Republicans rip Biden over Israel weapons threats

Republican Rep. Cory Mills filed impeachment articles against President Biden for pausing arms deliveries to Israel sparking widespread outrage – even by Democrats. Mills is accusing Biden of engaging in a ‘quid pro quo’ exchange by withholding military aid to pressure Israel to change its tactics in its war on Gaza. He says it’s only fair Biden gets impeached in the same manner as President Donald Trump in 2019 – for allegedly pressuring Ukraine to dig up dirt on the Bidens by withholding aid. The Senate eventually acquitted Trump of wrongdoing.

‘The House has no choice but to impeach President ‘Quid Pro Joe’ Biden,’ Mills said in a statement to DailyMail.com. He says Biden is ‘pressuring Israel’ by ‘pausing their funding’ that has already been approved by Congress if they don’t ‘stop all operations with Hamas.’ ‘It’s a very clear message, ‘this for that.’ These are the same accusations made against President Trump, which resulted in his impeachment by Democrats,’ he went on. ‘The same must happen for Joe Biden ,’ said Mills, R-Fla.

The impeachment push by Mills, R-Fla., comes even though he voted against sending aid to Israel himself. He was among 21 Republicans who opposed a vote on a $26 billion Israel aid bill that was wrapped into a $95 billion foreign aid package. Mills was also among 14 Republicans who opposed a failed Israel aid bill in February, but he’s gone on two separate rescue missions to Israel since the outbreak of war in October.

‘As Vice President, Biden was caught threatening to withhold funding and aid to Ukraine unless they fired the attorney general investigating Burisma, a company financially benefiting his son Hunter, not to mention the 10% share for ‘the big guy’ himself,’ Mills went on to describe other alleged ‘quid pro quo’ arrangements by the president. Meanwhile, Rep. Josh Gottheimer, D-N.J., led 25 House Democrats in a letter to National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan on Friday urging the administration to deliver the much-needed weapons. ‘Withholding weapons shipments to Israel … only emboldens our mutual enemies, including Hamas, Hezbollah, the Houthis, and other Iranian-backed proxies.’

They requested a classified briefing on the matter. Sen. Tom Cotton, R-Ark., demanded the House impeach Joe Biden on the Trump-Ukraine precedent on Thursday. ‘Some people say Joe Biden is doing this for his reelection, which would be bad enough,’ the Arkansas Republican said. ‘It would also, I have to add, be grounds for impeachment. He harkened back to 2019 when former President Donald Trump was impeached for what his critics said was withholding aid to Ukraine for political campaign purposes.

Other Senate Republicans, having successfully avoided the half-year fray of the House impeachment inquiry, were hesitant to make such a call, even as they deemed Biden a ‘propaganda tool’ and a ‘mouthpiece for Hamas . ‘I didn’t come here to talk about that but given what they did to president trump, i think you could make that argument,’ Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., told DailyMail.com in a news conference. ‘It does put the hostages more at risk, it makes the war go on longer. It Emboldens Iran in time they need to be contained,’ he said, adding it could also squander the U.S.’s ‘last best chance for structural changes in the Mid East.’

Biden told CNN on Wednesday that h e would pause more arms shipments to Israel if Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu launches a full-scale invasion of Rafah. Israelis reacted with fury and ceasefire negotiations have stalled. Netanyahu didn’t respond directly to Biden’s comment, but he posted a video on social media of a defiant speech he delivered this week in which he said ‘no amount of pressure’ will ‘stop Israel from defending itself.’ The president, last week, delayed the delivery of 3,500 bombs to the U.S.’s Middle East ally. It was the first time he used his executive power to influence Israel’s approach to its war with Hamas – after progressives for months begged him to do just that.

His words of warning on Wednesday were the most direct threat Biden has made to Israel during the seven-month war. ‘ Civilians have been killed in Rafah as a result of those bombs and other ways. They go after population centers. I made it clear that if they go into Rafah – they haven’t gone into Rafah yet – I’m not supplying the weapons,’ Biden said. But Kirby appeared to be clarifying the president’s stance. ‘As the President said, Israel has not yet launched such an operation. So he was talking about what would happen in the future, if they did. That’s a choice that Israel will have to make. And it’s one we hope they don’t,’ he noted.

