Over the many years they have been in the public eye, Joe Biden and Benjamin Netanyahu were never friends and rarely allies. Their fundamental political differences were compounded by years of long-distance disagreement.
Then suddenly, terrorism brought them together in something of a shotgun wedding. Biden visited Israel just 11 days after the Oct. 7 Hamas attack where he and Netanyahu embraced in an awkward, aborted hug.
In hindsight, that appears to have been the high point of their new relationship. It’s been downhill ever since and the gap between them is growing at an alarming pace. Headlines from recent days illustrate the tensions:
“Biden Warns Israel It Is ‘Losing Support’ Over War”
“In Dueling Remarks, Biden and Netanyahu Spar Over Gaza’s Future”
“Rifts Between Biden and Netanyahu Spill into Public View”
It is tempting to claim that a feud between the president and the prime minister was inevitable given their long history of contrasting parties and philosophies. But that explanation doesn’t do justice to the reasons driving the sudden change of tone.
The basic cause is the American political calendar and Biden’s scandalous bid to curry favor with American voters who oppose Israel, even after the Hamas slaughter.
With allies like this . . .
The president’s initial support for the Jewish state was firm, but it put him in a bind with major elements of the Democratic Party. And with his re-election campaign already sputtering just as the primary season is about to begin, something had to give.
His decision to undercut Israel during an existential war in hopes of winning back young voters and Muslim Americans is politics at its cheapest. It makes Biden look craven, as if he has neither courage nor conviction.
It’s hard to see how any American voter can be persuaded to pull the lever by such displays of fecklessness under pressure.
That’s not to suggest Biden has totally abandoned Israel. The two carrier groups he dispatched are still in the region and he’s still sending military supplies. Indeed, the president went around Congress for the latest shipment when lawmakers moved too slowly.
But there’s no denying he’s been giving Israel help with one hand and slapping it with the other. Hardly a day passes without Biden or someone on his team scolding Netanyahu or the IDF.
The running demand that the Jewish state be more careful to assist and protect Gazan civilians has taken on the persistently peevish tone of a big-brother lecture. Already there are questions in Israel about whether the rising death toll of its soldiers is owing in part to the use of tactics chosen to satisfy Washington’s warning that the clock is ticking on the mission and that a more targeted phase was needed.
Biden’s criticism reached a new low last week when, in remarks to donors, most of them reportedly Jewish, he actually accused Israel of “indiscriminate” bombing.
Aides tried to water down the meaning, but the word amounted to a scurrilous accusation. That it was made to donors only underscored the political nature of the president’s two-faced approach.
There’s a special place in hell for American presidents who try to put distance between themselves and Israel just to satisfy critics, some of whom are antisemites.
Inconvenient facts
Oct. 7 has been described as Israel’s 9/11, and the beleaguered nation needs America’s wholehearted support, lest its enemies, who are legion, take heart from a wavering White House and decide they will pay no price for joining the wolf pack.
If the Biden bunch wants to look tough and needs someone to pick on, how about the Red Cross for failing to visit the Israeli hostages and notify family members of their conditions?
Or why not the United Nations, for the ways its Gaza operation has for decades helped foment Arab hostility toward Israel through the martyr-indoctrination programs in its schools?
Or how about all those supposedly innocent Palestinians who showed their true colors in a recent poll? It found the civilian populations in both Gaza and the West Bank overwhelmingly support Hamas.
Those are inconvenient facts for the blame-Israel crowd, but should be reasons enough for Biden and his wannabe wise men, Secretary of State Tony Blinken and Jake Sullivan, the inept national security adviser, to stop micromanaging Israel’s military and second-guessing its decisions and tactics.
Recall it was the unqualified Sullivan who boasted the Middle East “is quieter than it has been in decades” just days before the Hamas attack. Now he’s an expert on how to rout Hamas from its tunnels and who should govern Gaza after the war.
His pledge to “revamp and revitalize” the corrupt, inept Palestinian Authority is the kind of Big Idea grad students come up with in all-night bull sessions over pizza and beer.
Yet there’s also another distressing dimension to Biden’s public criticism of Israel. It puts the commander in chief at odds with America’s own security.
Perhaps he has forgotten that Iran, which controls and funds Hamas, calls Israel the Little Satan and the US the Great Satan, and pledges to destroy both.
Nor is it happenstance that other Iran-funded terror groups have launched 100 missile and rocket attacks on US bases in Syria and Iraq, injuring scores of our servicemen. Or that Hezbollah continues to rain fire on northern Israel, forcing the evacuation of tens of thousands of people.
Similarly, the Houthis, an Iran proxy in Yemen, have fired scores of missiles at Israel and cargo ships in the Red Sea, some near American military vessels.
The mullahs’ message with this multifront assault is clear: Back off, or you’re next.
Biden’s Iran fantasy
Biden’s response has been less than minimal, with our military carrying out a handful of strikes against fuel storage tanks and taking out some of the Houthis’ drones and missiles. Whatever warning the president thinks his restraint is sending, it’s not working.
The heart of the problem, of course, is that Biden came into office sleepwalking in lockstep with the Obama-Biden administration’s bid to lure Iran back into the world order. The effort failed as predicted, yet not before Iran benefitted from having billions of its dollars unfrozen and realized a second bonanza through its oil sales.
Yet even now, despite the fact that much of that money went to Hamas and Hezbollah, the Houthis and scores of other malignant forces, Biden apparently remains convinced the mullahs will one day sit down with Israel and the US around a campfire and sing “Kumbaya.”
Fat chance.
But if that dream ever does come true, it will only be because America, Israel and Europe stood united against the terrorists and their evil sponsors.
In that case, there’s no time like the present to build that coalition and make it clear to Iran. The first step is for the White House to let Israel wage its justifiable war without amateur meddling.
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