After Joe Biden said he would stop sending weapons, Republicans were confronted over former President Ronald Reagan’s similar stance.
Following President Joe Biden stating that he would withhold certain weapons from Israel amid the Israel-Hamas war, Republicans were confronted on Sunday over former President Ronald Reagan’s similar stance to leverage military aid to Israel.
On October 7, 2023, Hamas, a Palestinian militant group, launched an attack against Israel, killing some 1,200 people and taking about 250 hostage. In the months that followed, Israel’s offensive has killed more than 34,000 Palestinians in Gaza, the Associated Press reported, citing local health officials.
On Wednesday, Biden warned he would stop supplying Israel with offensive weapons like bombs and artillery shells if Israeli forces launch an invasion of Rafah, the southernmost city in Gaza where over a million civilians are sheltering.
«I made it clear that 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 – that deal with that problem,» Biden said in an interview with CNN.
Biden has previously urged Israel not to open a military offensive in Rafah during a phone call with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu late last month, fearing it could result in large-scale civilian casualties. Netanyahu and his governing partners say Rafah is Hamas’ last major stronghold
During a Sunday interview with NBC News’ Meet The Press, Senator Lindsey Graham, a South Carolina Republican, Graham spoke about Israel’s war against Hamas as he compared it to the United States’ decision to drop atomic bombs on Japan in World War II and condemned Biden’s recent stance to withhold weapons.
«When we were faced with destruction as a nation after Pearl Harbor, fighting the Germans and the Japanese, we decided to end the war by the bombing [of] Hiroshima [and] Nagasaki with nuclear weapons.
