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Biden Is Not the First U.S. President to Cut Off Weapons to Israel

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Right_in_Virginia:
Biden Is Not the First U.S. President to Cut Off Weapons to Israel
NY Times, May 10, 2024

The president was livid. He had just been shown pictures of civilians killed by Israeli shelling, including a small baby with an arm blown off. He ordered aides to get the Israeli prime minister on the phone and then dressed him down sharply.

The president was Ronald Reagan, the year was 1982, and the battlefield was Lebanon, where Israelis were attacking Palestinian fighters. The conversation Mr. Reagan had with Prime Minister Menachem Begin that day, Aug. 12, would be one of the few times aides ever heard the usually mild-mannered president so exercised.

“It is a holocaust,” Mr. Reagan told Mr. Begin angrily.

Mr. Begin, whose parents and brother were killed by the Nazis, snapped back, “Mr. President, I know all about a holocaust.”

Nonetheless, Mr. Reagan retorted, it had to stop. Mr. Begin heeded the demand. Twenty minutes later, he called back and told the president that he had ordered a halt to the shelling. “I didn’t know I had that kind of power,” Mr. Reagan marveled to aides afterward.

[...]

Dwight D. Eisenhower threatened economic sanctions and an aid cutoff to force Israel to withdraw from the Sinai Peninsula after it invaded Egypt in 1956. Gerald R. Ford warned that he would re-evaluate the entire relationship in 1975 over what he considered Israel’s recalcitrance during peace talks with Egypt. George H.W. Bush postponed $10 billion in loan guarantees in 1991 in a dispute over settlements in the West Bank.

More: https://www.nytimes.com/2024/05/10/us/politics/biden-reagan-israel.html

Right_in_Virginia:
FTA:


--- Quote ---Israel’s invasion of Lebanon in 1982 forced another confrontation. Mr. Reagan halted the shipment of cluster-type artillery shells out of concern that such munitions were being used against civilians in violation of agreements. Around the same time, he delayed the delivery of 75 F-16 warplanes without explanation until March 1983, when he announced that he would not release the jets until Israel withdrew forces from Lebanon.

The move caused no wave of criticism like that seen in Washington this week. “Maybe it was a necessary signal to Israel,” Mr. Reagan wrote mildly in his diary that night in describing his decision. In the days that followed, stories in The New York Times did not include criticism from members of Congress in either party. Not until a week later did William Safire, a conservative columnist for The Times, fault Mr. Reagan’s move as “a tragic flip-flop on Israel,” as he put it.
--- End quote ---

Hoodat:
Defending Biden.

PeteS in CA:
From the OP of https://www.gopbriefingroom.com/index.php/topic,531576.0.html :


--- Quote ---Fact Check: NYT Claims Reagan Withheld Arms from Israel, Like Biden

Joel B. Pollak 10 May 2024

CLAIM: President Ronald Reagan, like President Joe Biden, withheld arms from Israel to influence its military policy.

VERDICT: MISLEADING. Reagan acted within the law, and in very different circumstances, in withholding arms.

The New York Times‘ Peter Baker — winner of the Pulitzer Prize for his newspaper’s bogus reporting on “Russia collusion” — wrote Friday that President Reagan, too, withheld weapons from Israel over concerns about their use.
...
Baker notes that the Reagan administration delayed the sale of jet fighters and the shipment of cluster munitions to Israel on several occasions.

In 1981, Reagan delayed the shipment of four F-16s to Israel over Israel’s successful attack on Iraq’s nuclear program (which the U.S. would later admit was a useful operation).

In 1982, Reagan delayed arms shipments over concerns that Israeli actions during the Lebanon War against Palestinian guerillas endangered locals. Like Hamas in Gaza, the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) had hidden in civilian areas, from which shelled civilian towns in northern Israel.
...
But there are several key differences between what Reagan did in the early 1980s and what Biden is doing today.

First, Reagan operated within the law, which requires the president to notify Congress of sales or pauses in weapons delivery. Biden did not follow the procedures of the Impoundment Control Act (ICA), keeping Congress in the dark.

Second, both the Iraq nuclear strike and the Lebanon War were wars of choice, to some extent, in that Israel made the decision to attack. The current war in Gaza is a response to an unprovoked — and brutal — terror attack October 7.

It is one thing to delay or deny weapons to an ally that has made a calculated decision to attack an enemy. It is quite another to delay or deny weapons to an ally that has been invaded by terrorists who targeted and kidnapped civilians.

more
https://www.breitbart.com/the-media/2024/05/10/fact-check-nyt-claims-reagan-withheld-arms-from-israel-like-biden/
--- End quote ---

Moral equivalence arguments must first be based on equivalents. The circumstances in which Reagan acted were very different from the battle Israel is currently fighting.

Wingnut:
Oh look our Israel hater RiV is posting lies.

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