5 Examples and 5 Consequences of Biden Admin Hindering Israel’s War against Hamas: Expert
Weeks after Hamas perpetrated the deadliest attack on Jews since the Holocaust, President Joe Biden visited Israel to declare, “I come to Israel with a single message. You are not alone. You are not alone. As long as the United States stands — and we will stand forever — we will not let you ever be alone.” But not everyone believed that was a promise to help a close ally.
“It sounded like a threat,” wrote Caroline Glick, senior fellow for Middle Eastern Affairs at the Center for Security Policy, “that he and his administration would never leave Israel alone to fight the war to victory.”
“Since then, the Biden administration has hampered Israel at almost every turn,” Family Research Council President Tony Perkins said on “Washington Watch” Thursday, “undermining Israel’s ability to defeat Hamas and eliminate the threat of terror right next door. They’ve limited their military options while strangely appearing to appease the regime in Iran.”
Glick joined Perkins on “Washington Watch” to detail five ways in which the Biden administration is working to hamper Israel’s ability to bring the war to a swift, victorious conclusion by eliminating Hamas.
1. Refusing to Let Civilians Flee
For “all this international commotion about [Gazan civilians] being collateral damage,” said Perkins, “the Biden administration is prohibiting refugees” from leaving the warzone and “fleeing to safety.”
It’s not as though Arab refugees from the Gaza Strip have nowhere to go. Perkins said he has communicated with “some Palestinian Christians who are trying to get out, and they have a country who will receive them,” but “the United States is blocking their exit.” Although “at least 10 countries have already expressed willingness to accept the Palestinians who want to leave Gaza,” said Glick, “the United States is saying, ‘Absolutely not, under no circumstances.’”
This is contrary to standard practice for civilians in warzones, said Glick. “The United States pays foreign governments to allow Ukrainians to resettle in their territory or Syrians, and yet the Gazans have to pay massive bribes to corrupt Egyptian soldiers and officers in order to flee.” The Guardian (a liberal British paper) reported that Gazans are paying $10,000 bribes to cross the Egyptian border, despite U.S. diplomatic pressure to prevent them.
Meanwhile Gazans who can’t afford a bribe must keep moving between “humanitarian safe zones that Israel sets up for them, from one to another,” said Glick. She reported that the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) assessed last week that Hamas had changed its tactics to fight from these humanitarian zones, instead of from their now-compromised tunnel network. “So, anywhere these people go, they’re always human shields,” Glick summarized.
By refusing to allow Gazans to flee the warzone for safe havens elsewhere, the Biden administration is “increasing the likelihood that they will be harmed by Israel’s attempts to eliminate the threat of Hamas,” said Perkins. Glick confirmed this. “They’re forcing them to remain beholden to Hamas and blocking Israel from being able to win the war,” she said.
2. Forcing Israel to Send Aid to Hamas
After trapping civilians in Gaza, the Biden administration is then “blaming Israel for the plight of these people,” said Glick, in a related pressure campaign to force Israel to “resupply Hamas, prolonging the war, prolonging the captivity of our hostages that are being held by Hamas, and of course, prolonging the humanitarian suffering of the uninvolved civilians in Gaza.”
Most of the supplies Israel is manipulated into delivering are then commandeered by Hamas. “On Jan. 23, Shin Bet director Ronen Bar informed Israel’s security cabinet that 60% to 70% of the so-called humanitarian aid entering Gaza daily either goes directly into Hamas’s hands or is commandeered by Hamas terrorists for their use,” wrote Glick.
In fact, she reported, Palestinian civilians have complained that Hamas militants have brazenly seized aid convoys right in front of them, and that the militants shot at Palestinians who have tried to access supplies. “So, it’s not actually going to the people of Gaza,” Glick said.
3. Delaying Military Shipments to Israel
Additionally, the Biden administration is “slow walking ammunition that Israel requires to fight the war successfully,” said Glick, “not only in Gaza, but also vis a vis Hezbollah in Lebanon.”
