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It used to be a Bidenite mantra: we may disagree with the Israelis on some policies, but we would never make our military aid contingent on Israel submitting to our demands. But that was then, and this is now, when the Bidenites are furiously signaling to voters in Michigan and a few other states with large Arab and Muslim populations, that don’t worry, we hear you, and you can see us getting tougher on Israel by the minute. Confirmation of this came on March 28, when the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, addressing the Defense Writers’ Group, for the first time openly admitted that some weaponry requested by Israel was not being provided. Presumably that was done to pressure Israel not to invade Rafah, or not to go to war with Hezbollah, or possibly both. Biden is now doing what he said he would never do: harm Israel’s capacity to wage war. More on this appalling development can be found here: “US refused to give Israel some weapons for Gaza war, general says,” Reuters, March 28, 2024:
The United States’ top general said on Thursday that Israel had not received every weapon that it had asked for, in part because US President Joe Biden’s administration was not willing to provide at least some of them.
Washington gives $3.8 billion in annual military assistance to Israel, its longtime ally. The United States has been rushing air defenses and munitions to Israel, but some Democrats and Arab American groups have criticized the Biden administration’s steadfast support of Israel, which they say provides it with a sense of impunity.
“Although we’ve been supporting them with capability, they’ve not received everything they’ve asked for,” said General Charles Q. Brown is the chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff.
“Some of that is because they’ve asked for stuff that we either don’t have the capacity to provide or are not willing to provide, not right now,” Brown added while speaking at an event hosted by the Defense Writers Group.
The Israeli offensive prompted opposition from within Biden’s Democratic Party, leading thousands to vote “uncommitted” for him in recent party presidential primaries.
US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin met with Defense Minister Yoav Gallant in Washington earlier this week, and the Pentagon said that security assistance for Israel had been discussed.
There are several ways to look at this announcement, none of them good.
One is that the Bidenites are not really withholding anything of importance, but want to give the appearance of doing so, in order to win back support from Muslim and so-called progressive voters. It seems unlikely that that will do the trick; nothing short of the Biden administration demanding an immediate and permanent ceasefire in Gaza is likely to win them back. That may not be enough.
Much more likely is that some weapons are indeed being withheld from a loyal ally, just as that ally is in the middle of a war that it did not want and did not cause. This is the fourth war for the Jewish state’s survival, after those of 1948, 1967, and 1973. Withholding of weapons requested by Israel has obvious consequences. Israel now must feel it cannot fully count on Washington’s military support, just as it can no longer count on its diplomatic support — that is, the use of the American veto — at the UN Security Council. This means Israel will not only ramp up its domestic manufacture of weapons that until now it has bought from the Americans, but will also be more willing to consider other weapons it never thought it might have to employ, including tactical nuclear weapons. Imagine, for example, that the IDF is still fighting Hamas in Gaza, and at the same time Hezbollah has attacked the northern Galilee, launching ten thousand missiles every day (Hezbollah has 150,000 rockets and missiles), hitting Tel Aviv, Dimona, ten of Israel’s military airfields, while the Houthis are still firing on ships in the Red Sea to prevent Israel’s shipping of goods to and from Asia. At that point, might the state of Israel decide that it needs, by way of a demonstration meant to frighten Iran and all of Israel’s Iranian-backed enemies — Hamas, Hezbollah, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, PFLP, and others — to drop a nuclear weapon in the Iranian desert?
Have the Bidenites considered how its other allies must be reconsidering their reliance on American weaponry, even if such a close ally as Israel can be denied weapons that the IDF says it needs? If you were Taiwan, for example, wouldn’t you be wondering whether you can continue to rely on American assurances of military support should China try to invade?
It’s hard to know what weapons the Americans are withholding from Israel’s wish list, but I suspect they might have decided not to resupply the IDF with the bunker-buster bombs that it had delivered early in the conflict. According to reports, the US has supplied 100 BLU-109 penetrating bombs to help the Israeli military destroy the deepest tunnels that have been dug, some 50 meters underground in the 500-mile network of terror tunnels that Hamas built under Gaza. But the destruction of those tunnels also leads to the collapse of many buildings just above. Perhaps the Bidenites want to discourage the IDF’s continued use of bunker-busters. It won’t discourage the Israelis — they are determined to destroy those tunnels, whatever the cost — but it will make that task much more difficult.
