US President Joe Biden has called for another package of military assistance worth 105 billion dollars to Israel, Ukraine, Taiwan and the Mexico border.
In a rare prime time address to the nation from the Oval Office, Biden on Thursday appealed to Congress to approve the package.
Fresh off a trip to Tel Aviv, Biden labeled the package “an unprecedented commitment to Israel’s security that will sharpen Israel’s qualitative military edge.” He compared the Hamas resistance movement fighting the Israeli regime in Palestine to the Russian leader.
“We will not let terrorists like Hamas and tyrants like [Russian President Vladimir] Putin win,” said Biden. “Hamas and Putin represent different threats, but they share this in common: they both want to completely annihilate a neighboring democracy.”
“History has taught us that when terrorists don’t pay a price for their terror, when dictators don’t pay a price for their aggression, they cause more chaos and death and more destruction. They keep going and the costs and the threats to America and the world keep rising.”
The president said on Friday he would send an urgent budget request to Congress to secure more funds for Israel and Ukraine. “It’s a smart investment that is going to pay dividends for American security for generations.”
The point of the president’s 15-minute address was to weave the Ukraine and West Asia conflicts as part of a US global security strategy and to convince war-weary voters and lawmakers to give Washington’s two allies, which have already received hundreds of billions of dollars’ worth of taxpayer money, additional funds.
In response, the Kremlin denounced Biden’s remarks, especially the comparison between Russia and Hamas.
“We do not accept such a tone in relation to the Russian Federation, in relation to our president,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters on Friday. Peskov said such “rhetoric is hardly suitable for responsible leaders of states, and it can hardly be acceptable to us.”
Also, the Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said Biden’s description of support as an “investment” showed that Washington benefits from proxy wars rather than fights for ideas.
“Wars have traditionally been ‘smart investments’ for the United States as they did not take place on the American soil and they do not care about costs borne by others.”
The US Congress is expecting Biden’s additional military aid request to come in around the $105 billion figure, with the lion’s share going to Ukraine and a smaller portion allocated for Israel, alongside more funding for weapons to Taiwan as well as boosting security at the southern border.
