Biden admin letter threatening Israeli war aid in 30 days called ‘pre-election political theater’

In a letter to Israel the Biden administration threatened to withhold military assistance to the American ally, perhaps in as few as 30 days, if conditions don’t improve in Gaza.

But some national security and foreign relations officials have called the letter “pre-election political theater” aimed at Israel using a document created by Biden to appease congressional critics of the Jewish state.

Israel has been targeting parts of the Gaza strip from which terrorist operations by Hamas have been carried out against Israel.

Hamas supporters in the U.S. and abroad, including more than two-dozen prominent Democrats, are using those military operations to claim Israel has violated international laws in its Gaza campaign, invoking the Biden national security memo.

The letter to Israel from Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin cited “U.S. law and policy,” and also included a reference to National Security Memo 20 (NSM-20) signed by President Joe Biden in February for the threatened aid embargo.

The letter addressed to Yoav Gallant, Israel’s minister of defense, and Ron Dermer, the country’s minister of strategic affairs, was first reported by Israel’s Channel 12 News, according to Axios, which later obtained a copy.

The letter charges Israel with deliberately holding up humanitarian assistance to Gaza:  

“We are particularly concerned that recent actions by the Israeli government – including halting commercial imports, denying or impeding nearly 90 percent of humanitarian movements between northern and southern Gaza in September, continuing burdensome and excessive dual-use restrictions, and instituting new vetting and onerous liability and customs requirements for humanitarian staff and shipments – together with increased lawlessness and looting – are contributing to an accelerated deterioration in the conditions in Gaza.” 

Israel denies the claim and has increased its humanitarian aid to northern Gaza despite a massive international and American disinformation campaign against it, reported the Jewish Press. 

State Department spokesperson Matt Miller told a press gathering on Tuesday that the letter was meant to be a private letter between the two governments, a claim made more questionable by the leak to Axios. 

“But now that it is public, I am happy to confirm it and speak to it to some extent,” added Miller. 

When one reporter asked how the election, which will be over in less than 30 days, figured into the letter about a war going on for over a year, Miller claimed that election-year politics had nothing to do with the threat by Biden. 

“[The election is] not a factor at all. The bottom line is we felt it was appropriate, if we are making clear to the Government of Israel that there are these changes that need to be implemented, that we give them an appropriate period of time to implement it – implement them,” said Miller.  

But one national security expert scoffed at the claim.  

“I’m not sure which is worse to consider, that threatening an ally is a necessary pre-election political theater to pacify radical pro-Hamas leftists or that it’s actually U.S. policy to cut off arms to Israel if Israel doesn’t agree to feed, fuel and fund Hamas,” Richard Goldberg, a senior adviser at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies and former NSC official in the Trump administration, told Fox News Digital. 

Blinken and Lloyd cited NSM-20, a measure akin to an executive order aimed only at Israel, for the necessity of the letter. 

While NSM-20 was ostensibly written to guarantee that the transfer of U.S. weapons would only be used to “strengthen the collective security of the United States and its allies,” language in the memo deployed against Israel includes vague “best practices for reducing the likelihood of and responding to civilian casualties.” 

The Biden letter to Israel concluded with a warning echoing the NSM-20 memo: “It is vitally important that our governments establish a new channel through which we can raise and discuss civilian harm incidents.”  

The letter established a deadline of the end of October for Israel to create such a channel.  

In April, House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Michael McCaul, R-Texas, and Senate Foreign Relations Committee Ranking Member Jim Risch, R-Idaho, both asked President Biden to scrub NSM-20 from its policies, noting, “NSM-20 plainly was designed to appease critics of Israel.” 

McCaul and Risch argued that NSM-20 has no objective standards by which its policies are applied and weakens the bond between America and its allies. 

“Moreover, the vague standards of the NSM leave open the possibility of overly broad or inconsistent interpretations that undermine the reliability of U.S. security assistance,” they wrote.