Before the passing of the $26 billion aid package last month, the U.S. had given Israel $216 billion in aid since 1946. Most of that came from the $3.3 billion the U.S. offers each year as grants under the Foreign Military Financing (FMF) program. It’s estimated that U.S. funding accounts for some 15 percent of the Israeli defense budget. Biden is far from the first president to dangle arms shipments over the Israelis in exchange for a change in policy. In 1982, Ronald Reagan accused then-Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin of committing a ‘holocaust’ in Lebanon in the early 1980s, and held back shipments of fighter jets and artillery shells to force Israel to stop bombing Beirut. Still, Biden’s top Senate ally has gone against him to say the IDF should ‘finish the job’ in Rafah.

Sen. Chris Coons, a Democrat from Delaware , is a top surrogate for Biden on the global stage. His public break from Biden’s policy is nearly unprecedented. Coons recounted a call last night with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on the Senate floor on Thursday. ‘You don’t just have right to defend the Israeli people against Hamas, you have the obligation,’ Coons said he told Netanyahu. ‘You have go after them. You have to finish the job. You have to go into Rafah.’ Still, he called on Israel to allow Palestinian civilians a pathway out of Rafah. ‘There are a million civilian refugees who’ve flown down to the very bottom of Gaza and now are up against the hard border with Egypt . And given that Egypt will not let any of them into Egypt, you have to provide a pathway for civilians to leave Rafah before you go in at scale, with a bombing campaign, a ground campaign to minimize civilian injuries and deaths.’

Speaker Mike Johnson called the move a ‘betrayal’ after he agreed to risk his job and put a $95 billion foreign aid package on the House floor that included $26 billion for Israel. That package passed only after six months of delay as both sides of the aisle could not come together on Ukraine aid or border security provisions. Coons later told DailyMail.com the call to impeach Biden over withholding arms to Israel is ‘ridiculous.’ ‘President Biden’s goal is to continue to support Israel security and to avoid needless civilian deaths,’ Coons continued. ‘Former President Trump’s goal was to extract a personal political benefits from the head of a partner country so I don’t see the parallel.’

‘Don’t go in and do that [expletive],’ Sen. John Fetterman, D-Pa., said of Cotton’s impeachment idea. The difference between Republicans and progressive Democrats’s view of Biden’s handling of the Israel-Gaza conflict could not be more stark – as if they’re talking about two different presidents. Last month 56 House Democrats, including former Speaker Nancy Pelosi, urged the pause in a letter to Biden. Progressives have taken to calling Biden ‘genocide Joe’ and saying he has ‘blood on his hands’ for allowing the war to go on seven months before he threatened to withhold aid. Republicans, meanwhile, insist that Israel could do no more to avoid civilian casualties if it is to take out Hamas.

‘Israel does not want to kill even a single civilian,’ Cruz said. ‘There is no military on the face of earth that does more to protect civilians.’ The White House reined in Biden’s remarks on withholding foreign aid on Thursday. ‘Everybody keeps talking about pausing weapons shipments. Weapons shipments are still going to Israel. And they’re still getting the vast, vast majority of everything that they need to defend themselves,’ National Security Council spokesperson John Kirby told reporters. As a result, Sen. Joni Ernst, R-Iowa, called Biden a ‘mouthpiece for Hamas’ and Ted Cruz, R-Texas, accused him of being ‘the most anti-Israel president this nation has ever seen. Cruz said Biden has been ‘undermining Israel at every step of the way.’

Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, noted it was Biden who put together the supplemental funding request for Israel. ‘Without any consultation, the administration over the weekend halted delivery of essential weapons. It did not inform Appropriations, Foreign Relations or Armed Services commitees. It was a unilateral decision.’ Sen. Roger Marshall, R-Kans., accused Biden of having a ‘schizophrenic national security policy.’ ‘He says he wants to help Israel but he’s scared to lose a handful of votes in Michigan.’ Just as Israel and Saudi Arabia were on the precipice of normalizing relations, Hamas launched its October 7 attack on Israel, which killed some 1,200 Israelis and has subsequently led to the death of over 35,000 Palestinians in Israel’s counteroffensive.

Graham turned up the heat on Biden to broker diplomatic ties between Saudi Arabia and Israel. ‘I believe a Democratic president is best positioned to build on the Abraham accords went to Saudi Arabia. That would be a major accomplishment,’ he said. The Abraham Accords, brokered during the Trump administration, led to normalization between Israel and the UAE and Bahrain. On Monday, Israel’s military warned about 110,000 civilians to leave Rafah, and hours later its tanks moved in. It was not a full-scale invasion but some worry that one is imminent. Israel has threatened a major assault on area to defeat thousands of Hamas fighters it says are holed up there.

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