Post Editorial Board
Israel as the IDF moves to eliminate Hamas, the Biden administration is sticking to its pre-Oct. 7 approach to the Middle East — and so effectively working toward Israel’s defeat.
For starters, the Biden team still refuses to admit that Iran is pulling the strings of what Tehran calls the “Axis of Resistance”: Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad in Gaza and the West Bank, Hezbollah in Lebanon and other Iranian proxies across the region.
This, when both The Wall Street Journal and New York Times have reported what US intelligence must also know: Top Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps officers helped plan the Oct. 7 attacks and coordinate followup strategies for the entire “Axis.”
That is: Most of the civilian government in Tehran may have been out of the loop — but that’s not who rules the country.
The IRGC reports directly to Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, who without question gave the green light.
The Bidenites’ willful denial isn’t just a public-relations move: They’re still plainly worried about “provoking” Iran, imagining they can somehow get past this current crisis so they can get back to appeasing the mullahs.
National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan even admits that they’re not breaking with the approach that he’d bragged (just days before Hamas’ attacks) had “de-escalated crises in Gaza” and made the region “quieter than it has been for decades.”
Witness the beyond-minimal US response after Iran’s proxies have attacked US bases at least 20 times since Oct. 7: We’ve answered only with pinprick bombing designed to damage IRGC property and not take lives.
The president can issue all the “Don’t” threats he likes; Tehran and its “axis” will look at his actions and see that he’s ruled by fear.
Even sending in the Ford aircraft-carrier-battle-group off Lebanon’s coast looks like a bluff: Asked on his flight home from Israel if he’d promised US forces would intervene if Hezbollah goes all-in, Biden answered: “Not true. I’ve never said it.”
The prez also keeps saying how he’s urged Israel to “respect the laws of war”; Sullivan on Sunday again stressed the IDF’s “responsibility to distinguish between terrorists and innocent civilians and to protect the lives of innocent civilians as they conduct this military operation.”
Israel has never done otherwise — it’s even now warning Gazans to evacuate a hospital that Hamas as built a huge base beneath, in brazen defiance of the laws of war, because those same laws say the IDF has every right to destroy that base, with Hamas responsible for all civilian casualties.
So all the Biden-Sullivan rhetoric amounts to a warning to Israel that they’ll hold it responsible for the results of Hamas’ war crimes: Washington will jump ship in the face of major Palestinian civilian deaths — i.e., anything on the scale that US allies inflicted in taking out ISIS.
Not to mention Biden’s calls for Israel to put off any full-on Gaza invasion until many more hostages are released, and his warnings that occupying Gaza would be a “big mistake.”
The president pretends he’s only offering Israel advice, but the implicit threat is blatant.
In reality, he’s giving our ally, amid its worst crisis in decades, an offer it can’t refuse.
Maybe Biden is only focused on what the progressive fringe believes: The top House prog, Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.) claims, “The American people are actually quite far away from where the president . . . has been on Israel and Gaza” — because he’s supporting Israel too much.
That’s utter nonsense: The pro-Hamas marchers are a tiny minority; the vast majority of Americans overwhelming support Israel in its time of need.
Even the liberals and moderates who worry about the consequences of an all-out IDF drive through Gaa understand that Israel must destroy Hamas after what it’s done, lest it do it again.
But Biden is tying Israel’s arms behind its back, increasing the odds that Hamas will get away with its atrocities.
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