The U.S. withheld certain bombs from Israel to prevent their use in an attack on Hamas battalions in the town of Rafah, according to multiple news reports Tuesday evening.
The news, ironically, came on Israel’s Holocaust memorial day, hours after President Joe Biden told Jews: “Never again.”
The reports confirmed stories that first appeared in Axios earlier in the week. The White House, when asked on Monday and Tuesday, refused to confirm or deny withholding weapons from Israel. Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre insisted merely that U.S. support for Israeli security was “ironclad.”
ABC News reported:
The Biden administration opted to pause a shipment of some 3,500 bombs to Israel last week because of concerns the weapons could be used in Rafah where more than one million civilians are sheltering “with nowhere else to go,” a senior administration official tells ABC News.
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The decision to pause the shipment and consider slow-walking others is a major shift in policy for the Biden administration and the first known case of the U.S. denying its close ally military aid since the Israel-Hamas war began.
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More than half of the shipment that was paused last week consisted of 2,000-pound bombs. The remaining 1,700 bombs were 500-pound explosives, the official said.
The Times of Israel also reported:
The Biden administration confirms reports that it held up a shipment last week of 2,000 and 500-pound bombs that it fears Israel might use in a major ground operation in Rafah.
This is the first time since October 7 that the US has held up a weapons shipment earmarked for Israel.
Washington adamantly opposes a major offensive in the southern city of Gaza, convinced that there is no way for Israel to conduct one in a manner that would ensure the safety of the over million Palestinians sheltering there.
Israel launched an offensive in Rafah on Monday, after Hamas attacked a border crossing over the weekend, killing four Israeli soldiers, and refused to agree to a ceasefire and hostage deal. Israel took the Rafah border crossing and the Philadelphi corridor, a road running along the Egyptian border that is a key strategic point to prevent smuggling.
Fox News’ Jacqui Heinrich asked Jean-Pierre how U.S. support for Israeli security could be “ironclad” if the Biden administration were withholding some weapons from Israel. Jean-Pierre said that two things could be true at once.
Critics of Biden’s decision have argued that withholding weapons that Congress has already authorized, absent any finding of human rights violations by Israel, is unconstitutional and violates the Impoundment Control Act of 1974.
Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News and the host of Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot on Sunday evenings from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET (4 p.m. to 7 p.m. PT). He is the author of the recent e-book, “The Zionist Conspiracy (and how to join it),” now available on Audible. He is also the author of the e-book, Neither Free nor Fair: The 2020 U.S. Presidential Election. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.