President Donald Trump has reportedly revoked a policy under President Joe Biden to threaten arms sales to Israel if the country does not satisfy critics of its human rights record while battling Palestinian Hamas terrorists in Gaza.
As Breitbart News reported last October, Biden “quietly” threatened future arms sales to Israel under a directive known as NSM-20:
The Biden-Harris administration is quietly threatening an arms embargo against Israel, citing humanitarian concerns about the war in Gaza, where Hamas continues to hold Israeli hostages while Israel tries to stop it from regrouping.
The revelation about a potential arms embargo came Tuesday in a leaked letter from Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin to his Israeli counterpart, Lloyd Austin, threatening to withhold weapons if the Gaza situation deteriorates.
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Austin gives Gallant and strategic affairs minister Ron Dermer 30 days in which Israel is to comply with his demands.
While the Biden administration generally avoided concluding that Israel was violating human rights standards, NSM-20 and other directives held the threat of an arms embargo over Israel’s head throughout the war.
Now, however, Trump has rescinded Biden’s policy and restored Israeli confidence. The Washington Post reported:
The White House’s repeal of the directive, which President Joe Biden imposed as his administration struggled to reconcile its support for Israel’s war against Hamas militants in the Gaza Strip and its alarm about the civilian toll of that fight, comes as the Trump administration puts its “America First” mark on U.S. foreign policy.
A Feb. 21 order from national security adviser Michael Waltz, a copy of which was obtained by The Washington Post, relays President Donald Trump’s decision to immediately rescind Biden’s National Security Memorandum, known as NSM-20. The repeal was also confirmed by several current and former U.S. officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss a decision that has not been made public.
Critics, such as Sen. Chris van Hollen (D-MD), who frequently attacks Israeli policies, said that Trump’s new policy — which he claimed applied to other countries in general, not just Israel — represented “America in Retreat”:
Trump has also lifted Biden’s hold on heavy precision-guided bombs, D9 bulldozers, and other essential hardware to Israel.
Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News and the host of Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot on Sunday evenings from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET (4 p.m. to 7 p.m. PT). He is the author of The Agenda: What Trump Should Do in His First 100 Days, available for pre-order on Amazon. He is also the author of The Trumpian Virtues: The Lessons and Legacy of Donald Trump’s Presidency, now available on Audible. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.
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