McConnell Warns Biden: Refusing Israeli Aid Will Prove 'Grave'

The "consequences will be grave" if President Joe Biden can't find the "political courage to stand up to radicals on his left flank" and support Israel, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell warned in a speech on the Senate floor Thursday.

"Other allies who rely on 'ironclad' guarantees from America will question our commitment," the Kentucky Republican said while speaking out against Biden's warnings that U.S. weapons will not be used in an Israeli attack on Rafah out of concerns for civilian casualties.

McConnell said that Biden's refusal to back an ally at war will backfire.

"Nations on the fence, in the middle of a major power competition for influence, will look elsewhere for their own security, and our enemies will be emboldened," the senator said.

McConnell acknowledged that "war is hell" and "innocent noncombatants suffer," but still, "civilized nations hold themselves to the highest standards and take deliberate care to minimize harm to civilians."

Israel, he added, goes to "great lengths" to avoid civilian casualties, including accepting "great risk" to its soldiers to avoid endangering innocent civilians.

"But the forces sworn to erase Israel from the earth follow a different code," he said. "[To] Hamas, civilian casualties are not tragedies; they're tools of the trade."

"To these savages, kidnapping, torture, rape, and murder aren't crimes; they're tactics," McConnell said. "For terrorists around the world, human suffering is the weapon of choice. And Hamas seeks to magnify it."

He added that Israel tried to avoid the war, including negotiating a cease-fire, but Hamas "used this cease-fire to plan and prepare for war" and launched its attacks on Oct. 7.

Hamas also chose to put fighting positions in hospitals, schools, and the United Nations, while directly attacking humanitarian aid crossings to exploit human suffering "because it works."

"They know the media will cover it — 'if it bleeds, it leads' — because they know it creates an international rush to blame Israel," said McConnell.

This has led to "leftist fifth columns and useful idiots on university campuses" to express solidarity with the terrorists, and forcing Biden to choose between a "supposedly 'ironclad' commitment to an ally under attack and the will of his leftist political base."

And, McConnell said, "Hamas bet correctly."

McConnell further warned that Biden is old enough to remember the 1968 protests at the Democratic National Convention, but he doesn't choose to heed what happened.

"Caving to the college radicals will only whet their appetite to spend the summer demanding further anti-Israel concessions at his party's convention," said McConnell.