“At the direction of the White House, the Pentagon has been reviewing what weaponry Israel has requested that could be used as leverage,” NBC News reported on January 28, according to four anonymous sources.
“Although the White House denied the reports,” wrote Glick, “the IDF has been compelled to conserve its ammunition on the ground due to shortages in supplies, indicating that the United States is slow-walking its supply of key armaments to Israel.”
4. Negotiating Controversial Ceasefire Agreement
Currently, the U.S. is “doing some shuttle diplomacy” between Israel and Hamas, Perkins described, in an attempt “to try to get more [hostages] released.” Israel has not yet recovered more than 130 hostages taken in the October 7 terror attack, at least 95 of which are believed to still be alive. But the negotiations, which are being managed by CIA Director William Burns, the architect of the Obama administration’s nuclear deal with Iran, are “in a pathological tailspin,” complained Glick.
“The hostage negotiations aren’t [saying], ‘Give back the hostages, release the hostages, or we’ll turn Gaza into a parking lot,’” she explained. “No, what they’re saying is, ‘If you give back the hostages, we will free thousands of terrorist murderers, including the murderers and the rapists who carried out the massacre of October 7.’”
Under the current deal Burns has negotiated, in exchange for 40 hostages released at a rate of one per day, Israel would have to release “between 100 and 250 terrorists,” or roughly between three to six terrorists for every hostage recovered, described Glick. “So, not all of the hostages are supposed to be released. And, during those 40 days, Israel is not allowed to continue its war against Hamas,” she said. “Not only that, we’re supposed to end surveillance flights by drones so that Hamas can rebuild their terrorist infrastructure, and Israel won’t have eyes to see what they’re doing. They can move the hostages.”
U.S. negotiators have openly professed one goal in the negotiations is to “prevent Israel from reinstating its military operations against Hamas,” said Glick.
5. Continuing to Push for a Two-State Solution
More generally, under the Biden administration, U.S. diplomats continue to press for a two-state solution. As recently as Wednesday, Secretary of State Antony Blinken reiterated his endorsement of “a clear and credible pathway to a Palestinian state.”
Perkins responded, “We’ve had essentially a two-state solution, if you want to call it that, since 2007, when Hamas took over jurisdiction of Gaza.” In 2006, Israeli forces voluntarily withdrew from the Gaza Strip, permitting the area’s residents to choose their own government in a free election. Hamas won that election — the only one ever held in Gaza — and then seized complete power in a bloody coup in 2007. Since then, Hamas has governed the area as an oversized military base for carrying out attacks against Israel.
Nevertheless, only weeks after Hamas’s October 7 terrorist attack against Israel, President Biden once again endorsed a two-state solution, a solution that has not succeeded in bringing lasting peace to the region through 80 years of trying. Among the obstacles to achieving a two-state solution are: Arabs in the West Bank and Gaza overwhelmingly reject a two-state solution, Israelis will no longer tolerate any solution that leaves Hamas on their border, and there is no organization that could credibly and peacefully govern the Arab state.
At a campaign fundraiser in December, Biden suggested that Israel was responsible for inventing a strategy to “strengthen PLA [PA, the Palestinian Authority] — strengthen it, change it, move it,” and he proposed to force Israel to do so by changing Israeli public opinion, fomenting Israeli civil unrest, and orchestrating regime change in Prime Minister Netanyahu’s cabinet.
In addition to the practical impossibility of achieving a two-state solution, Glick argued it would be a morally repugnant response to Hamas’s unprovoked terror attack against Israel. If they were rewarded with their own independent nation, she argued, it “would be the single largest prize any terrorist organization ever received for carrying out a massacre.”
These five ways the Biden administration is hindering Israel’s ability to obtain victory against Hamas are only a sampling; there are more listed in Glick’s analysis for the Jerusalem News Service.
But Glick proceeded to address the consequences that would result if the Biden administration succeeded in prematurely derailing Israel’s campaign to exterminate Hamas. Here are five consequences she presented.
