Two Takes on Whether Biden is Holding Up Arms Shipments to Israel

#1. Here, Prime Minister Netanyahu complains that the Biden administration is holding up arms shipments to Israel:

Following reports that US Secretary of State Antony Blinken promised Benjamin Netanyahu that Washington would remove all restrictions on weapons transfers to Israel in the coming days, the prime minister went on the record Tuesday to assert that the top American diplomat had given him assurances to that effect….

“But I also said something else, I said it’s inconceivable that in the past few months, the administration has been withholding weapons and ammunitions to Israel,” he added. “Israel, America’s closest ally, fighting for its life, fighting against Iran and our other common enemies.”

“Secretary Blinken assured me that the administration is working day and night to remove these bottlenecks,” Netanyahu continued. “I certainly hope that’s the case. It should be the case.”

And here is the response by Secretary Blinken, and repeated by Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre, to Netanyahu’s charge that the Americans had been holding up arms deliveries to Israel:

Blinken was asked to confirm Netanyahu’s account of their meeting during a press conference in Washington later Tuesday. The top US diplomat indicated that the Israeli premier was exaggerating the step taken by the US, insisting that only one shipment has been withheld.

“We are continuing to review one shipment that President [Joe] Biden has talked about with regard to 2000-pound bombs because of our concerns about their use in a densely populated area like Rafah. That remains under review,” Blinken said.

“But everything else is moving as it normally would move… with the perspective of making sure that Israel has what it needs to defend itself against this multiplicity of challenges [it faces],” he added.

“Pressed again to say whether Netanyahu was telling the truth, Blinken responded, “I’m not going to talk about what we said in diplomatic conversations.”…

The Bidenites can claim that the weapons shipments are not being withheld – so they publicly ask what is Netanyahu talking about – but they know full well that they have slowed down their deliveries of all weapons, as compared with the timetable of deliveries in October and November. And this delay in the delivery of weapons is a real threat to Israel’s ability to defend itself, especially given the second front that Hezbollah has opened, with its barrage of rockets launched into northern Israel.

#2. Here is the view of a leading Republican, Senator Tom Cotton of Arkansas, about Netanyahu’s claims, and the Bidenite denials that military deliveries are being held up:

Republican Senator Tom Cotton of Arkansas weighs in on the public spat between Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and US President Joe Biden, accusing the latter of slow-walking arms deliveries to Israel through a “bureaucratic sleight-of-hand.”

Noting a shipment of heavy bombs withheld by Biden over concerns about their potential use in Rafah, Cotton charges that the administration has also held up deliveries of fighter jets, tactical vehicles, mortars, tank shells and other munitions by not informing Congress of plans to ship them.

“Your administration can then claim that the weapons are ‘in process’ while never delivering them,” he writes in a letter to Biden, while saying the US president can bypass the need for Congressional approval by asserting emergency powers but is no longer doing so.

“Though your administration reportedly released a ship carrying at least some of these arms on Wednesday, that modest step doesn’t cure the damage done by the delay,” asserts Cotton. “Any delays to military support to Israel blatantly disregard Congress’s bipartisan mandate to supply Israel with all it needs to defeat the Hamas terrorists and other Iranian-backed groups.”

Whom do you believe? Do you think Netanyahu would have chosen to make such a charge about the dangerous slowing down of arms deliveries, knowing full well that it would anger the Bidenites, unless he were convinced that it was true? And that he was now appealing over the heads of the administration to Congress, hoping that it will pressure the government to lift its ban on the deliveries of 2,000 and 500 pound bombs that the Bidenites have still withheld, and also cause the Bidenites to speed up the deliveries of other weapons that they have deliberately slowed down as a way of pressuring Israel? After all, the Bidenites have said that they found “credible and reliable” Israeli assurances that it would use US weapons in accordance with international humanitarian law, allowing for the further transfer of American arms amid Israel’s war with Hamas in Gaza. So why are those weapons deliveries so much slower now than in the fall?

The administration finds Israel’s assurances to use US weapons “in accordance with “international humanitarian law” are both “credible and reliable.” Rafah has now been emptied of almost all of its population, so it is no longer densely populated, which is the main reason, so the Bidenites claimed, why they withheld delivers of 2000-pound and 500-pound bombs. Now there is less reason to worry about the use of those bombs in Rafah, not just because 90% of its population has left the city, but, according to the IDF, the campaign in Rafah will end in just a few more weeks.

Yet neither Biden nor Blinken nor Sullivan has declared, as they ought to, that “the temporary withholding of those bombs for Israel has been lifted,” and “our deliveries of other weapons have been speeded up because we recognize Israel’s great need at this point, given the increase of attacks from Hezbollah on northern Israel.”

What will it take to shame them into doing the right thing?