Daily Kickoff
Good Thursday morning.
In today’s Daily Kickoff, we look at the responses from Capitol Hill and the Jewish community to President Joe Biden’s announcement that the U.S. is halting the sale of some weapons to Israel, and report on a new ad buy from the United Democracy Project targeting Rep. Thomas Massie. Also in today’s Daily Kickoff: Robert Kraft, Nir Bar Dea and Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz.
In the wake of President Joe Biden’s commentson Wednesday that the administration will withhold certain weapons transfers to Israel if the IDF mounts a major ground operation in Rafah, mainstream Jewish groups and communal leaders are pushing back on efforts to halt military support for Israel, suggesting that the move hamstrings Jerusalem’s ability to prosecute the war, defeat Hamas and secure the release of the remaining 132 hostages.
Abe Foxman, the former national director of the Anti-Defamation League, characterized Biden as sending conflicting messages in the CNN interview and a Holocaust memorial event the day prior.
“There seem to be [two] Bidens, one that spoke at the Holocaust event, who flew to Israel during war [against] Israel, moved military/financial support,” Foxman said. “And the political Biden who engages in [party] politics — telling Israel it has [a] right to defend itself — but we will tell you when and how.”
American Jewish Committee CEO Ted Deutch, a former Democratic member of Congress, said that the threatened move would be detrimental to Israeli security. “President Biden should not take steps that could impair Israel’s ability to prevent Hamas from attacking it again and again — as its leaders have promised,” Deutch said. “The U.S. knows that defeating Hamas is critical to Israel’s long-term security and to defeating the global threat posed by the Iranian regime and its proxies.” Read more here.
Biden’s CNN interview marked the first time the president has explicitly stated that the U.S. is conditioning arms transfers to Israel, writes Jewish Insider senior national correspondent Gabby Deutch. Last month, the White House threatened to shift its policy toward Israel if it didn’t take additional precautions to protect civilians — and Wednesday’s interview confirmed that was not an empty threat.
“Civilians have been killed in Gaza as a consequence of those bombs and other ways in which they go after population centers, and I made it clear that if they go into Rafah — they haven’t gone into Rafah yet — 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, to deal with that problem,” Biden said. It was also the first time the president acknowledged that U.S.-supplied weapons have been responsible for the death of civilians in Gaza.
“We’re going to continue to make sure Israel is secure in terms of Iron Dome and their ability to respond to attacks like [those that] came out of the Middle East recently, but it’s just wrong. We’re not going to supply the weapons and the artillery shells that have been used,” said Biden. Israel has “not yet” crossed Biden’s red line on Rafah, he said, even as the IDF began a more limited operation in the southern Gaza city this week. But Washington has already held up one shipment, Biden acknowledged.
House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA)toldPolitico he was surprised by Biden’s comments, noting that he had gotten written and verbal confirmations from the administration in recent weeks that there would be no delays in weapons transfers. “I mean, 24 hours ago it was confirmed to me by top administration officials that the policy’s very different than what he stated there,” Johnson said. “So I hope that’s a senior moment.”
In a speech on Tuesday, Biden said at a Holocaust memorial event at the Capitol that his commitment to the “security of Israel and its right to exist as an independent Jewish state is ironclad, even when we disagree.” (The Associated Press reported that Biden waited to weigh in on Rafah until after he delivered his Holocaust remembrance address.)
A senior Biden administration official told JI after Biden’s interview that withholding the arms shipments does not mean Biden’s support for Israel’s security is no longer “ironclad.” Instead, the official argued that there is a distinction between the U.S. giving Israel access to defensive weapons versus offensive weapons — and that the bombs the U.S. is withholding are not needed for defensive purposes.
“It’s ironclad to Israel’s security, right, like, I mean, they need Iron Dome defense systems. You can argue that they don’t need a 2,000-pound unguided munition in order to defend themselves,” the official said. “He is drawing a distinction in the interview between defensive weapons, which he will always support, and some types of offensive weapons, for instance, the 500-pound, 1,000-pound unguided munitions that Israel would use in a Rafah operation if they decided to move forward with that.”
Biden’s Wednesday comments signal a major shift in U.S. policy toward Israel in its seven-month war against Hamas in Gaza. From close to the beginning of the war, which began with Hamas’ Oct. 7 attacks that killed more than 1,200 people in Israel, Biden and top administration officials have told Israel to do more to protect civilians and aid workers in Gaza, warning Israel not to follow the path of America’s destructive wars in Afghanistan and Iraq after 9/11. He echoed those concerns again on Wednesday while acknowledging the severity of the Oct. 7 attacks.
