(NewsWorthy.news) – Republican Senator for South Carolina Lindsey Graham has said that he has more trust in Israel than he does in U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin following President Joe Biden’s warning that weapons sales to Tel Aviv will be halted if the Israeli regime proceeds with its assault on Rafah.
Graham slated Biden over the withdrawal from Afghanistan, and suggested that in the future the world would think twice about establishing ties with the U.S. if the president does not change his stance. Citing his own background of negotiating between Saudi Arabia and Israel for years, the senator said Biden’s position on arming Israel could destroy political stability in the region.
Graham made his stance on Israel abundantly clear in a visit to Jerusalem in March 2024, during which he told reporters that Hamas was to blame for the “miserable” situation in Gaza. He called claims that the Israeli regime was starving Palestinians in Gaza “BS” and “blood libel”, arguing that Israel was employing its armed forces to help the people of Gaza.
Graham attracted criticism for his harsher and more controversial comments when speaking to reporters on May 12. In the interview, the senator compared the situation in Gaza to that in Japan at the end of WW2, and argued that dropping the nuclear bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki was the right thing to do. Graham added that Israel should be given the weapons to “end the war”, suggesting that the Israeli regime should resort to dropping a nuclear bomb on Gaza. Graham already argued in November 2023 that the White House should not be placing a limit on the number of acceptable civilian casualties in the Gaza conflict.
Israel’s assault on Rafah has been criticized by western powers due to the southern city being a place of refuge for hundreds and thousands of refugees. After the assault began and Israel’s government told the city’s civilians to evacuate, the U.N. changed its definition of “forced displacement” to “displacement”, meaning that Tel Aviv’s act of ordering the city’s civilians to leave their homes en masse could be considered a war crime. In his latest declaration Biden warned Israel’s armed forces that if they proceed with assaulting Rafah he would halt the supply of artillery shells and bombs from the U.S.. The president has argued that Gaza’s civilians have been killed because of the bombs the U.S. has sent to Israel.
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