AP
Israelis are fighting for their lives on several fronts, so naturally President Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris decide it’s a good time to tie their hands and publicly threaten them.
Whose side are they on?
Sadly, it doesn’t seem to be Israel’s.
Nor is it America’s when they insist Israel go easy on terrorists who aim to destroy America after they destroy Israel.
Even to call the White House approach a policy is overly generous.
It’s more of a gut reaction born of weakness that sees any expression of American or Israeli power as dangerous.
Thus their instinct is always to call for a peaceful status quo, even when it is temporary and rewards the enemy.
Afghanistan offers an example of the disastrous consequences of cutting and running.
The defeatist pattern over Israel’s war began early this year as a way to appease Muslim-American voters and antisemitic college students who wanted to feed Israel to the wolves and were angry Democrats didn’t comply.
Election-year strategy
As the nominee, a nervous Biden reacted by turning the screws on Israel, and later had Secretary of State Tony Blinken, who has zero military experience, dictate which targets in Gaza Israel could strike.
Now, as the election draws close and Harris is the nervous nominee, the White House is tightening the screws again.
This time, it’s taking a multifront approach, with Washington simultaneously demanding our ally show restraint in Lebanon and Iran, and allow increased amounts of humanitarian aid into Gaza.
In other words, Israel should raise the white flag until the American election is over.
If it doesn’t, the US threatens to join France and others in imposing an arms embargo on the beleaguered Jewish state.
The urge to protect Israel’s enemies is doubly bizarre when they also happen to be America’s enemies.
Yet that is the impact of the positions America is taking and the demands it’s making.
Notice that Biden and Harris are not making a single demand of any other party, and no one else faces ultimatums.
Israel alone is being held responsible for the care and feeding of Gaza’s civilians even though Hamas uses them as human shields.
Why aren’t Jordan and Egypt pushed to help care for their fellow Arabs?
And in what previous war was the country that had been attacked required to risk the lives of its military to care for the enemy’s civilians?
Hamas could end the war in Gaza immediately.
Yet there are no White House demands for the terror group’s leaders to come out of their tunnels, surrender and release all the hostages, including the Americans still being held.
Similarly, there is no demand that Hezbollah stop firing into Israel.
Instead, Lebanon’s prime minister said he has “received American guarantees” that Israeli strikes in Beirut, Hezbollah’s stronghold, will be reduced, according to Al Jazeera.
Neither the Arab outlet nor Israeli media say who made the guarantee, but suspicion falls on Blinken, the errand boy who has led the charge against Israel all along.
Blinken and Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin even wrote a Sunday letter threatening to withhold arms shipments if Israel doesn’t increase the humanitarian aid to Gaza within 30 days.
Dictating aid to Gaza
The micromanaging jumps off the page, with the letter insisting that Israel allow at least 350 aid trucks a day to enter Gaza through four crossings and open a fifth.
It also says Israel must implement “humanitarian pauses” throughout Gaza as necessary to enable vaccinations and aid distribution for at least four months.
Harris echoed the letter from the campaign trail, writing on X that “Civilians must be protected and must have access to food, water, and medicine. International humanitarian law must be respected.”
She said that while planning to spend several days in Michigan, a battleground state which is home to an estimated 200,000 registered Muslim-American voters.
Most reflexively vote Democrat, but anger over the war has led many to say they will stay home or vote for Green Party candidate Jill Stein, who is Jewish and yet a harsh critic of Israel.
Her running mate, Butch Ware, is a Muslim.
Politics is a dirty game, but it doesn’t have to be this dirty.
Not if you have a spine and any sense of America’s security and how to build trust among threatened allies.
Consider that the only beneficiaries of the Biden-Harris buttinsky moves are Hamas, Hezbollah and Iran.
A refresher course on how we got here is apparently necessary for a White House that seems to have forgotten.
Hamas broke a cease-fire to launch the war with Israel more than a year ago with its barbaric invasion from Gaza.
Hezbollah, in a show of support, began its daily barrage of rockets and drones the very next day, forcing more than 60,000 Israelis to evacuate from their homes along the Lebanon border.
They still can’t go home, and Israel is still taking incoming fire from all sides, with Iran playing the role of puppet master and financier.
The mullahs are also firing on Israel, yet the White House is insisting all Israeli retaliation be modest.
Indeed, Biden reportedly extracted a promise from Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that Israel’s response will not hit Iran’s oil fields or its nuclear facilities.
The argument against striking the oil fields is that taking Iran’s production off the global market would drive up prices everywhere.
The last thing Dems want is a spike in gasoline and heating oil prices as voters make their choice.
Perilous duel with Iran
The reason for the American ban on striking Iran’s nuclear facilities is less clear, although it surely reflects Biden’s constant fear of escalation.
It’s the same fear that has kept our ally Ukraine in a bloody stalemate with Russia.
Michael Oren, the former Israeli ambassador, likens the tit-for-tat limitation to a boxing strategy known as the “rope-a-dope.”
He cautions that “the knockout punch, the haymaker, is the Iranian nuclear weapon.”
Oren, writing in The Times of Israel, adds: “the only question is whether Israel is prepared to deliver ours first.”
That’s the crunch of the argument that Israel should strike the nuke plants before Iran gets a bomb and the missile to deliver it.
The clock is ticking, with some reports saying the mullahs could reach that point within weeks.
Netanyahu has often said Israel will never allow a nuclear-armed Iran because the mullahs have made it clear that eliminating Israel is their aim.
One former Iranian official even called Israel a “one bomb country,” meaning that’s all Iran would need.
Although Israel is said to be still debating how it will respond to Iran’s latest attack, it has greatly diminished both Hamas and Hezbollah and thus made Iran more vulnerable.
But Oren argues that a stalemate offers insufficient protection because Iran could throw its nuke punch without notice.
“Now is our chance to strike,” he concludes.
“We may not get another.”