“Nothing’s like that’s happened to the Jewish community since the Holocaust. When I went over immediately after that happened I said to Bibi, ‘Don’t make the same mistake we made in America. We wanted to get Bin Laden and we’ll help you get Sinwar,’” Biden said, referring to Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar. “Don’t make the same mistake. Focus on — and we’ll help you focus on getting the bad guys.” Read the full story here.
In the CNN interview, Biden didn’t mention the more than 130 hostages still remaining in Gaza, nor did he refer to Hamas by name. The senior administration official said that’s because CNN host Erin Burnett did not specifically ask Biden about the hostages.
Biden’s interview and previous arms sales delays drew condemnation from pro-Israel Democrats and Republicans on Capitol Hill, some of whom argued that the Rafah operation is Israel’s only remaining leverage in the ongoing hostage negotiations. (Read more on that below.) The senior administration official disputed this argument, saying the U.S. continues to exert pressure on Hamas.
“We have been putting a lot of pressure on them for that and on Hamas for that. If anyone out there would want to conclude, ‘Oh, we’re not doing that, we’re only pressuring Israel,’ that is absolutely not true. We’ve been putting a lot of pressure on Hamas and will continue to do that,” said the official.
The comments are likely to reignite conversation about Israel’s own development of a domestic arms industry, which Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had floated earlier this year. Israel relies on the U.S. for roughly 70% of its military imports.
In response to Biden’s comments, Israeli Foreign Minister Israel Katzposted on X that “Israel will continue to fight Hamas until it is destroyed. There is no war more just than this.”
Israeli Ambassador to the U.N. Gilad Erdantold Israel’s public broadcaster Kan: “I think that it’s pretty clear that all the pressure on Israel, all the limitations put on Israel, even if they’re from close allies who wish Israel well, are interpreted by our enemies — whether Iran, Hamas or Hezbollah — as something that gives them hope to succeed in their goals. It can encourage them, the enemies of the Jewish people and the State of Israel.”
The ambassador also noted that the Biden administration did not present Israel with “alternatives to an operation in Rafah that could bring down Hamas control and create a future and a horizon, including, of course, freeing our hostages.”
Opposition Leader Yair Lapid called the situation a “massive failure” by Netanyahu. “Of course, I prefer that the U.S. continue helping the IDF win the war,” Lapid told Israel’s 103FM. “That’s why these relations have to be managed… The mistake is by the government of Israel, which made the arguments [with Washington] public…This is an unusual, extreme and dangerous situation. The whole world is watching the U.S. have a public dispute with Israel. The government of Israel should not be in this situation — certainly not in wartime.”
taking heat
Biden’s Israel threats slammed by pro-Israel lawmakers, mainstream Jewish groups

President Joe Biden’s CNN interview on Wednesday threatening to cut off offensive weapons transfers to Israel if Israel invades Rafah drew quick criticism from Israel-backing Democrats and Republicans on Capitol Hill, Jewish Insider’s Marc Rod and Emily Jacobs report.
Using the funds: Rep. Brad Sherman (D-CA) noted to JI, “[Biden] came to this Congress and he said pass legislation… you can’t come to members and get them to vote for your bill, your package, and then throw away part of the package.” He added that, legally, the funds appropriated by Congress must be used.
Destroying Hamas: Rep. Don Bacon (R-NE) told JI, “I support Israel’s desire to destroy Hamas in Gaza. They attacked brutally on 7 October, and Hamas has to be destroyed in Gaza to the best that they can. To stand in front of that, that means President Biden wants Hamas to continue to exist in Gaza, which is a continuous threat to Israel. It’s wrong.” He also alluded to former President Donald Trump’s impeachment over his decision to withhold arms sales to Ukraine.
Wait and see: Another House Democrat, who voted against aid to Israel, seemed skeptical that the policy change would hold. “Let’s wait and see what happens tomorrow,” the Democrat told JI on condition of anonymity. “I don’t know whether this is Biden going off-script, or if tomorrow his staff will go, ‘Oh well what he meant to say is,’ and reverse course.”
Welcoming the move: Progressive Democrats, who’ve been pushing for such a move from Biden for months, were quick to praise the president. “[Biden] has long warned PM Netanyahu that invading Rafah would be a “red line” — it would result in untold civilian death & destruction, and undermine our efforts to return the hostages,” Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-MD) said. “I applaud him for making clear today that the U.S. will not be complicit in this suffering.”
Read the full story here with additional reactions from Reps. Jared Moskowitz (D-FL), Donald Norcross (D-NJ), and Greg Meeks (D-NY) and Sens. Chris Coons (D-DE) and Lindsey Graham (R-SC).
Double trouble: House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) sent a letter to Biden on Wednesday condemning his administration for placing holds on weapons sales and shipments to Israel.