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‘An inflection point in history’: Biden says assisting Israel and Ukraine is necessary to preserve democracy
WASHINGTON (JTA) — President Joe Biden delivered a rare Oval Office address asking Americans to back assistance to Israel and Ukraine in the name of preserving democracy across the globe.
“We’re facing an inflection point in history,” Biden said Thursday in the roughly 15-minute address, delivered just hours after he returned from a lightning visit to Israel. He landed in Tel Aviv on Wednesday to show his support as the country wages war on Hamas, the terror group that invaded Israel on Oct. 7, killing 1,400, wounding thousands and taking more than 200 hostage.
“Hamas and Putin represent different threats,” Biden said, referring to the Russian president who launched an invasion of Ukraine last year. “But they share this in common. They both want to completely annihilate neighboring democracies.”
Hamas’ “purpose for existing is the destruction of the State of Israel and the murder of Jewish people,” he said.
Biden said he would ask Congress on Friday for more defense assistance for Israel and Ukraine. He said he wanted Israel to “sharpen” its qualitative military edge to deter Iran and others from joining Hamas in the war it launched from the Gaza Strip. He also wants to provide funding for Israel’s Iron Dome missile defense system.
Congress has been stalled for weeks as the Republican majority in the U.S. House of Representatives has been unable to elect a speaker, without whom appropriations are impossible. Biden did not mention numbers, but reports have said he is set to ask for $60 billion for Ukraine and $14 billion for Israel.
Throughout the speech, Biden cast his plea for support as a vital American interest. “When terrorists don’t pay the price for their terror, when dictators don’t pay the price for their aggression, they keep going,” he said.
Biden described his meetings with Israelis who had survived the Oct. 7 invasion, and added that he urged Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to obey the laws of war. He noted his efforts to get humanitarian assistance into the Gaza Strip. Israel has launched counterattacks from the air and with artillery that have killed more than 3,700 Palestinians, and is readying for a ground invasion of Gaza.
Biden also spoke of the threat of antisemitism and islamaphobia in the United States now that the war is underway, mourning the murder of a Palestinian-American boy in a Chicago suburb.
“The Oct. 7 terror attacks have triggered deep scars and terrible memories in the Jewish community,” Biden said. “Today, Jewish families are worried about being targeted in school, wearing symbols of their faith walking down the street, or going out about their daily lives.”
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Rights Group Files Lawsuit to Block Trump Deportations of Anti-Israel Protesters
Marco Rubio speaks after he is sworn in as Secretary of State by US Vice President JD Vance at the Eisenhower Executive Office Building in Washington, DC, Jan. 21, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Kevin Lamarque
The American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee (ADC) filed a lawsuit challenging as unconstitutional the Trump administration’s actions to deport international students and scholars who protest or express support for Palestinian rights.
The lawsuit, filed on Saturday in the US District Court for the Northern District of New York, seeks a nationwide temporary restraining order to block enforcement of two executive orders signed by US President Donald Trump in the first month of his term.
The lawsuit comes after the detention of a Columbia University student, Mahmoud Khalil, a 30-year-old permanent US resident of Palestinian descent, whose arrest sparked protests this month.
Justice Department lawyers have argued that the US government is seeking Khalil’s removal because Secretary of State Marco Rubio has reasonable grounds to believe his activities or presence in the country could have “serious adverse foreign policy consequences.” Rubio on Friday said the United States will likely revoke visas of more students in the coming days.
Trump vowed to deport activists who took part in protests on US college campuses against Israel’s war on Hamas in Gaza following the October 2023 attack by the Palestinian terrorists.
The ADC lawsuit was filed on behalf of two graduate students and a professor at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York, who say their activism and support of the Palestinian people “has put them at serious risk of political persecution.”
“This lawsuit is a necessary step to preserve our most fundamental constitutional protections. The First Amendment guarantees the freedom of speech and expression to all persons within the United States, without exception,” said Abed Ayoub, national executive director of the ADC.
Chris Godshall-Bennett, the group’s legal director, said the litigation seeks immediate and long-term relief “to protect international students from any unconstitutional overreach that stifles free expression and deters them from fully engaging in academic and public discourse.”
The lawsuit centers on three Cornell University plaintiffs: a British-Gambian national and PhD student with a student visa; a US citizen PhD student working on plant science; and a US citizen novelist, poet, and professor in the Department of Literatures in English.
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Netanyahu Informs Shin Bet Chief to Vote on His Dismissal Next Week
Israel’s Shin Bet chief Ronen Bar speaks at Reichman University in Herzliya on Sunday, September 11, 2022. Photo: Screenshot
i24 News – Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told Ronen Bar, the head of the Shin Bet security agency, that he will bring a vote before his government to dismiss him next week.
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Houthis Claim to Attack US Aircraft Carrier, Retaliating for Strikes
Newly recruited fighters who joined a Houthi military force intended to be sent to fight in support of the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, march during a parade in Sanaa, Yemen, Dec. 2, 2023. Photo: REUTERS/Khaled Abdullah
i24 News – The Houthis claimed on Sunday that they targeted the aircraft carrier USS Harry Truman and other vessels in the northern Red Sea with 18 ballistic and cruise missiles and a drone. Military spokesperson Yahya Saree said that the US-led attacks against the Houthis on Saturday comprised of more than 47 airstrikes on seven governorates, with the death toll expected to rise.
“The Yemeni Armed Forces will not hesitate to target all American warships in the Red Sea and in the Arabian Sea in retaliation to the aggression against our country,” Saree said, vowing the Houthis “will continue to impose a naval blockade on the Israeli enemy and ban its ships in the declared zone of operations until aid and basic needs are delivered to the Gaza Strip.”
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