Three weeks ago, President Biden told reporters, while licking an ice cream cone with TV host Seth Meyers, that he hoped “by next Monday, we’ll have a ceasefire” between Israel and Hamas.
It turns out that evaluation of the war wasn’t accurate. Israeli leadership, Hamas and even his own national security adviser Jake Sullivan all had much less optimistic views.
Now his administration tried to strongarm our ally by drafting a UN resolution calling for an immediate ceasefire. It won’t work — allowing Hamas to control territory in Gaza is akin to losing the war — but a loud minority of Michigan voters sympathetic to Hamas seem to be driving our Middle East policy right now.
Not to be outdone, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) recently called for new elections in Israel and framed Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu as an “obstacle” to peace. Netanhayu justifiably responded that elected American officials pushing leadership changes in another democracy was “totally inappropriate.”
That Netanyahu had to defend his legitimacy this way in wartime says all you need to know about the current leadership in the Senate and the White House.
Let’s be absolutely clear: Israel is still very much under attack, fending off an existential threat. Hamas explicitly wants Israel wiped off the map, and has for a very long time. There certainly seem to be discussions of a ceasefire underway, but that won’t end the conflict — and it certainly won’t do so anytime soon.
Israel and its current war on Hamas must be taken more seriously. It’s a bit mind-boggling that anyone has to be reminded of just how brutal and horrific the attack was that prompted this conflict in the first place, but I’ll do it anyway. Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack on Israel was the third-deadliest recorded terrorist attack in history. It was, by far, the deadliest attack in Israeli history, taking the lives of over 1,200 Israelis.
Hamas militants brutally murdered 36 children, the youngest of whom was just 10 months old. An entire family with three young children was shot dead in its home. Of the 242 hostages Hamas kidnapped on that day, 32 were children. Of those, some were infants. Over 5 months later, 130 of those hostages still remain in Hamas’s custody.
They also employed a systematic use of rape as a tool of war and a means of terror, an orgy of violence undertaken with forethought and malice. It was an attack of unprecedented scale and brutality. Israel’s earliest estimates of its own fatalities was confused, because the bodies were so terribly burned that they mistook some corpses of terrorists for their own murdered citizens.
How do you negotiate with an enemy that commits such atrocities? This isn’t the behavior of a faction that will broker a reasonable peace. Hamas is a radical terrorist sect waging active, sophisticated war on one of the United States’ most important geopolitical allies. Frankly, it’s outrageous that Biden feels he can glibly predict an end to the conflict in a week’s time.
If we forget or dismiss Israel, we abandon one of the only things leading the Middle East towards regional stability and development. Israel isn’t just important to us as an outpost of democracy and liberty. In fact, Israel is important to every neighboring nation — whether they like it or not — because the Israelis bring economic progress, technological innovation, and political stability with them.
That’s part of why the Abraham Accords were such a tremendous achievement during President Trump’s administration. The Accords established a firm, explicit legal and economic relationship between Israel and nations that for many, many years had refused even to acknowledge Israel’s existence.
The U.S. is Israel’s top provider of military aid today, and has been since its inception. Yet in a time of tremendous and acute need, Biden seems intent upon half-measures and geopolitical gamesmanship.
The Biden Administration has now funded Hamas’ funder and chief architect, Ayatollah Khamenei of Iran, to the incredible tune of some $16 billion. He continues to work to bind the fates of an enormous, bloated Ukraine funding bill to any legislation that might fund further Israeli aid. What’s more, he does so while publicly and thoughtlessly mischaracterizing the nature and state of the conflict in the Middle East.
It is time to hold Biden and his administration accountable at the ballot box for their misdeeds. We must vote for leadership and policies that will advance U.S. interests at home and abroad, and protect America’s most cherished allies instead of punishing them.
Timothy Head is the executive director of the Faith and Freedom Coalition.