1. Israel Would Lose the War
Glick explained that the current war is over whether Hamas is allowed to survive, after the terror attack it perpetrated against Israel. Continued coexistence with Hamas is unacceptable to Israelis, while Hamas’s radical jihadist ideology makes them willing to endure any amount of losses to inflict harm on Israel. Describing the stakes in stark terms, Netanyahu insisted Sunday that Israel was “fighting for its existence and its future.”
The Biden administration is “using this hostages-for-terrorists ceasefire deal to try to force Israel to lose the war — not to win — and to let Hamas survive — which means to win this war,” Glick said. “The Biden administration’s goal right now is to force Israel to stop fighting this war, even at the cost of strategic defeat.”
2. Hamas Would Perpetrate Another, Bigger Terror Attack against Israel
“There is no solution besides total victory,” Netanyahu insisted on Wednesday. “If Hamas survives in Gaza, it’s only a matter of time until the next massacre.” Glick added that the next attack would be “even greater in scale” and “just a matter of time.”
Therefore, she concluded, “We cannot accept this outcome”; due to Hamas’s genocidal intentions against Israel, the war will continue until one or the other is destroyed. Allowing Hamas to continue, and even giving them their state official recognition “would be rewarding terrorists,” Perkins agreed, and would “only incite more” of the same, barbaric violence seen on October 7.
3. Israel’s Relationships with Other Arab Countries Would Be Undermined
Trying to force a premature ceasefire upon Israel is “the worst thing, from a signaling perspective, that the United States could possibly do,” argued Glick. “The entire Arab world and Iran are sitting in the balcony overlooking the stage that we’re playing upon, and they want to see what Israel does if we don’t fight to victory.”
If Israel doesn’t fight to victory, then that “signal[s] to Iran that they have a green light to do whatever they want,” according to Perkins. “Arabs will be convinced that Israel is too weak to trust, and that they’re better off trying to cut a deal with Iran,” Glick agreed.
This result would not only hazard the possibility of normalizing relations with Saudi Arabia, but it would also jeopardize “all of our peace agreements,” said Glick: “with the Egyptians, with the Jordanians, the Abraham Accords — all of them will fall by the wayside.”
4. America’s Status as a Superpower Would Be Tarnished
Glick argued that the Biden administration’s betrayal of Israel has the potential to erode the confidence of all of America’s allies. “If the United States is going to betray its allies to such a profound degree that they’re demanding that Israel lose this war, then the United States will be finished as a superpower,” she said. In a sense, then, Israel’s security is “tied to our security” as Americans, said Perkins.
5. Terrorists Would Be Emboldened to Attack America
Finally, if the U.S. forces Israel to lose its war with Hamas, terrorists would have so little fear of America’s weakness that they would “very quickly start attacking Americans at home,” said Glick. “There’s absolutely no doubt about that.”
Conclusion
“Total victory over Hamas will not take years,” insisted Netanyahu this week. “It will take months. Victory is within reach. And when people talk about ‘the day after,’ let’s be clear about one thing. It’s the day after all of Hamas is destroyed. Not half of Hamas, not three quarters of Hamas, all of Hamas.”
In this context, the U.S. is trying to force Israel to accept a disadvantageous ceasefire with Hamas, without totally destroying them. Perkins said he could think of no precedent in history “where such a close alliance [as there] has historically been between Israel and the United States” has witnessed such a profound betrayal — in sight of the finish line.
Meanwhile, the people of Israel remain committed to finishing the war. Glick described how “tens of thousands of Israelis,” who were conscripted to defend against Hamas, have gathered in Jerusalem, “demanding to be remobilized.”
“We are winning this war. We have destroyed the vast majority of Hamas’s military power. And we mustn’t leave in the middle of the battle,” said Glick. “I don’t know when you’ve ever seen a people who have been so mobilized … for victory and understand the imperative of winning against Hamas — not in points, but in a knockout.”
Joshua Arnold is a senior writer at The Washington Stand.