Biden administration rejects Netanyahu’s claim of arms delays: ‘We genuinely don’t know what he’s talking about’

The White House vehemently denied that further arms shipments to Israel were being delayed on Tuesday after Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanayhu claimed that the US was holding up supplies of munitions to Israel’s military.

Earlier in the day, Netanyahu posted a video to social media in which the prime minister, speaking English, blasted the Biden administration and said he’d told Secretary of State Antony Blinken that it was “inconceivable that in the past few months, the administration has been withholding weapons and ammunitions to Israel.”

The Israeli leader, who over the weekend shuttered his war cabinet after two centrist ministers withdrew from it over his lack of planning for governance in Gaza after the current war against Hamas is concluded, posted the video at the same time Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell took to the Senate floor to claim that the Biden administration “has made Israel’s task even more difficult” by withholding weapons.

Netanyahu has long exhibited no qualms about interfering in American politics to the benefit of Republicans, who have generally given his government a free hand to expand West Bank settlements and marginalize the Palestinian Authority in ways that make a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict increasingly difficult to achieve.

White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre responded to the Israeli leader at her daily White House briefing, telling reporters: “We genuinely don’t know what he’s talking about.”

Echoing comments made at a press conference earlier in the day by Blinken, Jean-Pierre stated that only the one shipment of 2,000 pound bombs that President Biden has ordered to be paused during Israel’s offensive in Rafah has been withheld