“I believe that Israel and America have an ironclad relationship, and I have faith in what the Biden administration is doing,” Schumer said when asked if it is appropriate for the Biden administration to hold up the shipment of bombs, according to The Hill.
His comments followed confirmation from US officials that the US had paused a shipment of bombs to Israel last week over concerns that Israel was approaching a decision on launching a full-scale assault on the southern Gaza city of Rafah.
The shipment which was paused was supposed to consist of 1,800 2,000-pound bombs and 1,700 500-pound bombs, a US official told The Associated Press, with the focus of US concern being the larger explosives and how they could be used in a dense urban setting.
Schumer has recently been critical of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, describing him as “an obstacle to peace” and calling for elections in Israel, but he has also stressed the importance of the US providing Israel with the support it needs to defend itself.
On the Republican side, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell and House of Representatives Speaker Mike Johnson on Wednesday sent a letter to the President urging that congressionally appropriated security assistance to Israel should be expedited immediately.
Also on Wednesday, US Senator Lindsey Graham grilled Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin and Joint Chiefs of Staff Chair Charles Q. Brown Jr. on the Biden administration's freezing of an arms shipment to Israel, demanding to know if they would have dropped the two atomic bombs on Japan in order to end World War II.
"If we stop weapons necessary to destroy the enemies of the State of Israel at a time of great peril, we will pay a price. This is obscene. It is absurd. Give Israel what they need to fight the war. They can’t afford to lose. This is Hiroshima and Nagasaki on steroids," Graham warned.
