Obama Adviser on Emergency Aid to Israel
(2014)
Tony Blinken, deputy national security advisor under President Barack Obama recalled an exchange that took place during the 2014 war (Operation Protective Edge) between Israel and Hamas:
“I got a call late one night from the Israeli Ambassador Ron Dermer, and he said, ‘Can I come over tonight? It's something urgent.’ And I said, of course, come on over. This is about 9 o'clock at night at the White House. And he and the military attache from the embassy laid out to me in detail why Israel urgently needed a replenishment of Iron Dome interceptors that were saving lives from missile attacks.”
“The next day, I went to the Oval Office. I sat with President Obama and Vice President Biden [and] I laid out what I'd heard from the ambassador and the military attaché, and I got three words from both of them in response: ‘Get it done.’ That was Friday morning. Tuesday, we had a quarter of a billion dollars from Congress to replenish Israel’s Iron Dome supply.”
Source: Melissa Weiss, “Former deputy national security advisors debate Obama admin support for Israel,” JewishInsider, (June 18, 2020).
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