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White House National Security Advisor Ludicrously Claims Biden’s Policies ‘Did Save Lives in Gaza’ [1]

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Date: 2025-01-14 02:29:49+00:00

White House National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan claimed that President Joe Biden’s policies have saved lives in Gaza.

Really.

Biden has stepped up shipments of arms sales to Israel after the Oct. 7 2023 attacks in which Hamas launched raids from Gaza into Israeli territory. Some 1,200 Israelis were killed and more than 200 were taken hostage. In response, Israel invaded Gaza in an operation that is still ongoing and has killed more than 46,000 Palestinians – and possibly many more. On at least two occasions, Biden has bypassed Congress to send weapons to Israel.

The International Criminal Court has issued arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Defense Minister Yoav Gallant for war crimes, as well as Hamas commander Mohammed Deif, who was killed last year.

Sullivan appeared on Monday’s Inside on MSNBC, where former Biden Press Secretary Jen Psaki interviewed her former administration colleague. At one point, Psaki asked whether the administration overestimated the amount of pressure the U.S. could exert on Israel. She declined to mention the steady flow of arms Biden has been sending to Israel.

“As we look over a year into this war, there’s often this expectation that the United States can control foreign leaders or control their actions,” Psaki said. “That’s not how negotiations or global power works. But do you think that you or the president or others in the administration may have overestimated the sway or power you had over Prime Minister Netanyahu early on to change his behavior or pull it back to something that was not as aggressive in Gaza?”

At no point did Psaki mentioned the billions in weapons shipments Biden has sent to Israel, which the country has used to lay waste to Gaza.

Incredibly, Sullivan responded by defending the administration’s approach and claiming that Biden’s efforts saved lives in the besieged Palestinian territory:

Look, actually, what I think is that a lot of the commentary put this whole question into very transactional terms. “Why don’t you just cut off weapons and that’ll make Israel do what we want them to do?” From our perspective, Israel was not just being attacked by Hamas, it was being attacked by Hezbollah. It was being attacked by the Houthis. It was being attacked by the Shia militia groups in Iraq and Syria, and it was being attacked by Iran itself. So, the notion that we would stop military assistance to a friend under assault from all those different fronts was not something that sat well with the president. But he did take the very strong view that while we were going to stand up for Israel’s defense and security, we also were gonna speak out on principle on protecting the basic rights and lives of civilians in Gaza. And that meant pushing Israel when we felt they went too far. It meant pushing for more humanitarian assistance. And we do believe that our interventions with respect to the flow of humanitarian assistance into Gaza did save lives and did stave off the famine that was warned about at multiple points over the course of the past 14 months. Too many civilians have died. Too many Palestinians have gone through hell. I acknowledge all of that. But I believe that the United States has taken a clear position over the course of the past 14 months in support of the defense of Israel and in working to try to minimize civilian harm and maximize humanitarian assistance in Gaza.

Not surprisingly, Psaki offered no pushback.

Multiple human rights organizations – including Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch have concluded that Israel is perpetrating a genocide in Gaza. B’Tselem, an Israel human rights organization, has concluded that the country is practicing ethnic cleansing in Gaza and is committing war crimes by starving the people in the territory.

Since the Oct. 7 attacks, Israel has also bombed the West Bank, Iran, Syria, and Yemen, and has invaded Lebanon. During this time, multiple news outlets have repeatedly reported that Biden is privately frustrated with Netanyahu. In one instance, Biden pledged he would stop offensive arms shipments to Israel if it invaded the Gaza city of Rafah, which Israel did. However, the president has kept sending those weapons.

Watch above via MSNBC.

This is an opinion piece. The views expressed in this article are those of just the author.

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[1] Url: https://www.mediaite.com/opinion/white-house-national-security-advisor-claims-bidens-policies-did-save-lives-in-gaza/

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