A failure to recognize that Israel’s war must be to defeat not appease Hamas and other Iranian proxies.
By Jonathan Feldstein
It’s almost unimaginable to see recent Biden Administration moves going from bad to worse, so much so that these defer any prospect for any real peace, an end to the war against Hamas (and Iran and its proxies) or the return of our hostages.
Words have meaning but when they are mindlessly repeated followed by inaction, they end up hollow and simply embolden the terrorist. Defiantly repeating “DON’T” to Iran before launching an unprecedented massive arial attack on Israel without consequences, and then telling Israel to “take the win” and not respond forcefully has fundamentally undermined both the US and Israel’s deterrence value. Constantly reassuring his support for Israel as “ironclad” but then showing the world in general, its allies, and specifically the terrorists that it is anything but “ironclad”, only stiffens the resolve of the terrorists and makes them less likely to release hostages or to negotiate in any good faith.
Last week, President Biden went public with his threat to cut off weapons delivery to Israel, suggesting that Israel was using them illegally or irresponsibly, despite his own administration verifying that wasn’t the case.
The first problem with this is that he went public. Not even his mentor Obama did that when he cut off delivery of the precision Hellfire missile. Cutting off weapons is bad enough. Announcing to the terrorists that he’s doing so across international media simply empowers them.
Specifically, by doing so, Biden gave Hamas abundant reason to refuse any deal to release the hostages, including Americans, that it is holding in Gaza for over seven months. After this happened and with Hamas being jubilant, I created a meme:
Now, with no hostage deal even possible because of Biden emboldening Hamas after his own Secretery of State said that the deal before Hamas “was very generous,” Israel must complete its invasion of Rafah to find and release the hostages and crush the remains of Hamas’ 4 to 5 battalions.
By cutting off precision munitions, Biden is ensuring that more civilians will die, which was the premise that he used to cut off the weapons. Yes, read that again. Dead Gazans blood will be on Biden’s hands.
Biden’s action also emboldens Hezbollah in Lebanon, making an all-out war there more likely, not less so.
Jordan, Egypt and other “moderate” Arab allies are watching Biden’s blunder unfold with multiple negative consequences. Primarily, it signals that the US is an undependable ally that if it could turn its back on Israel with whom it perennially proclaims enjoys “shared values and strong friendship”, it can do so on them. This is likely to accelerate more extremism. Biden’s blundering also pushes off any possible Saudi normalization with Israel for the same reason. The Saudis don’t need to extend themselves if they don’t believe the US is going to be a reliable partner!
All this sends multiple dangerous messages to Iran and its terrorist proxies, basically that they can get away with their murderous terrorist objectives without consequence. They will feel they have a free pass to operate against Israel and soft Jewish targets globally without restraint.
And with the Administration pressurizing Israel not to pursue the ground operation in Rafah will only result in even more Israeli casualties as it will leave Hamas homicidally intact. If will require more conflicts and a wounded nation questioning why so many of its soldiers have died in vain.
Furthermore, look for Russia and China to swoop in to extend their negative influence in the region, and anywhere else they see US policies exposed as weak.
A few weeks ago, the US passed a bill providing an additional $17 billion for Israel to have the weapons needed to pursue prosecuting a war it neither began nor wanted. Now the US is trying to tie Israel’s hands from doing so. I was asked about this in an interview, and said that I was thankful as an Israeli as well as proud as an American, for the US making the right decision. But then on reflection, I commented that had Biden not controversially released $6 billion to Iran in the summer, and then another $10 billion to Iran in the winter ($16 billion), and had President Obama not earlier paid off the Iranians with billions more, perhaps there would have been no or far fewer deaths; no emboldening the Iranians, no funding for their proxies, and there would have been no need for an extra $17 billion in defense aid to Israel, and some $9 billion providing humanitarian relief to the people in Gaza.
Just think, what if the US had engaged in a full-scale embargo on Iran, cutting the Islamic regime off from any possible funds, bringing the already weak Iranian economy to its knees, and empowering Iranians to take back their country from the Ayatollahs. There could have been regime change in Iran without a US weapon being fired, a safer world, and no war now on multiple fronts.
Instead, the US through a blundering foreign policy has been complicit in funding Iranian-backed terrorism in the Middle East.
BLOOD ON U.S. HANDS
It gets worse. After Biden declaring that he is withholding weapons – ostensibly to avoid civilian deaths in Rafah – there have been reports of the Biden Administration offering Israel a deal:
Providing intelligence on the location of Hamas terror leaders in exchange for Israel not conducting an all-out assault.
It is unthinkable that if the US had such intelligence, it would not provide it not as a carrot on the end of a stick, but to help Israel defeat Hamas which the US has acknowledged is an important goal. Had the US ‘as an important friend and ally’ provided this vital intel days or weeks ago, Israel could have cut off the head of the Hamas snake already, saving lives on both sides. If these reports are true, there’s all the more blood in Gaza on the hands of the US administration.
And as the US tries to link Saudi recognition of Israel with a US-Saudi defense treaty, the Saudis surely are looking at all this and questioning the value of any such agreement with the Biden Administration beyond the paper it’s written on, and wondering where it more prudent to wait until after the US election on November 5.
The war against Hamas and other Iranian proxies must be to defeat and not to appease them and certainly not to leave them standing where they can threaten Israel from Gaza, Lebanon, Syria, Yemen, Iraq, and elsewhere. Biden would be well served to understand this, recognizing that the only way to defeat the Hamas wing of his Democratic Party to which he is shamefully pandering to is to truly defeat Hamas.
For Biden and the Democratic Party, ‘the issue’ is no less existential. While despite his damaging blundering, Biden still genuinely refers to himself as a Zionist and supporter of Israel but if he allows the Ilhan Omars, Rashida Tlaibs and other Hamas supporters in his own party to win, he may be the last Democratic president who publicly claims support for Israel.
Biden may have already lost Michigan and other battleground states. Short of declaring war on Israel, it could be a done deal. Many pundits believe that his appeasement of the Hamas wing of his own party will not only not work come November 5, but is immoral.
What Biden is doing now is extending the war, preventing the completion of the necessary objectives, and creating more casualties. Is there a conspiracy behind it or just plain stupidity?
What happens in Gaza doesn’t stay in Gaza. If only Biden understood that the negative consequences of his policies are horrifyingly far-reaching.
About the writer:
Jonathan Feldstein - President of the US based non-profit Genesis123 Foundation whose mission is to build bridges between Jews and Christians – is a freelance writer whose articles appear in The Jerusalem Post, Times of Israel, Townhall, NorthJersey.com, Algemeiner Jornal, The Jewish Press, major Christian websites and more.
While the mission of Lay of the Land (LotL) is to provide a wide and diverse perspective of affairs in Israel, the Middle East and the Jewish world, the opinions, beliefs and viewpoints expressed by its various writers are not necessarily ones of the owners and management of LOTL but of the writers themselves. LotL endeavours to the best of its ability to credit the use of all known photographs to the photographer and/or owner of such photographs (0&EO).
