The Biden Administration is Starting to Turn the Screws on Israel

Although Biden keeps assuring the Israelis that he remains four-square behind them, his words at a private fundraiser he attended on September 12 — words that he clearly wanted to be made public — about Israel having to stop its “indiscriminate bombing” of Gaza, were infuriating. Nothing has changed in Israel’s modus operandi, where soldiers on the ground call in precision airstrikes on places where it knows Hamas has rocket launchers, vast quantities of weapons, command-and-control centers, and hideouts for combatants. Israel does everything, along with this precision bombing (no carpet bombing, no firebombing of cities as the Americans did during World War II in Tokyo and Dresden), to minimize civilian casualties. Far from being “indiscriminate” in its bombing, the IDF uses messaging, telephoning, leafletting, and the “knock-on-the-roof” technique, to warn civilians away from sites that are about to be targeted, even though it knows such warnings will also alert Hamas fighters to get out of the target area.

And Israel even warned more than 1.2 million people living in northern Gaza to leave that area, and head south, beyond the Wadi Gaza, by dropping 1.5 million leaflets; one million heeded the warning, and left for the south. Some were prevented from leaving by Hamas itself, that murdered people trying to escape on the north-south corridor of Salah al-Din Street; Hamas wanted as many civilians as possible to remain, to be used as human shields. And the more of those civilians who were killed in Israeli airstrikes, Hamas reasoned, the better that would be for its propaganda war against the hated Jews. The IDF does not now, and for that matter never has, engaged in the “indiscriminate bombing” that Biden so unfairly charges it with.

Now we learn that the Bidenites are withholding delivery of 20,000 rifles that the IDF needs. Why? Because it wants to punish Israel for the behavior of a handful of “settlers” in Judea and Samaria (the “West Bank”). Out of the half-million Israelis who have settled in Judea and Samaria, at most a few hundred have gone on rampages against Palestinians. They do so, enraged at Palestinians who have committed acts of violence against them that the settlers believe the police do little to prevent or punish. These settlers commit crimes of property — vandalizing cars, letting their livestock onto Palestinian farmland, uprooting olive trees, but almost never violent crimes. But even if all of those settlers — “settler” has itself become a pejorative term — were as terrible as some have painted them, depriving Israel, the Bidenites’ decision, in the middle of a war, to refuse to deliver 20,000 M-16 rifles that had been promised to the IDF, is certainly an exaggerated, callous, and worrisome response.:

As Robert Spencer noted here, a day after his boss scolded Israel for its “indiscriminate” bombing, National Security Council spokesperson John Kirby took quite a different tone here: “Biden aide: Israel taking steps to protect civilians that even US might not have done,” by Jacob Magid, Times of Israel, December 14, 2023:

White House National Security Council spokesperson John Kirby suggests that some of the steps the IDF has taken to prevent civilian casualties in Gaza might go further than what the US would have done if it were in Israel’s place.

Kirby highlights the map the IDF published alerting civilians as to which neighborhoods it is planning to attack, so that they can evacuate ahead of time.

“That’s basically telegraphing your punches. There are very few modern militaries in the world that would do that. I don’t know that we would do that,” Kirby says during a press briefing.

The White House spokesperson is one of several officials in US President Joe Biden’s administration who appear to be trying to walk back or soften the message voiced by the president yesterday, when he characterized Israel’s bombing campaign against Hamas in Gaza as “indiscriminate.”…

Kirby has indeed walked back Biden’s remark about Israel needing to be careful about “indiscriminate bombing.” Now he has told the world that Israel deserves not blame but praise, for it has gone beyond what the US military does to protect civilians from harm. He talked about the map Israel has produced alerting civilians to the precise neighborhoods in the south that the IDF was planning to attack: “That’s basically telegraphing your punches. There are very few modern militaries in the world that would do that. I don’t know that we would do that.” That’s high and well-deserved praise, for the IDF.