No American should need to be reminded that our government has designated Hamas a terrorist organization. But apparently, one very important American does need to be reminded.
That would be Joe Biden.
The news that the president apologized for casting doubt on Hamas’ casualty reports in Gaza is stunning. All the more so because Biden made his apology in secret.
He backed down in a meeting with five Muslim Americans, a fact that suggests Hamas has garnered sympathy if not outright support among some Americans and immigrants from Muslim lands.
That’s troubling in its own right, but Biden’s apology signals he’s willing to pander to them privately while publicly supporting Israel.
Truth emerges slowly
The incident began on Oct. 25 when the president, in a rare news conference, addressed the issue of civilian casualties from Israel’s attacks. This was about a week after Hamas and its servile Gaza Health Ministry insisted Israel had bombed a hospital and killed 500 Palestinians.
It was a big story, thanks to sensationalizing play by The New York Times and other media outlets primed to condemn Israel.
The truth, as usual, emerged slowly and showed the hospital was not bombed and that an explosion in an adjacent parking lot was almost certainly caused by a Hamas rocket aimed at Israel that blew up prematurely and crashed.
The dramatic 500-dead angle should have set off alarms that Hamas was using its old playbook of inflating civilian death claims to drum up sympathy for itself and provoke international outrage at Israel, leading, the terrorists hoped, to a quick cease-fire that would protect them. To this day, it remains uncertain if there were any fatalities at the hospital that night.
It was against that backdrop that Biden scoffed at Hamas casualty figures, declaring “I have no notion that the Palestinians are telling the truth about how many people are killed.”
He was right, and at the time I thought that was a bold thing for the president to do and showed he understood the war was not a battle between moral equals.
Hamas had savagely broken the cease-fire on Oct. 7 with its slaughter of 1,200 Israelis and carried away nearly 250 hostages, and Biden’s comment was part of his then-ardent defense of the Jewish nation’s right to respond.
Yet it turns out that 24 hours later, Biden flip-flopped in a meeting with the Muslim American activists who got an hour to say they were furious at him for casting doubt on the numbers.
He told them, “I’m sorry. I’m disappointed in myself. I will do better,” according to The Washington Post, which first reported on the meeting.
The paper said one visitor told the president, “Palestinians are dying. We’re not OK with the numbers of their dead being disputed.”
Benefiting terrorists
But accepting the numbers benefits Hamas, which has a long track record of lying. That’s what Biden should have said instead of apologizing.
Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison, a Democrat who was the first Muslim elected to Congress, was one of those invited to air grievances.
Subsequent reports say Biden met with other Muslims in recent weeks, though there is no word on whether he repeated his apology or made other statements at odds with what he says publicly.
What is certain is the president fears his support of Israel could cost him votes, especially in states that have large numbers of Arab-American and Muslim voters.
Nationally, there are an estimated 1.1 million registered voters who identify as Muslim, and two-thirds are Democrats, according to advocates.
They argue that Muslims could be the deciding factor in battleground states where recent contests were decided by margins smaller than the number of Muslim voters.
The implication seems to be that Biden’s support of Israel could turn all Muslim voters against him.
The developments underscore my warning that the president’s early support for Israel was at risk of being undercut by his political desperation.
Polls show young voters mostly disapprove of Biden’s job performance. The fact that many young Americans, especially on elite college campuses, are participating in protests against Israel surely heightened the campaign’s fears.
Although antisemitism is an obvious and odious factor in the protest movement, Biden’s team can’t afford to lose many voters under the age of 30, one of the party’s core constituencies.
It’s likely the White House’s current push for a longer and perhaps permanent Gaza cease-fire grows out of election fears.
Of course, minimizing civilian casualties and getting the Israeli hostages back are important, but stopping the war before Hamas is eliminated would leave the terrorists in power.
Boost for Iran
That would maintain Iran’s outpost, and along with Hezbollah in the north, leave Israel facing danger on two borders. None of that is in America’s interest.
And having Hamas retain control of Gaza would stunt postwar plans for rebuilding the strip and creating an international governing authority, which are part of Biden’s fantasy plan of a two-state solution.
His political worries are especially focused on the upper Midwest, where so many Muslim Americans live and vote.
Minnesota first elected Ellison in 2006 and he was a rising star in the party despite his support for the Nation of Islam and Louis Farrakhan, a notorious antisemite.
When Ellison left Congress after winning the state AG race, his seat was won by Ilhan Omar, a refugee from Somalia who makes little effort to hide her hatred of America and Israel.
Michigan, of course, is home to Rep. Rashida Tlaib, a Palestinian-American who has stuck with the lie that Israel bombed the hospital. She also falsely insists the chant of “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free” isn’t a plan to eliminate Israel and Jews.
She recently tweeted that “Joe Biden supported the genocide of the Palestinian people,” and her incendiary lies finally earned her a House censure, with 22 Dems voting with Republicans.
The fact that so many other Dems were afraid to denounce an antisemite in their midst is a cousin of the pandering that led Biden to apologize for insulting Hamas. Up and down the party, too many elected officials are calibrating their statements about the war to avoid alienating anti-Israel voters.
They’re cowards who are practicing a form of appeasement that will only encourage the beast. And it’s not just Israel that’s endangered.
As its prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, recently warned Americans on Fox News, “If we don’t win now, then Europe is next and you’re next.”
Far-left U. history
Reader David Bryant says leftist indoctrination in college goes way back, writing: “In 1967, I enrolled at Rutgers and the Marxist faculty was devout in framing Western Civilization as racist and problematic to peace and social justice. Their war against the West and America was firmly in place and Israel was loathed as a Western outpost in an Arab utopia.”
Counterpoint: as Bill Maher pointed out a few election cycles ago when people were worried that the Democrats weren't suffiently leftists enough for some groups: Where are you going to go?
ReplyDeleteMuslims won't vote for Biden? Who will they vote for? Not Trump. There's no credible third candidate at this time. Either they stay home or they hold their noses and vote for Biden to block a Trump win. What do you think they'll choose?
Biden could've stood up to these menuvalim but chose the easy way out. The more likely effect is that hopefully some liberal Jews will reboot their brains and switch to Trump.