Donald Trump accused election rival Joe Biden on Thursday of siding with Hamas when he threatened to stop sending US weapons to Israel as it wages war against the Palestinian militant group in Gaza, calling the president’s stance “disgraceful”.
Biden warned on Wednesday of halting weapons supplies if Israel pushes ahead with its long-threatened Rafah ground offensive, his most direct warning yet over the civilian impact of the war.
“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”.
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“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.
Biden’s administration has also previously taken smaller steps to show displeasure with Israel, including imposing sanctions on extremist settlers and letting through a UN Security Council resolution that supported a ceasefire.
The White House later insisted that Biden still strongly supported 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.
The Gaza war began with Hamas’s unprecedented October 7 attack on Israel, which resulted in the deaths of more than 1,170 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally of Israeli official figures.
Israel in response vowed to crush Hamas and free the captives. It began a military offensive that has killed more than 3,900 people in Gaza, mostly women and children, according to the Hamas-run territory’s health ministry.