Janus-Faced Biden Turns Away From Israel

Joe Biden’s ability to turn on a dime, from “ironclad” guarantees of Israel’s security one day, to announcing the very next day that he will be withholding weapons — bombs, artillery shells, and tank shells — from Israel if the IDF enters Rafah, where four battalions of Hamas fighters remain intact, has made a deep impression. Not a good one.

After Israel had opened the Kerem Shalom crossing so that more aid could be brought into Gaza, Hamas fired on IDF soldiers who were guarding the crossing in order to ensure that the humanitarian aid was not being stolen by Hamas. Four IDF soldiers were killed. In response, Israel then closed that crossing, but a few days later opened it again, to let the aid trucks into Gaza. More on Biden’s undermining of our closest ally can be found here: “Biden turns on Israel,” by Clifford D. May, Washington Times, May 14, 2024:

…Two days later, Hamas fired more missiles at Kerem Shalom — from a civilian shelter in Gaza. Hamas missiles were fired at the crossing again on May 8, 10, 11 and 12. Israeli military officials assured impatient reporters that the crossing would be reopened as quickly as possible.

If this does not strike you as grotesque, there is no point in reading the rest of this column.

On May 7, President Biden gave a moving speech at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum’s annual Days of Remembrance ceremony, recalling the Nazi genocide of the Jewish communities of Europe and vowing “never again.”

The next day, in an interview with CNN’s Erin Burnett, Mr. Biden lent encouragement to Hamas leaders, whose goal is to follow the Nazi example by exterminating the only surviving and thriving Jewish community remaining in the Middle East. The atrocities of Oct. 7, they’ve vowed, were merely a foretaste.

For months, Mr. Biden and other Democrats had slammed Republicans — quite rightly — for not passing a bill providing arms to Ukraine and Israel, democratic nations and friends of America under attack by enemies of America. Thanks to House Speaker Mike Johnson, the bill finally passed — with overwhelming bipartisan support.

But Mr. Biden told Ms. Burnett that he was holding up the delivery of munitions to Israel and would block further security assistance if Israel launched a major assault on Hamas in Rafah.

“We’re not walking away from Israel’s security,” Mr. Biden equivocated. “We’re walking away from Israel’s ability to wage war in those areas.”

Wars cannot be won on defense alone. Boxers don’t win fights just by blocking punches. “Deterrence by denial” not coupled with “deterrence by punishment” invites enemies to try, try again.

If Israelis must fight terrorists without American support, they will do so. They’ve done it before. Israel exists so that never again will Jews lack the means to stand up to those determined to slaughter their children….

The Israelis will fight if necessary — as Prime Minister Netanyahu said —“with our fingernails.” In 1948, Israel had very few weapons; it was under an arms embargo, and managed only to buy a few dozen rickety planes from Czechoslovakia, chiefly rebranded Messerschmitts that had fallen into desuetude, while American Zionists managed to smuggle rifles and some machine guns to the Haganah. Yet the Jews, including many who had managed, just, to survive the Nazi death camps, prevailed, repelling five Arab armies. Only the British-officered Arab Legion of Jordan held its own, and at the war’s end found itself in possession of Judea and Samaria, which Jordan renamed “the West Bank” in 1950, in order — like the Romans eighteen centuries before them, when they renamed “Judea” as “Palestine” — to efface the toponym that linked the land to the Jews.

But Israeli leaders can’t focus all their attention — or all their remaining ammunition — on Gaza. Hezbollah, a proxy of Iran like Hamas, continues to fire missiles from Lebanon. Some 80,000 Israelis have been forced from their homes in the north for more than seven months.

Hezbollah has been launching rockets and drones, and letting loose with artillery barrages, too, at Israeli towns and cities in the north almost daily. 80,000 Israelis who fled those places in October have been unable to return; another 20,000 Israelis have been unable to return to their homes on the border with Gaza in the south, because of Hamas rockets. Hezbollah is known to possess 150,000 rockets and missiles, a colossal armory that the terror group will be ready to fire at Israel whenever Iran gives the signal.

And last month, for the first time, Iran’s rulers launched hundreds of drones and missiles at Israel from Iranian soil. This time, those rockets were prevented from reaching their intended targets. But there will be a next time. The [Iranian] regime’s nuclear weapons program has progressed significantly since Mr. Biden moved into the White House and eased economic sanctions on Tehran….

Biden to Israel: “Not to worry. We’ve got your back. Our commitment to your security is “ironclad.” “Iran will never get a nuclear weapon — not on my watch.” I doubt that those promises, so quickly made, so quickly undone, put Israelis at their ease. For he then followed that with this: “But really, how can you expect us to allow you to invade Rafah, just because there are four intact battalions of Hamas fighters there? Find another way, Bibi, ol’ buddy, to defeat Hamas. Maybe it’s time to just call it quits. You’ve done a lot of damage already —isn’t that enough?” “The optics, you know, on the evening news…aren’t good.”

Israel knows that Yahya Sinwar has to be killed. He cannot be allowed to remain alive, a symbol of what would be depicted as Hamas’ heroic resistance (a resistance that depends on hiding men and weapons in the middle of human shields) against the supposedly mighty IDF. What if it takes a 2000-pound bomb to hit Sinwar hiding inside a deep tunnel — the very bomb that Biden is now withholding from Israel? Has Biden no shame at his betrayal of America’s most loyal ally? It is outrageous that the Bidenites now say that if Israel does their bidding in Rafah, they will provide it with intelligence information about the precise locations of the three senior Hamas leaders in Gaza, Yahya Sinwar, his brother Mohammed, and Muhammed Deif. This is information that should never have been withheld; it ought to have been immediately shared with Israel, just as Israel never fails to share information on Muslim terrorists with Washington.

What I can imagine is this: Israel will call its operation in Rafah “more modest than what we did in the north” with “much greater use of high-precision munitions” and “fewer airstrikes.” And the Bidenites will have to accept this, not just because it will be true, but because they have to walk back their withholding of bombs and other critical munitions, now that they have seen how much opposition that move has elicited, from virtually all Republicans, and more than half of the Democrats. The Squadroons turn out to be not quite as numerous as they would like us to believe. And of course, there are those 94 retired generals and admirals, an impressive number, who have just come out foursquare for treating our ally Israel like an ally. It’s a good idea. Release those weapons to the IDF, please, Mr. Biden. Let Israel defend itself.