WASHINGTON — Fresh off a visit to Israel following the Hamas terror attack that killed more than 1,300 Israelis, President Joe Biden is set to pitch a $100 billion plan Thursday night to help both that country and Ukraine defend themselves as well as to provide humanitarian relief for the 2 million residents of Gaza.
“We are at a global inflection point that is bigger than party or politics,” Biden said Thursday afternoon in a social media post ahead of the speech.
The White House also released a summary of a phone call Biden had with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy earlier in the day. “The leaders discussed Ukraine’s ongoing fight to defend its freedom and independence from Russian aggression,” the statement read.
While Biden has, many times over the past year and a half, explained his rationale for supporting Ukraine in its efforts to fight Russia’s invasion, this is the first time he is doing so in a prime-time Oval Office address.
His first Oval Office speech, which came this June, followed an agreement with House Republicans that averted an unprecedented default on the nation’s debt, which likely would have triggered a global economic catastrophe.
Biden is expected to lay out his case for why it is important for the United States to continue its leadership role in organizing the multinational alliance on behalf of Ukraine, which he himself assembled in the wake of the February 2022 Russian invasion. He further plans to reiterate his support of Israel after Hamas militants assaulted towns bordering the Gaza Strip on Oct. 7, murdering, raping and kidnapping Israeli residents.
But he also intends to speak of the importance of not punishing all Palestinians in Gaza and the occupied West Bank for the actions of Hamas and other terror groups and of providing Palestinians with humanitarian aid. Israel has been pummeling Gaza with airstrikes for the past week and a half and is expected to launch a ground offensive there in the coming days.
Biden’s aid package will likely find strong bipartisan support in the Senate, where leading Republicans have, like Biden, said that helping Ukraine repel Russian dictator Vladimir Putin’s invasion was a cost-effective way of weakening Russia and keeping Europe safe.
However, prospects in the House are less certain. Even before the recent leadership turmoil in that chamber, former Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) was having trouble getting enough Republicans to support more assistance for Ukraine. Many in his caucus, followers of coup-attempting former President Donald Trump, argued that the United States had no interest in that conflict.
Trump himself, long an admirer of Putin, called him a “genius” for having invaded Ukraine in the days immediately following the initial assault.
Biden returned from his 30-hour journey to Tel Aviv just after midnight on Thursday. While in Israel, he met with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, other government officials, and survivors of the Hamas attack. He promised Israel, again, that the United States would support it as it fought to defeat Hamas, even as he cautioned against letting the current “rage” lead Israelis into making mistakes the way Americans’ rage after Sept. 11, 2001, led to mistakes in the U.S. response. He also said that everyone in Israel and the occupied territories, whether Jewish or Palestinian, deserved security and dignity.
Eight months earlier, Biden had traveled to Ukraine to meet with Zelenskyy. That trip involved flying to Poland and then finishing the journey to Kyiv with a 10-hour train ride.
The two visits to active war zones are unprecedented in American history. Previous presidents had traveled to conflict zones, but only to places secured by the U.S. military.