{"id":2241545,"date":"2024-05-10T06:11:02","date_gmt":"2024-05-10T10:11:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/biden-doublespeak-leaves-pro-israel-and-pro-palestinian-critics-with-questions\/"},"modified":"2024-05-10T06:14:00","modified_gmt":"2024-05-10T10:14:00","slug":"biden-doublespeak-leaves-pro-israel-and-pro-palestinian-critics-with-questions","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/biden-doublespeak-leaves-pro-israel-and-pro-palestinian-critics-with-questions\/","title":{"rendered":"Biden&#8217;s Ambiguous Stance Raises Concerns for Pro-Israel and Pro-Palestinian Critics"},"content":{"rendered":"<aside class=\"mashsb-container mashsb-main mashsb-stretched\"><div class=\"mashsb-box\"><div class=\"mashsb-count mash-medium\" style=\"&quot;\"><div class=\"counts mashsbcount\">20<\/div><span class=\"mashsb-sharetext\">SHARES<\/span><\/div><div class=\"mashsb-buttons\"><a class=\"mashicon-facebook mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/sharer.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.conservativenewsdaily.net%2Fbreaking-news%2Fbiden-doublespeak-leaves-pro-israel-and-pro-palestinian-critics-with-questions%2F\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Facebook<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-twitter mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?text=&amp;url=https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=2241545&amp;via=ConservNewsDly\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Twitter<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-subscribe mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"#\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Subscribe<\/span><\/a><div class=\"onoffswitch2 mash-medium mashsb-noshadow\" style=\"display:none\"><\/div><\/div>\n            <\/div>\n                <div style=\"clear:both\"><\/div><\/aside>\n            <!-- Share buttons by mashshare.net - Version: 4.0.47--><p>President Biden&#8217;s conditional \u200dU.S. military support to \u200cIsrael\u2063 based\u200d on an invasion decision \u200bhas sparked criticism. Pro-Israel Democrats and conservatives disapprove, \u200dwhile pro-Palestinian Democrats remain skeptical.\u200c The ongoing\u200d conflict tests Biden&#8217;s support for Israel, \u2062as he \u200cfaces pressure \u200bfrom various groups. The situation highlights the complexity\u2062 of \u2063geopolitical relationships and domestic considerations in \u200b<a href=\"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/senate-overwhelmingly-votes-to-keep-u-s-embassy-in-jerusalem\/\" title=\"Senate Overwhelmingly Votes to Keep U.S. Embassy in Jerusalem\">foreign policy decisions<\/a>.  <\/p>\n<p class=\"readmore\">\n    <button onclick=\"showReadMore()\" id=\"readmorebtn\">Read more&#8230;<\/button>\n<\/p>\n<hr id=\"line\">\n<span id=\"more\"><\/p>\n<div>\n<p>President <a href=\"https:\/\/www.washingtonexaminer.com\/tag\/joe-biden\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\" title>Joe Biden<\/a>\u2018s shock announcement that he would condition U.S. military support of <a href=\"https:\/\/www.washingtonexaminer.com\/tag\/israel\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\" title>Israel<\/a> on Prime Minister <a href=\"https:\/\/www.washingtonexaminer.com\/tag\/benjamin-netanyahu\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\" title>Benjamin Netanyahu<\/a>\u2018s decision to invade the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.washingtonexaminer.com\/tag\/gaza\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\" title>Gazan<\/a> city of Rafah to end <a href=\"https:\/\/www.washingtonexaminer.com\/tag\/hamas\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\" title>Hamas<\/a> has been criticized by pro-Israel Democrats and conservatives. <\/p>\n<p>But many pro-Palestinian Democrats are also skeptical of Biden\u2019s words and actions.<\/p>\n<p>The longer the war between Israel and Hamas lasts, the more the support of Israel that Biden demonstrated immediately after Hamas\u2019s Oct. 7 terrorist attacks gets tested as he seeks to keep pro-Palestinian stakeholders on his side.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe moment Biden decided he would oppose Israel destroying Hamas and winning the war, he started a countdown to this moment,\u201d Foundation for Defense of Democracies senior adviser\u00a0Richard\u00a0Goldberg, a onetime national security aide to former President <a href=\"https:\/\/www.washingtonexaminer.com\/tag\/donald-trump\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\" title=\"Donald Trump\">Donald Trump<\/a>, told the <em>Washington Examiner<\/em>. \u201cHe\u2019s isolated himself and undermined his influence and leverage by going down this road.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Even House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) described Biden\u2019s announcement as \u201coff script\u201d and hopefully a \u201csenior moment\u201d in a conversation with <em>Politico<\/em>. <\/p>\n<p>Biden had said during an interview with CNN on Wednesday that the United States would no longer provide heavy bombs and artillery shells to Israel if it launches a large-scale incursion of Rafah, and the announcement came after the president paused one shipment of 1,800 MK84 2,000-pound and 1,700 500-pound\u00a0bombs to Israel. The shipment was not part of last month\u2019s passed national security funding package.