Cotton: Israel Should Reject Biden’s Effort to Send Fuel to Hamas

Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AR) has accused President Joe Biden of pressuring Israel to give fuel to Hamas, which would benefit from any supply of fuel to the Gaza Strip, and has urged the Israeli government to reject the president’s efforts.

Cotton made the accusation in two posts on Twitter/X on Wednesday:

Biden is now secretly pressuring Israel to allow fuel into Gaza. Hamas has huge reserves of fuel that it could use for civilians, but instead stockpiles for its rockets and terror tunnels.

— Tom Cotton (@SenTomCotton) November 1, 2023

Biden literally wants to fuel Hamas’s war machine. Israel should flatly reject this outrageous pressure campaign, confident that the Congress will have its back.

— Tom Cotton (@SenTomCotton) November 1, 2023

Hamas is known to hoard fuel and other necessities that are intended for civilian use. As NBC News reported on Wednesday:

As U.N. officials say hospitals in Gaza are running dangerously low on fuel, Hamas is maintaining a stockpile of more than 200,000 gallons of fuel for the rockets it fires into Israel and the generators that provide clean air and electricity to its network of underground tunnels, according to U.S. officials, current and former Israeli officials and academics.

…

Hamas, meanwhile, has repeatedly demanded fuel deliveries to Gaza during negotiations to allow foreign nationals to leave the enclave and in talks about the release of 240 people it kidnapped.

It is thought to have several months’ worth of fuel stored in its network of tunnels beneath Gaza, which it could release to the civilian population if it wanted to do so. But the terror organization does not concern itself with the welfare of Palestinian civilians, whom Hamas considers Israel’s and the UN’s responsibility in any case.

 

Israel also recently produced evidence that Hamas is stealing fuel from the hospitals in Gaza.

As Breitbart News has reported, the Biden administration is also pressuring Israel for a “pause” in fighting, which it claims is different from a “ceasefire.” The purpose of the “pause” would ostensibly be to allow humanitarian aid into Gaza, and to facilitate the release of hostages, yet neither of these activities is directly threatened by Israel’s military activities. The real purpose of the “pause” would appear to be to appease Biden’s angry Arab- and Muslim-American supporters in key swing states like Michigan.

Cotton accused Biden of mincing words:

The Biden administration is mincing words. Calling it a “pause” instead of a “ceasefire” makes no difference to Hamas and only gives the terrorists the advantage.

— Tom Cotton (@SenTomCotton) November 2, 2023

Cotton’s argument is supported by the fact that the word “pause” translates into Hebrew in a way that is similar to the word for “ceasefire,” such that an Israeli news reader had to explain the difference.

Sen. Cotton has not been shy about telling foreign governments to oppose what he considers bad policies by his own government. In 2015, he wrote to Iran, warning it that President Barack Obama’s nuclear deal would not bind future U.S. governments because it had not been ratified by the Senate, as required by the U.S. Constitution.

Others have also faulted Biden for sending $100 million in humanitarian aid to Gaza, knowing it might be seized by Hamas, while threatening to veto a funding bill to support Israel’s war effort if that legislation is not also tied to funding for the war in Ukraine.

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 new biography, Rhoda: ‘Comrade Kadalie, You Are Out of Order’. He is also the author of the recent 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.