Some have already hit out at the president for breaking his once “ironclad” commitment.
“An American president siding with Iran over one of our strongest allies is unforgivable,” said former UN ambassador and one-time Republican presidential hopeful, Nikki Haley.
“Israel didn’t start this war, Hamas did. Withholding ammunition helps our enemies win and puts American lives at risk, including the hostages still held in Gaza.”
However, Biden, a self-described Zionist, has struggled for months to balance his long-standing support for Israel with the growing calls to protect innocent civilians.
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This included calls from Democrats and progressives within his own party’s ranks, who have been urging the president to use the supply of weapons as leverage.
The most damning condemnation came from Jewish independent senator Bernie Sanders, who described the carnage in Gaza as “one of the worst humanitarian disasters in the modern history of the world” and told Netanyahu to “stop murdering innocent people”.
Biden’s vow to oppose a Rafah offensive comes as outrage over the atrocities in Gaza continues to spill out at university campuses across the US, where pro-Palestinian encampments have sprung up over the last few weeks and thousands of students have been arrested following clashes with police.
The latest took place a few blocks from the White House on Wednesday, when police used pepper spray while breaking up an encampment at George Washington University on April 25.
About 33 demonstrators were arrested after police said they found signs protesters had “gathered improvised weapons” and were “casing” university buildings with the possible intention of occupying them.
These arrests come almost a week after police stormed Columbia University to round up protesters who broke into a historic campus and demanded that the Ivy League institution sever all ties with Israel.
Republicans have seized on the unrest to cast Biden as weak and unable to control the country six months from the presidential election.
“These agitators are really hurting our country,” ex-president and Republican nominee Donald Trump said in New York after enduring a day of salacious testimony from porn star Stormy Daniels in his hush-money trial.
“I think our government ought to find out who they are, where they’re from, and treat them in the same way as they do the J6 hostages” – a reference to the rioters jailed for the deadly attack in support of Trump on the US Capitol building on January 6, 2021.
Columbia sophomore, David Lederer, waves a large Israeli flag outside the student protest encampment on the university’s campus in New York on Monday.Credit: AP
Biden, meanwhile, used a speech on the same day to condemn what he described as a “ferocious surge of antisemitism” in the US and to announce tougher measures to crack down on the problem.
Among them is a proposal to cut federal funding to universities if they fail to crack down hard enough on antisemitism and Islamophobia, in violation of civil rights laws.
The Biden administration is also investigating more than 100 complaints of harassment and discrimination against both Jewish and Muslim students, and has issued every school and college in America with new guidelines outlining forms of hate that would violate the law.
“I understand people have strong beliefs and deep convictions about the world,” Biden said, but “there is no place on any campus in America, any place in America, for antisemitism or hate speech or threats of violence of any kind.”