Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin confirmed Wednesday at the Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on Defense that the U.S. is withholding a shipment of weapons to Israel over concerns about its ongoing attack on Hamas in Rafah.
Austin, while claiming that the Biden administration's commitment to Israel's security was "Ironclad," said that the U.S. had concerns about Israel's potential use of large bombs in Rafah and had therefore paused a bomb shipment.
"We've been very clear from the very beginning that Israel shouldn't launch a major attack into Rafah without accounting for and protecting the civilians that are in that battlespace. And again, as we have assessed the situation, we have paused one shipment of high payload munitions," he said.
C-SPAN. Austin claimed that the "Pause" did not affect the $23 billion of dollars in military aid for Israel passed in the recent national security supplemental budget.
Graham noted that Israel was fighting a war for its survival against Iran and its terrorist proxies and that the U.S. not withhold weapons: "Give Israel what they need to fight the war they can't afford to lose!".
C-SPAN. Austin kept repeating that the U.S. was withholding large bombs because it wanted Israel to use the "Right kinds of weapons," and that the decision to withhold arms had not been final.
Sen. Susan Collins told Austin that the decision to pause an arms shipment was, itself, a decision, and noted that Israel has been careful about trying to avoid civilian casualties in Gaza despite Hamas's use of civilians as human shields.
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