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI don\u2019t know if Biden was just meandering in his senile fashion or if this was a policy change,\u201d American Enterprise Institute foreign and defense senior fellow\u00a0Danielle\u00a0Pletka told the<em> Washington Examiner<\/em>. \u201cClearly, he\u2019s getting major pressure from his base and his own staff in the White House on this.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>White House senior spokesman Andrew Bates dismissed Johnson\u2019s speculation about Israel and U.S. military support, contending the Biden administration, including Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, had made similar statements days earlier. But Bates told the <em>Washington Examiner<\/em>, \u201cTo be fair, we understand the speaker has a lot to keep up with.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>For White House national security spokesman John Kirby, Biden\u2019s decision to make the announcement was based on \u201cseeing things, threats for a major operation in Rafah, and certainly rhetoric around that,\u201d which gave him \u201cpause.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cYou all don\u2019t hear everything that the president says to Prime Minister Netanyahu,\u201d Kirby told reporters Thursday during a briefing. \u201cI can assure you the direct and forthright nature with which he expressed himself and his concerns in that interview with [CNN] is consistent with how he has expressed himself to Prime Minister Netanyahu and to Israeli officials.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Alexander Hamilton Society Executive Director\u00a0Gabriel\u00a0Scheinmann countered that Biden was undercutting an ally at war with a \u201cgenocidal terrorist group\u201d because the administration would \u201crather see the end of the Netanyahu government than the end of the Hamas regime.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe Netanyahu government, and frankly any government that would be present in the last six months, cannot continue to survive if the games of the war are not achieved, i.e. the elimination of Hamas,\u201d Scheinmann told the <em>Washington Examiner<\/em>. \u201cSo in that stark choice, what it truly means is that Biden is trying to unseat Bibi by forcing an end of the war far short of the objectives.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Biden\u2019s counterpart to Netanyahu\u2019s Israel-Hamas war cabinet includes Austin, in addition to Secretary of State Antony Blinken, national security adviser Jake Sullivan, Sullivan\u2019s deputy Jon Finer, CIA Director Bill Burns, and National Security Council Middle East coordinator Brett McGurk. Arab and Muslim Americans in Michigan sat down with Finer earlier this year to discuss the conflict after they declined to meet with Biden campaign manager Julie Chavez Rodriguez about the same topic.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI think there is still a deep sense of skepticism toward President Biden\u2019s comments,\u201d Michigan State University political science professor\u00a0Nura\u00a0Sediqe told the <em>Washington Examiner<\/em> of the community after Biden\u2019s announcement on Israel and U.S. military support. \u201cHe is often referred to by a nickname that implicates him as a war criminal, rather than by his name, so it will take a lot of clear visible signs to turn the tide in opinion among American Muslims and Arab Americans.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>That skepticism persists amid Israeli claims that more civilians may be killed or injured in Gaza because the paused shipment of U.S. military support, postponed for two weeks, includes Boeing-made Joint Direct Attack Munitions, which transform so<a href=\"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/bernie-sanders-attempt-to-block-735m-israeli-arms-deal-appears-doomed\/\" title=\"Bernie Sanders' Attempt to Block 5M Israeli Arms Deal Appears Doomed\">-called dumb bombs<\/a> into precision-guided ones, as well as Small Diameter Bombs.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIsrael needs resupply from the United States,\u201d AEI\u2019s\u00a0Pletka said. \u201cCan it fight without them? Yes. But more people will die; they will need to use dumber bombs and broader and less pinpointed weaponry.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Goldberg, of FDD, also emphasized Israel\u2019s military preparedness more broadly: \u201cThe question is what will happen if Iran escalates any one of its six other fronts against Israel, especially via Hezbollah, which is a threat 10 times larger than Hamas ever was.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Biden\u2019s announcement, too, coincides with polling that indicates younger people, among the most vocal regarding Gaza, have competing priorities before November\u2019s general election. An <em>Axios<\/em>\u2013<a href=\"https:\/\/www.generationlab.org\/_files\/ugd\/b2ee84_ccf258b35be84db5849fa7366da82042.pdf\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\" title>Generation Lab<\/a> poll published this week, for example, found that only 13% of college students considered the \u201cconflict in the Middle East\u201d as the issue \u201cmost important to them.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThis is the irony,\u201d Pletka said. \u201cYoung people \u2018say\u2019 they aren\u2019t voting on Gaza. They are also notoriously unreliable voters.