The Biden-Harris administration is quietly threatening an arms embargo against Israel, citing humanitarian concerns about the war in Gaza, where Hamas continues to hold Israeli hostages while Israel tries to stop it from regrouping.
The revelation about a potential arms embargo came Tuesday in a leaked letter from Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin to his Israeli counterpart, Lloyd Austin, threatening to withhold weapons if the Gaza situation deteriorates.
The letter claims, without evidence, that Israel is blocking aid to Gaza, and that humanitarian aid deliveries to Gaza have plummeted. (Israel claims the opposite — that it continues to expand humanitarian aid deliveries to Gaza.)
The aid demands that Israel “surge” aid to Gaza, and that it end the “isolation” of northern Gaza — where the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) ordered the evacuation of Palestinian civilians due to an ongoing offensive against Hamas.
The letter also defends the role of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) in distributing aid, even as Austin admits that UNRWA has been linked to terror and the October 7, 2023, attack on Israel that launched the war.
U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, right, is greeted by Israel’s Minister of Defense Yoav Gallant as he arrives at the Ministry of Defense, Friday, Oct. 13, 2023, in Tel Aviv. Austin is in Israel for meetings with senior government leaders and to see firsthand some of the U.S. weapons and security assistance that Washington rapidly delivered to Israel in the first week of its war with the militant Hamas group. (AP Photos/Lolita Baldor)
Effectively, the letter demands an end to the current Israeli offensive in Gaza, and holds Israel responsible to harm to civilians due to the war. The letter does not mention the remaining 101 hostages or make any demands of Hamas.
Austin gives Gallant and strategic affairs minister Ron Dermer 30 days in which Israel is to comply with his demands.
“Failure to demonstrate a sustained committment to implementing and maintaining these measures may have implications for U.S. policy under [National Security Memorandum]-20 and relevant U.S. law,” the letter states.
NSM-20 and other U.S. laws and regulations require recipients of U.S. military aid to comply with human rights norms. A review of Israel’s conduct in May was worded in a sloppy fashion that left the administration’s position unclear.
Countries that fall short of the standards of international law — as judged by the bureaucrats in the State Department, widely considered to have an anti-Israel bias — could lose their access to American weapons as a result.
A Pentagon spokesperson was on the defensive in a briefing on Tuesday, claiming that Austin’s letter had been “personal” or “private” and had not been intended to be leaked. Left-wing critics of Israel have been demanding an arms embargo on Israel since the start of the war.
Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democratic nominee for president, told pro-Palestinian activists in August that she would be “open” to discussing an arms embargo on Israel.
Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News and the host of Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot on Sunday evenings from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET (4 p.m. to 7 p.m. PT). He is the author of The Agenda: What Trump Should Do in His First 100 Days, available for pre-order on Amazon. He is also the author of The Trumpian Virtues: The Lessons and Legacy of Donald Trump’s Presidency, now available on Audible. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.
This post has been updated.
