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).
