More than two dozen House Democrats led by Rep. Josh Gottheimer told national security adviser Jake Sullivan on Friday they were “deeply concerned” about President Biden’s decision to withhold military aid from Israel.
Gottheimer (D-NJ) and 25 of his fellow lawmakers wrote in a letter to Sullivan obtained by The Post that “withholding weapons shipments to Israel … only emboldens our mutual enemies, including Hamas, Hezbollah, the Houthis, and other Iranian-backed proxies.”
“Seven months after October 7, the deadliest day for the Jewish people since the end of the Holocaust, Iranian-backed terrorist proxies continue to fire rockets and mortars into Israel and at Americans from all directions,” they wrote. “At the same time, antisemitism is spreading globally like wildfire.”
Biden, 81, announced Wednesday he would not supply arms to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s war effort if his military forces moved forward with an invasion of Rafah, the last stronghold of Hamas in the Gaza Strip.
“I made clear that if they go into Rafah — they haven’t gotten into Rafah yet — if they go into Rafah, I’m not supplying the weapons that have been used historically to deal with Rafah, to deal with the cities, to deal with that problem,” he told CNN’s Erin Burnett.
White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre told reporters Thursday that the paused shipment included 1,800 2,000-pound bombs and 1,700 500-pound bombs.
The House Democrats said the president’s decision “buttresses” the Iranian terror proxies’ “agenda of chaos, brutality, and hate, and makes a hostage agreement even harder to achieve.”
