Biden’s Ceasefire Demands Are ‘Nothing but Electioneering,’ ‘It’s Buying Votes from the Left’: Congressman

President Biden probably isn’t the best person to give national security advice. Considering his decisions to let Afghanistan collapse, throw open the southern border to terrorists and criminals, and allow China to surveil our country with spy balloons, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is right to shake off this White House’s admonishments in his war in Gaza. “He’s wrong,” Netanyahu said bluntly about Biden’s insistence on a ceasefire. If anyone knows what’s good for Israel, he argued, it’s Israel.

“The majority of Israelis understand that if we don’t do this,” the prime minister said, referring to his goal of exterminating Hamas, “what we’ll have is a repetition of the October 7th massacre — which is bad for Israel, bad for the Palestinians, bad for the future of peace in the Middle East.”

The president, meanwhile, is having an extremely difficult time balancing the demands of the Democrats’ anti-Israel mob with Netanyahu’s resolve to finish off the terrorists who killed, raped, tortured, and burned 1,200 innocent Israelis on October 7. The result has been a confusing muddle of statements that sound increasingly uncharitable toward our closest Middle East ally.

From Capitol Hill, Republicans can only shake their heads at the disaster the White House has made of yet another foreign crisis. “The president’s being schizophrenic over this,” Rep. Keith Self (R-Texas) pointed out. “He says he supports Israel — and yet we have competing red lines. His red line is he wants a ceasefire. Netanyahu’s red line is October 7th [so that this] will never happen again, which means he must destroy Hamas’s infrastructure. So we have competing red lines here between two sovereign states. And I will tell you, I think that President Biden is simply bending the knee to the left-most part of his party.”

One of the wildest examples of Biden’s meddling has been his insistence that U.S. soldiers build a humanitarian pier that will help funnel food and other supplies to Gaza. “Biden is terrified of the pro-Palestinian elements in his party,” National Review’s Luther Ray Abel wrote, “and, in his fear, is creating a situation whereby the U.S. taxpayers are almost certain to aid Hamas in its fight against our regional partner while having to watch U.S. men and women in uniform get left high and dry just off the coast of one of the most volatile few square miles in the world.”

Not to mention, Self told “Washington Watch” guest host and former Congressman Jody Hice, “Netanyahu says the fighting could be over in two months.” Most estimates say it will take a week for our ship to get there. “And then it’s 60 to 90 days to construct the pier, and then they have to start doing the operations. The fighting could be over before this pier is even constructed. So this is simply virtue signaling that we are going to do something, even if it makes no sense.”

And who gave him permission to do this in the first place, Self wanted to know? “President Biden doesn’t seem to worry about congressional authority for anything,” he vented, citing the southern border as the biggest example of lawlessness. “So why would he obey the law now? Why would he ask for congressional approval?”

The reality is, Hamas could release the hostages, surrender, and end the war today, he continued. They could “stop the suffering. But Hamas will not do that. So Israel is exercising its right of self-defense to destroy the infrastructure of Hamas. … And you have to take [the terrorists] at their word that they will continue to attack Israel as often as they can. They’ve got a tremendous tunnel structure. They take all of the humanitarian aid and turn it into military supplies anyway.”

So Biden’s demands are illogical. “This is an election ploy,” Self said. “We saw it in the State of the Union address. We see it in his trying to claw back some sort of authority on the southern border. Now we see it in Israel. This is nothing but electioneering. This is buying votes amongst the Left. That’s all it is.”

On the ground in Israel, Family Research Council President Tony Perkins had a chance to tour the area by the Gaza border where most of the atrocities took place and understand firsthand the horror that is fueling Israel to keep fighting. “I’ve lost track of the number of times I’ve been here,” he told Hice on Monday, “but this is a different time. [Sunday] we were … right on the Gaza border [and] went to the kibbutz, where some of the first attacks and atrocities took place, walked through the houses, stepped over the charred remains of their homes, [saw] the bullet holes. Listen[ed] to the stories,” he said solemnly.

“This is a time,” Perkins urged, “that we need to be standing with them as it appears the whole world, including the Biden administration, is backing away from Israel. And so it’s hard to really put into perspective the attack. … It’s as I’ve described before on the program — and I can say with even greater confidence now — [this was] demonic, just pure evil is what took place here on October the 7th.”

What really struck him, he said, is that the Jewish people have come to Israel from all over the world to flee persecution and make homes in a safe place. That illusion of security was all shattered in October. “And it’s almost like, ‘Where do we go now? We have no other place to go. So we have to fight. We have to fight to secure our homeland for our children and for the future.’ When you’re talking to people who have seen their neighbors slaughtered or even lost their own family members to what took place on October the 7th, you know that they mean business.”

Perkins’s delegation had the opportunity to sit down with Netanyahu, who was visibly “carrying a heavy weight for his people.” “This country is so small that everyone knows someone that’s been affected — either directly or indirectly by what happened on October 7th. … So the prime minister and his team are resolute that they are going to fight and win this war, and they’re going to eliminate Hamas and the threat to their people.”

“I’ve met with him a number of times,” he said, “but this is probably the longest meeting I’ve had with the prime minister. … His first comment when he walked in the room and sat down across from me [was], ‘You’re not going wobbly, are you?’ And I said, ‘No, Mr. Prime Minister, we’re not going wobbly. We’re more determined than ever.”

Perkins says the group had a productive “heart-to-heart conversation” with Netanyahu but one thing was very clear. The prime minister would never intentionally “invoke conflict with the United States … but [t]hey know what happens when their borders are not protected. And so they are not going to let America [and] the international community stand in the way of doing what needs to be done. They want to do it in concert with the support of the United States, because they truly do see us as their strongest ally. But if we leave them there, they’re going forward.”

Netanyahu reiterated the importance of “evangelicals, Christians in America in particular,” standing with Israel and being vocal about their support for Israel. But above all, he insisted, the Jewish people need their prayers.

“The big takeaway for me [is] they are going to complete the job,” Perkins reiterated. “… [And] the Prime Minister knows, and he respects and understands [that] the evangelical community is very important in the United States, but also important to Israel.”