Is the Biden administration qualified to advise any nation on how to defeat a terrorist state? Whatever your answer, the US commander-in-chief has summoned representatives from Israel to assure his administration that innocent Palestinians will be protected when the Israel Defense Force (IDF) enters Rafah, the last major stronghold of Hamas, in southern Gaza. Team Biden seems to want Israel to pledge that it will eliminate the terrorist organization while not killing anyone. A tall order.
Biden’s foreign policy and national security teams have been pushing Israel to slow down in its self-defense operations to destroy Hamas. However, such curtailment has consequences. In his recent article, “Biden insults Israel, supports Hamas in his Bizarro World,” Jed Babbin, Washington Times national security and foreign affairs correspondent, described what Biden’s wobbly support for Israel has wrought. Liberty Nation had an exclusive discussion with Babbin about the fissures widening in the US-Israel relationship.
Jed Babbin on Future of Israel
Liberty Nation: Jed, you wrote an article recently revealing the perverse duplicity of the Biden administration in its flagging support for Israel. How do you see Biden’s foreign policy team’s weakening affirmation for Israel playing out?
Jed Babbin: Biden reversed our policy toward Israel. It can no longer rely on us as an ally. Israel will invade southern Gaza and destroy Hamas without US support and possibly a denial of crucial military assistance on which Israel depends. Donald Trump was an avid ally of Israel. But the November election – and Trump’s possible January 2025 inauguration – is a long way off. Israel will have to go it alone until then. If Biden is re-elected, Israel will be very much alone, isolated, and friendless.
LN: In your article, you revealed that the Biden administration has just lifted a sanction allowing Iraq to buy $10 billion more of Iranian energy. You draw attention to the perversity of the United States allowing funding to flow to Iran, which supports its proxy Hamas that is holding more than 100 Israeli and American hostages, while counseling Israel’s Defense Minister Benny Gantz to be less aggressive in defeating Hamas. Where does this disingenuous thinking come from?
JB: I can’t read what little is left of Biden’s mind. His advisers have a bizarre worldview. They think we’re a lone superpower (which we are no longer) that can manipulate nations easily, the way Woodrow Wilson did after World War I. (See Margaret MacMillan’s Paris 1919.) There are too many other superpowers – China and Russia – and regional powers – Iran, North Korea, India, and Pakistan – which have to be handled, both diplomatically and with the implied threat of military force. Our military isn’t credible enough to deter even the Houthis, who have taken to firing missiles at Israel. The mailed fist in the velvet glove is what’s needed. It’s too much for Biden and his advisers to comprehend. There will be more wars before Biden leaves office.
Domestic Political Consequences
Babbin paints a grim portrait of what America faces on the path Biden has chosen. And the White House’s foreign policy team, seemingly unaware of the attending consequences of its posture, have charted a rocky course for the near-term US-Israel future. It seems the president was unaware that his strong stand with Israel after the murderous Oct. 7 Hamas terrorist attack would result in massive pro-Hamas and Palestinian university protests. Another political shock occurred when 13%, or 101,623, of Michigan Democratic primary voters - many of of Middle Eastern backgrounds - chose “Uncommitted” over the incumbent president in the early March primary.
Both of these events seem to have caused Biden to ease away from his initial resolute position to support Israel. So why does the White House fear the pro-Hamas and Palestinian voters in the United States when they represent a relatively small demographic? Is it perhaps because political momentum, even though small, beats loyalty to America’s strongest ally in the Middle East? Additionally, the State Department and National Security Council are dismayed that Israel is not cowed and is reluctant to be bullied by Biden’s apparent turnabout.
PM Netanyahu Determined to Destroy Hamas
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has made it abundantly clear that he would not detour from the objective of destroying Hamas. In a recent television address, Netanyahu told the audience he had met with US Secretary of State Antony Blinken:
“I told him that I greatly appreciate the fact that for five months we have been standing together in the war against Hamas … [W]e recognize the need to evacuate the civilian population from the combat zones and, of course, also see to the humanitarian needs, and we are working to this end … [W]e have no way to defeat Hamas without entering Rafah and eliminating the remnant of the battalions there. I told him that I hope we would do this with US support, but if necessary – we will do it alone.”
Blinken and his foreign policy team should recognize this level of resolve from Israel. Nevertheless, Netanyahu agreed “to send a team of officials to Washington to discuss alternatives to a promised Israeli invasion of Rafah, the city that has become the last refuge for roughly half of Gaza’s population, according to Mr. Biden’s national security adviser, Jake Sullivan,” The New York Times reported. However, the Israeli leader scrapped this plan as the Biden administration became increasingly hostile to Israel's push to destroy Hamas.
Letting Israel carry out its stated objective against the terrorist group might be the best course of action for Biden’s team. Not having Hamas to spread terror in the Middle East would also rid the world of one more Iran proxy.
The views expressed are those of the author and not of any other affiliate.