\u201d <\/p>\n<p>\u201cBiden is so spooked by his poll numbers and the third party candidates that he has persuaded himself he needs every last pro-Hamas voter he can get to win,\u201d she added. <\/p>\n<p>Scheinmann, from the Alexander Hamilton Society, disagreed: \u201cIf he were truly concerned about winning Michigan, he wouldn\u2019t be seeking to kill the combustion engine via his electric vehicle policies. Way more people are going to be put out of work or life made more expensive as a consequence of those policies than on Israel-Gaza stuff. I think that simply at the end of the day, this is where the administration is.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Democratic strategist Tom Cochran, an alumnus of former President Barack Obama\u2019s State Department and now managing director of public affairs firm 720 Strategies, was of a different opinion.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cFirst, it is always about politics and balancing an impossibly tenuous situation,\u201d Cochran told the <em>Washington Examiner<\/em>. \u201cSecond, it sends a clear message to Netanyahu that Biden\u2019s patience has limits, given that a ground offensive would likely result in continued widespread civilian casualties.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Meanwhile, Sedique sought more information about the <em>Axios<\/em>-Generation Lab poll because she could not find the demographic breakdown of its respondents online.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIf this is an aggregate of all college students across the U.S., as it appears, then that average may make sense,\u201d Sediqe said. \u201cBut if we were to do a regional poll on the Northeast, California, Michigan, I anticipate the answers looking different and this poll doesn\u2019t appear to capture their perspectives.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Biden campaign spokesman Kevin Munoz responded to polling such as the <em>Axios<\/em>-Generation Lab survey last week during an interview with Hearst: \u201cWhile the war is one issue, the Biden campaign sees the cost of living, reproductive rights, and fighting for democracy as top issues that could win over voters in November.\u201d <\/p>\n<p>In his gaggle with reporters, Kirby argued that Biden remained committed to the \u201cenduring defeat of Hamas\u201d and that the president\u2019s position on Rafah has been constant. He cited how Israel is receiving \u201cthe vast, vast majority of everything that they need to defend themselves.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe arguments that somehow we\u2019re walking away from Israel fly in the face of the facts,\u201d Kirby said.<\/p>\n<p>The previous day, Biden acknowledged civilians have been killed in Gaza \u201cas a consequence\u201d of U.S military support and \u201cother ways\u201d that Israel has engaged \u201cpopulation centers\u201d during the war.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/washingtonexaminer.com\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\"><strong>CLICK HERE TO READ MORE FROM THE WASHINGTON EXAMINER<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n<p>\u201cI made it clear that if they go into Rafah \u2014 they haven\u2019t gone in Rafah yet \u2014 if they go into Rafah, I\u2019m not supplying the weapons that have been used historically to deal with Rafah, to deal with the cities, that deal with that problem,\u201d Biden told CNN on Wednesday.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe\u2019re going to continue to make sure Israel is secure in terms of Iron Dome and their ability to respond to attacks that came out of the Middle East recently,\u201d he said. \u201cBut it\u2019s \u2014 it\u2019s just wrong. We\u2019re not going to \u2014 we\u2019re not going to supply the weapons and artillery shells.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<p><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>President Biden&#8217;s surprising statement to tie U.S. military aid to Israel with Prime Minister Netanyahu&#8217;s choice to invade Rafah has drawn criticism from pro-Israel Democrats and conservatives. Additionally, pro-Palestinian Democrats remain doubtful of Biden&#8217;s intentions. The ongoing conflict raises questions about Biden&#8217;s approach<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2652,"featured_media":2241546,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mo_disable_npp":"","fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/wex-s3.s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/05\/AP24130784127554-1024x683.jpg","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[538],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2241545","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-washington-examiner"],"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/wex-s3.s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/05\/AP24130784127554-1024x683.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2241545","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2652"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2241545"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2241545\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2241546"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2241545"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2241545"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2241545"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}