Both Harris Walz’s presidential ticket and Joe Biden, now a lame-duck president, continue to claim that they are Israel’s best friend.
The acerbic Biden recently boasted in a controversial press conference that “no administration has helped Israel as much as I have.” None, none, none. And I think[Prime Minister Netanyahu]should remember that. ”
But Biden’s flimsy, provocative barbs have skillfully concealed, or perhaps revealed, the truth. This current administration knows that it is responsible for the current Middle East explosion and Israel’s particular dilemma.
When asked another probing question about Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s alleged election interference, Biden said, “I don’t know if he’s trying to influence the election,” and held the Israeli government accountable. The location was revealed.
Election interference?
Biden, while slamming candidates Donald Trump and J.D. Vance in a left-wing magazine, flew Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to the battleground state of Pennsylvania to lobby for more aid. Apparently, he had forgotten that early voting and mail-in voting had just begun in the area.
Recently, Democratic candidate Vice President Kamala Harris also refused to say whether Netanyahu’s government is an ally of the United States.
Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, the Democratic vice presidential candidate, said the Democratic ticket is a threat to Israel from the roughly 500 Iranian missiles and rockets that targeted Iran’s nuclear bomb program and its oil fields and export facilities. He could not say whether he approved of the reaction. Jewish state.
Another revealing book about Bob Woodward’s risqué gossip has been published. The paper alleges that Mr. Biden has disparaged Mr. Netanyahu and has told his aides to slander Mr. Netanyahu. “That son of a bitch, Bibi Netanyahu, he’s a bad guy. He’s a bad guy!”
What are we to make of this Biden-Harris-Waltz mess?
This is an election year, and one of the closest elections in modern memory. Mr. Biden and his successor, Harris Walz, know that support for Israel is a bipartisan cornerstone of American foreign policy and critical to the unity of the Democratic Party.
But they also feel they have to pander to anti-Israel Muslim American voters who could decide the electoral vote in the key battleground state of Michigan.
Democratic politicians have countered this ring by claiming to support Israel, even as they denounce conservative Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. In doing so, they seek to accuse Netanyahu of alienating Arab and Muslim-American voters while not alienating left-wing Jews or pro-Israel Democrats.
Despite all the abuse, the demonized Netanyahu is now regaining popular support in Israel. Israelis approve of his near destruction of Hamas, Israel’s ongoing spectacular evisceration of Hezbollah, and Israel’s revelation that Iran’s once widely feared terrorist regime may actually be a papier-mâché tiger. I am doing it.
“The Middle East is quieter today than it has been in the last 20 years,” Biden aide Jake Sullivan acknowledged just eight days before the October 7 massacre.
His boast was acknowledging that Biden and Harris inherited a stable Middle East from the previous Trump administration.
So what broke Sullivan’s silence?
Certainly not Netanyahu or Israel in general.
It was Hamas terrorists who killed 1,200 Israeli civilians in a surprise attack during a holiday of peace and Judaism.
Their slaughter, torture, rape, and hostage revealed a level of pre-civilizational savagery rarely seen in modern times.
Israel was simultaneously targeted by rockets from Hamas and Hezbollah, whose numbers eventually exceeded 20,000.
It was not until October 27, about three weeks after the massacre, that the country responded to the massacre with a full-scale invasion of Gaza.
Meanwhile, much of the Muslim world, American Muslim communities, and American campuses rejoiced at the news of the massacre of Jews.
For more than three years, the Biden administration has signaled to Israel’s adversaries that it would no longer behave like the close allies of the past.
In the end, the Biden-Harris administration lifted sanctions against hostile Iran, giving Iran $100 billion in oil revenue. He implored Iran to rejoin the disastrous Iran deal. Abandoned the Abraham Accords. The terrorist designation of the Houthi terrorist organization has been lifted. Reinstated fungible aid to Hamas tunnel builders. New aid given to Hezbollah-controlled Lebanon.
Israel’s enemies got Biden’s message to attack the Jewish state, but perhaps for the first time in half a century, Americans may not care all that much.
And they did so all at once.
Mr. Biden and Ms. Harris are now blaming the victims of their own incendiary foreign policy, rather than acknowledging their role in provoking the situation in the Middle East.
The final irony?
Israel has concluded that the recklessness of Biden and Harris is harmful and could endanger the very existence of the nation, and therefore will not agree to commit suicide.
Instead, Israel is trying to end a multi-sided war that it did not want. And given that Israel is now systematically undermining America’s own existential enemy, one of the beneficiaries of Israeli blood and treasure will be America itself.
Victor Davis Hanson is a distinguished fellow at the Center for American Greatness. He is a classicist and historian at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution and the author of Basic Books’ The Second World Wars: How the First Global Conflict Was Fought and Won. You can get in touch by sending an email to authorvdh@gmail.com.
The views and opinions expressed in this commentary are those of the author and do not reflect the official position of The Daily Caller.
