by Michael Goodwin NYP
As fate would have it, the 79th anniversary of the formal Japanese surrender in World War II came on the same day that Joe Biden all but encouraged Hamas to keep fighting and holding hostages in Gaza.
The contrast suggests that had Biden been president back then instead of Harry Truman, America would have lost the Second World War.
Truman boldly led the free world to total victory, while Biden is an appeaser from head to toe.
He is a modern incarnation of Neville Chamberlain, the British prime minister so desperate for peace that he convinced himself Adolf Hitler wanted the same thing.
Although Biden fancies himself a student of history, he has failed to learn its most important lesson about dealing with tyrants and terrorists.
The signature moment of his terrible tenure, the catastrophic withdrawal from Afghanistan, helped spark wars in Europe and the Mideast and heightened tensions in Asia.
Our adversaries see him as a soft touch, and who can say they are wrong?
Biden’s not even smart enough to hide his delusions, as he showed Monday with his answer to a question about Israel and Hamas.
The terrorist savages had just executed six civilian hostages, one of them an American citizen, Hersh Goldberg-Polin, and Biden was asked if he thought Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was doing enough to gain a cease-fire.
Given the circumstances, the question was preposterous, but the answer far worse.
“No,” Biden said.
Never has one word signified so much ignorance and betrayal.
Israel is a key ally, its existence a moral imperative. It is being threatened in a three-front war with its survival at stake and kidnapped hostages are being brutalized, yet Biden publicly undercuts its democratically elected leader.
There was no denunciation of Arab terrorists taking hostages, terrorizing them for nearly a year, then executing them to prove there would be no deal unless Hamas got everything it wanted.
Nor did Biden mention that Israel has agreed to earlier cease-fire proposals that Hamas rejected, a fact that American officials concede.
Only through a printed statement did the White House even acknowledge that an American citizen had been slain.
Given an opportunity on camera to make a forceful denunciation and promise consequences, Biden’s one-word, one-sided answer puts more demands on Israel.
Nothing was asked of Hamas, which got a green light to keep holding out for more Israeli concessions. Not incidentally, of the remaining 60 hostages thought to be alive, at least four are American citizens — yet Biden says nothing about them.
Open Jew hatred
Nor mentioned was Iran, which could end the war in a heartbeat by announcing it would no longer finance and support Hamas.
The mullahs are thus encouraged to continue their campaign against what they call the “Little Satan,” while still harboring hopes that one day they will rout the “Big Satan,” meaning us.
This is madness, but is unfortunately consistent with Biden’s tenure.
He has run hot and cold on supporting Israel ever since the Oct. 7 slaughter, becoming more critical of the Jewish state as time wore on in a clear appeal to the antisemitic wing of the Democratic Party in an election year.
Recall that he sent Secretary of State Tony Blinken to sit in on Israeli war Cabinet meetings where Blinken dictated targets and strategy Biden would support.
Blinken will never be confused with a battle-tested general, yet there he was, toying with Israel’s survival by imposing Biden’s foolish conditions on continued support.
Recall, too, how the White House was quick to accept Hamas’ death statistics, and how it wasted hundreds of millions of dollars on a food aid pier that the ocean quickly washed away.
All of this was of a piece aimed at pacifying the young campus radicals who were expressing their ignorance by wearing keffiyehs and chanting “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free.”
Never mind that most failed to understand they were calling for the elimination of Israel.
It can be no surprise, then, that some of the same groups have resumed their open expressions of Jew hatred to start a new academic year.
Netanyahu boycott
Biden never forcefully denounced antisemitism or the college administrators who coddled those guilty of threatening and harassing Jewish students.
We only know of how feckless the leaders of Harvard, Penn and Columbia were because Republicans in Congress unmasked their indifference to the outrages.
It is no consolation that Biden is on his way out the door.
Nor does it matter that the whole world knows he was pushed aside by his own party because it could no longer hide the fact that he is unfit for the world’s most important job.
All that really matters is that he is still president of the United States and that his words and actions still define American policy, even when he gives aid and comfort to terrorists.
Worse, Vice President Kamala Harris took his place on the ticket and promptly ramped up the pressure on Israel.
She boycotted Netanyahu’s address to Congress and consistently has been more critical of Israel than even Biden and Blinken.
The fact that Biden’s Department of Justice filed criminal charges against Hamas leaders indicates how out of touch the White House policy is.
It’s also noteworthy that the British government announced a ban on some military export licenses to Israel.
Although the ban is largely symbolic, it reflects a concerted aim among Western allies to pressure Israel to stop the war.
We can expect other European nations to follow, with the aim of further isolating the Jewish nation.
A war without end
No doubt the ruling leftists in Washington and Europe are encouraged by the public protests against Netanyahu and the splits in his Cabinet.
But as much as he is disliked by a large portion of Israelis, including many hostage families, it is unlikely there is a majority of voters who favor ending the war and leaving Hamas in power.
Any candidate who ran on that platform would have the impossible task of explaining how he or she could guarantee that Hamas would not be able to fulfill its promise of repeating the horrors of Oct. 7 “again and again.”
Similarly, the left’s obsession with the “two-state solution,” which Harris repeated last week, is a nonstarter in the real world. Palestinians passed up numerous chances to have a state of their own in the last two decades because they were unwilling to guarantee Israel’s security.
The Hamas attack means no Israeli leader will be able to propose one for years to come.
That’s the overriding reality of the situation, and while it doesn’t fit in with the ideology of Biden and Harris or the antisemite wing of their party, Israel’s not about to commit suicide to please them.
The only sensible policy is one that helps Israel completely defeat and dismantle Hamas.
Anything less will guarantee a war without end.
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