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With so much shouting and partisan rancor during Joe Biden’s State of the Union rant, it was easy to miss the most important news.
That would be the president’s plan to have the American military build a floating dock off the coast of Gaza.
In the middle of a war.
No boots on the ground, he insists, but that could be an impossible promise to keep if only because of construction logistics.
And what if Hamas attacks our troops, or an errant rocket from Israel or the terrorists hits Americans?
The risks are necessary, Biden suggests, because of the humanitarian crisis.
“Nearly 2 million more Palestinians under bombardment or displaced, homes destroyed, neighborhoods in rubble, cities in ruin, families without food, water, medicine. It’s heartbreaking,” he said Thursday.
He added that the dock in the Mediterranean would unload large ships filled with food, water, medicine and shelters.
And then what?
Who provides security and how do the goods get distributed to the truly needy, as opposed to Hamas gunmen, up and down the Gaza Strip (inset)?
Who pays?
Those are just the obvious questions, but nobody seems to know more than the outline Biden cited.
In truth, the facility he described likely couldn’t be built for at least several months, which seems an awfully long time when the United Nations and the Hamas-controlled Gaza Health Ministry claim on a near-daily basis that civilians face imminent famine and starvation.
Then again, suffering Gazans are not actually Biden’s first concern.
That distinction belongs to his re-election campaign and merely by promising action he served his leftist critics an appetizer.
The port idea marks Biden’s latest effort to calm Democrats upset about his aid to Israel.
Many of them are Jew-hating college students and Muslim Americans in swing states, especially Michigan, and the president is trying to win them back with a two-step approach: massive aid to Gaza’s civilians and frequent beat-downs of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
‘Obstruction’
As the Guardian put it, “The White House made clear that the decision to open a sea route for aid into Gaza had come with frustration of what is seen in Washington as Israeli obstruction of road deliveries on a substantial scale.”
Right, Israel is guilty of “obstruction” because it will not risk its soldiers’ lives to feed and protect Palestinian civilians, insisting instead on eliminating the Hamas terrorists who savagely attacked Jewish civilians on Oct. 7.
What’s next — is a desperate White House going to join the ignorant “genocide” chorus against Israel?
Never mind that Hamas uses Gaza’s civilians as human shields to get America and Europe to put pressure on Israel.
The more civilian suffering, the greater the pressure and the better the odds the terrorists will get to live to kill another day.
Biden surely knows all that but his fear of defeat in November is bending him like a twig in a storm.
He’s gone so far off track that he’s turning Israel into a punching bag while treating Hamas like the victim.
It’s a pattern I’ve noted before but the president keeps adding to the distance between America and our top Mideast ally.
And he’s doing it by siding with those who demand that Israel abandon the war and immediately accept a Palestinian state teeming with jihadists.
Biden hasn’t crossed all those lines yet, and is still providing Israel with critical military help.
But his constant criticism undercuts Israel’s standing and gives its global haters cover for their pro-Hamas sympathies.
The president’s Thursday quip about demanding a “come to Jesus” meeting with Netanyahu captures his arrogance.
The back-stabbing speech and complaints about Israeli “obstruction” marked the second time in days that Biden sabotaged Israel’s elected leader.
Earlier, the White House took the highly unusual step of inviting to Washington Benny Gantz, a political rival of Netanyahu’s who only joined the government coalition after Oct. 7.
The move was a blatant attempt to meddle in Israeli politics by showing Biden favors Gantz.
According to Israeli media, Netanyahu didn’t know about the invitation until Gantz told him and furiously demanded that Gantz not go, saying Israel has “only one prime minister at a time.”
Friends like foes
But Gantz went, had a series of meetings with administration officials, including a pointless meeting with Vice President Kamala Harris (aren’t all meetings with her pointless?).
The American description of the meeting used the obligatory line about Israel’s “right to defend itself,” but the emphasis was on humanitarian aid and the push for an end to hostilities in conjunction with a hostage deal.
Gantz heard the same pitch on the next stop of his anti-Netanyahu tour, in London, where he met with British Foreign Secretary David Cameron, who went a nasty step further than Washington.
Cameron suggested the UK might join with others at the UN and accuse the Jewish state of violating international humanitarian laws.
And these are Israel’s friends?
Even though most Western governments are demanding both a permanent cease-fire and a hostage swap, Israel is determined to finish the destruction of terrorist networks and will agree only to a temporary truce in exchange for hostages.
Hamas, meanwhile, won’t settle for a temporary truce that involves the release of all hostages because they are its only defense.
The terrorists know that once the hostages are freed, Israel will launch a full ground invasion of Rafah, the last major Hamas holdout.
Iran’s role
The stalemate obscures how the US and Europe are ignoring Iran’s malignant role.
Its financing and training of Hamas, Hezbollah and the Houthis remain unaddressed as if the mullahs’ quest to eliminate Israel and dominate the region are separate from what’s happening in Gaza.
And don’t forget the chaos in northern Israel, where tens of thousands have been evacuated because of Hezbollah rockets.
Although Iran’s aggression is the key to everything, including Oct. 7, Biden and other leaders seem to believe they can sweet-talk it into adopting a policy of peaceful coexistence.
The same wishful thinking is leading them to pressure Israel into prematurely ending its Gaza mission and accepting a Palestinian state.
Those are dangerous fantasies that would merely set the table for the next war.
And sooner or later, a war that starts in the Mideast won’t stay there.
GOP losing the political game
My point that congressional Republicans are consistently outplayed by united, ruthless Democrats spurred creative comparisons.
John Jaffe put it this way: “Have thought for quite a while now that the Dems are playing chess, while the GOP is still playing checkers!”
Matthew Esposito believes, “Republicans are the Washington Generals to the Dems’ Harlem Globetrotters, and the fix is always in.”
by Michael Goodwin NYP
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