursday that did not mention Biden, vowed of Israel: “If we have to stand alone, we will stand alone.”

The House Democrats said the president’s decision “buttresses” the Iranian terror proxies’ “agenda of chaos, brutality, and hate, and makes a hostage agreement even harder to achieve.”

Hamas kidnapped 240 people during its Oct. 7 invasion of southern Israel that led to the massacre of 1,200 people, including 33 US citizens.

More than 130 remain hostages in the Gaza Strip — including five Americans. It is unclear how many of that number are alive or dead.

More than 30,000 Palestinians have also been killed in the dense urban warfare, according to figures provided by the Hamas-controlled Gaza Ministry of Health, which does not distinguish between terrorists and civilians.

“Stalling these shipments will allow terror groups to continue stealing humanitarian aid, ultimately putting innocent Palestinians at even greater risk,” the Democrats also said.

“As the President confirmed after October 7, Hamas must be ‘eliminated entirely,’” they added, reminding Biden of his other commitments to America’s closest ally in the Middle East early in the war.

“When we abandon these duties, we leave a vacuum of American leadership for our anti-democratic adversaries to fill,” the members declared.

Gottheimer and the other Democrats requested a classified briefing to discuss the matter further and receive assurances for when the $17 billion in military aid for Israel passed by Congress last month “will be delivered.”

The House Oversight Committee also fired off a letter to Sullivan on Friday, accusing the Biden administration of “playing political games with US taxpayer funded assistance going to Israel.”

“Further reporting indicates that the National Security Council actively chose to withhold this information from the public eye for days, in part so that news of the decision would not be known when President Biden delivered a speech touting support for Israel on Holocaust Remembrance Day,” read the letter led by Oversight chairman James Comer (R-Ky.).

“The Committee seeks a briefing, as well as documents and information related to this decision, including any legal justification for withholding essential supplies from Israel in its fight against Hamas terrorists who still have Israeli and American hostages,” added Comer and 21 GOP co-signatories.

The Oversight panel demanded the records and a briefing by May 24, chiding the White House for having declared at the start of Biden’s term that he would “bring transparency and truth back to government.”

A spokeswoman for Sullivan did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Muslim and Arab American voters have threatened to withhold their votes for Biden in the 2024 election over his support for Israel during its more than seven-month-old war in Gaza.