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PITTSBURGH — Two Democrats from battleground-state Pennsylvania said Wednesday that the US should let Israel make its own military decisions, a sign that President Joe Biden’s party is giving his administration space as fighting escalates in the Middle East.
Sen. Bob Casey and Rep. Chris Deluzio said in interviews that they support Israel’s ability to respond to Hezbollah in Lebanon as well as to Iran and Hamas in Gaza. Both Casey and Deluzio urged restraint as needed amid worries about growing unrest in the region, but they made clear they want to see continued US support for Israel’s military.
“They’ve got to be able to make their own national security determinations. We give them a lot of military support, and I’ll continue to support that,” Casey said. “They have to have a response to the Iranians to show the Iranians and other extremist groups in the region and in regimes like Iran that they’re going to push back hard.”
Deluzio said that it’s just not “realistic to ask the Israelis to take no action in the face of a now multifront war and the Iranians themselves lobbing missiles at them.”
Both Casey and Deluzio, a member of the Progressive Caucus, are locked in tough reelection races in a state where Jewish voters are a critical swing bloc this fall. Their remarks less than a month out from the election are a strong signal that the progressive pushback the Biden administration faced after Israel’s initial offensive in Gaza may not flare as much this fall.
The State Department said this week that it supports Israel stepping up its attack on Hezbollah.
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Israel continued striking Hezbollah in Lebanon on Wednesday after its killing of Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah, which Casey praised.
“We can be a force for good to deter Iranian aggression” by supporting Israel at the moment, Deluzio said. “Those aren’t small tasks or easy ones.”
Casey also said Wednesday he was ”outraged” about a public statement cosigned by Rep. Summer Lee, D-Pa., that did not pin blame for last year’s Oct. 7 attack directly on Hamas.
“It was just wrong for any government official to … to talk about that, the reality of that conflict and to not be very clear and even repetitively so, that Hamas was the instigator of it, was the one who brought that harm to the Israeli people, and has continued to remain a threat to Israel,” Casey said.
He said it was “especially insensitive” of Lee and her cosigners to put that statement out on the first anniversary of the attack.
Lee spokespeople did not immediately return a request for comment.
Casey’s opponent, Dave McCormick, is courting Jewish voters in the state and has attacked Casey for some of his votes and stances. McCormick has criticized Casey for not coming out more forcefully against Lee and not dropping his endorsement of her.