White House: Notion that Biden is abandoning Israel ‘flies in the face of the facts’

Jacob Magid is The Times of Israel's US bureau chief

The White House rejects the notion that US President Joe Biden is abandoning Israel after he threatened to withhold offensive weapons if the IDF launches a major military offensive in Rafah.

“The argument that somehow we’re walking away from Israel flies in the face of the facts,” White House National Security Council spokesperson John Kirby says in a briefing.

“This is a president who visited Israel within days of the October 7 attacks. This is a president who rushed additional military aircrafts to Israel and provided expertise from our own military to go over there to help them as they thought through their planning and their operation… This is a president who put American fighter pilots in the sky to help shoot down more than 300 missiles and drones fired by Iran in mid-April.”

“So the argument that somehow we’re walking away from Israel, we’re not willing to help them defeat Hamas just doesn’t doesn’t comport with the facts,” Kirby asserts.

“Everybody keeps talking about pausing weapons shipments. Weapons shipments are still going to Israel. They’re still getting that the vast, vast majority of everything that they need to defend themselves,” he adds, reiterating that the entirety of the $14 billion in Israel aid passed by Congress last month will be spent.

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