When Joe Biden threatened to halt the US military’s supply to Israel while the country fights the Palestinian organization Hamas in Gaza on Thursday, Donald Trump accused the opponent of the presidency of supporting Hamas and called Biden’s position “disgraceful.”
In his most forthright warning to date over the effects of the war on civilians, Biden threatened to stop supplying weapons on Wednesday if Israel continued with its long-threatening Rafah ground offensive.
“Crooked Joe is taking the side of these terrorists, just like he has sided with the Radical Mobs taking over our college campuses,” Trump posted on his Truth Social network, referring to the protests against the war that have spread across US universities.
Speaking later to reporters outside the courtroom at his hush money trial in New York, Trump said that “what Biden is doing with respect to Israel is disgraceful.”
“He’s totally abandoned Israel and nobody can believe it,” said the former president and presumptive Republican presidential nominee who will face off against Democrat Biden in the November election.
Leading Republicans have also weighed in against Biden.
Biden “cannot claim his support for Israel is ‘ironclad’ while denying Israel precisely the weapons it needs to defend itself,” Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell said on X.
In response to mounting pressure from the left wing of his own party to restrict the flow of weapons, Biden stopped the delivery of 1,800 2,000-pound (907 kilogram) and 1,700 500-pound bombs last week.
Smaller measures to express dissatisfaction with Israel have also been done by his government in the past, such as penalties against radical settlers and approval of a UN Security Council resolution in favor of a ceasefire.
Later, the White House reiterated that Biden remained a fervent supporter of Israel.
“The argument that somehow we’re walking away from this role, we’re not willing to help them to defeat Hamas, just doesn’t comport with the facts,” National Security Council spokesman John Kirby told reporters.
“This is a president who visited Israel within days of the October 7 attacks,” said Kirby, adding that Biden had also “put American fighter pilots in the sky” to shoot down missiles and drones fired by Iran at Israel.
Biden had instructed his team to work with Israel to “refine their strategy” to defeat Hamas because “smashing into Rafah, in his view, will not advance that objective” Kirby added.
More than 1,170 people, largely civilians, were killed in Hamas’s historic October 7 raid on Israel, which marked the start of the Gaza conflict, according to an AFP assessment of Israeli official data.
In retaliation, Israel promised to destroy Hamas and release the prisoners. According to the health ministry of the Hamas-run region, it started a military offensive that has killed over 3,900 people in Gaza, the majority of them were women and children.
