The White House attempted to carry out damage control regarding US President Joe Biden’s comments over the weekend saying that Israel’s invasion of Rafah would be a “red line.”
National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan told reporters at a briefing on Tuesday: “The President didn’t make any declarations or pronouncements or announcements. The red line came up in a question. He was responding to that question. I think he gave a full answer to it.”
Sullivan also denied reports that Biden is considering withholding weapon transfers to Israel if the IDF enters Rafah.
“We’re not going to engage in hypotheticals about what comes down the line, and the reports that purport to describe the president’s thinking are uninformed speculation,” he said.
“He’s really focused on the substance, on the policy on his concern about the protection of civilians, and about Israel being able to sustain a campaign in a way that ultimately leads to an outcome in which the people of Israel are secure., Hamas is crushed and there is a long-term solution to stability and peace in the region.”
On Tuesday, Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu made a speech via teleconference at the AIPAC conference and used the opportunity to respond to Biden, saying that “our friends in the international community can’t say they support Israel’s right to defend itself, and then oppose Israel when it exercises that right.”
(YWN Israel Desk – Jerusalem)
Join the official YWN WhatsApp status
3 Responses
Way too little, and way too late. Biden was pandering to the radical, anti-Semitic left, he was pushed to talk about the red line, he did, and he meant it. And this is one simple reason why he needs to be replaced. I don’t like Trump’s mean tweets, nor do I like his negative campaigning. But I will take him over Biden any day.
Where in the statement did they state that they were backing down? I’m not seeing it.
Biden has decided to try to appeal to both his traditional (some would say, old fashioned) mainstream in the Truman/Kennedy tradition that supports Israel, while also appealing to his “Progressive” caucus that endorses genocide of Jews in Eretz Yisrael and elsewhere. It will be a real challenge.
I predict that if Trump goes “America First” (for isolationism), Biden will dump the Progressives (who hate Trump to much to prefer him to supporting a third party) and try to appeal to the Reagan Republicans (who are very unhappy with Trump’s foreign policy views).