Joe Biden may think he’s scoring points with his anti-Semitic base, but his Israeli approval rating is probably taking on more water than his Gaza floating pier. For months, the Jewish state has watched the president boast of his “ironclad” support of Israel, only to undermine their war efforts at every turn. It’s “inconceivable” that the Biden White House would keep withholding weapons from Israel, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu declared this week. But not when you consider that Biden only cares about winning one thing this year — and it isn’t the war against Hamas.
“Prime Minister Netanyahu wouldn’t have given that message if he didn’t feel that it was absolutely necessary,” Israeli affairs expert Caroline Glick insisted on “Washington Watch” Wednesday. “And the Biden administration’s response, which was really effectively to have a temper tantrum against the prime minister and insult him in just the most obnoxious ways” shows where their loyalties really lie.
After Netanyahu called out Biden’s munitions delay in a public video, an “enraged” White House retaliated by canceling a meeting with the prime minister on Iran. “… [T]here are consequences for pulling such stunts,” a U.S. official relayed to Axios.
It’s quite a contrast to how the president bends to Ukraine’s every whim, Family Research Council President Tony Perkins pointed out. “The Biden administration is telling Ukraine, ‘Yeah, you can go ahead and use our munitions to strike directly into Russia,’ but at the same time tying the hands of our most strategic ally, Israel. How do you square that?” he asked Glick.
You can’t, the senior contributing editor at the Jewish News Syndicate replied. The reality is, “The administration is advancing a policy that opposes Israeli victory in this war. They’re willing to allow Israel to defend itself. But the only way that we can defend ourselves is by going on offense and actually defeating our enemies. And that’s something that the White House does not want to countenance — that [it] will not countenance — whether it’s in relation to Hamas or it’s in relation to Hezbollah, which is the looming threat in the North.” And frankly, she pointed out, that’s not just looming, “it’s escalating before our eyes.”
The threat of Hamas, Glick reminds people, is small compared to the danger of Hezbollah in the north. “Israel is being shelled every day, and it’s civilian homes that are being shelled. Over a thousand of them have been destroyed over the months of the Hezbollah missile offensive,” she shook her head. “But it’s not only that. It’s military bases, it’s forest preserves, it’s agriculture. And most important, from a military perspective, it’s also strategic sites in Israel. Just [this week], Hezbollah released drone footage … taking pictures of strategic sites. … So we’re talking about a [grave] threat … given the fact that Hezbollah has 150,000 projectiles pointed at Israel, more if you count their drones, which you should.”
The danger, she warns, rises to a nuclear level with the amount of firepower they can bring to bear in a full-scale war. “This is not theoretical,” Perkins reiterated. “This is happening. It’s been happening since October.” And there will be “no future for Israel as a free and safe nation without addressing this threat.”
A lot of people wonder if the internal shake-up of former Minister of Defense Benny Gantz stepping aside is a cause for concern. Glick reassured people that none of this weakens Netanyahu or Israel. “It doesn’t mean anything in terms of the stability of the government,” she insisted. “The Left and a lot of the people in the United States … want very badly to overthrow Netanyahu. It’s funny because the same forces [have no problem leaving] Hamas in charge of Gaza. So it shows you where their brain is. … So they’re making it seem as though Benny Gantz’s departure from the War Cabinet is going to destabilize the government. But we had a stable 64-member majority coalition making up the government before October 7th and before Benny Gantz came in on October 11th. And that coalition still remains now.”
If you talk to the Israeli people, they still care about the same two things that they did on October 7: national unity and victory in the war. But if the choice is between Benny Gantz staying in the War Cabinet and beating Hamas, the majority, Glick says, want to eradicate the terrorists.
“The majority of Israelis recognize that this is a zero-sum game,” Glick said. “Either we stay alive and they die, or they’re defeated and their ability to kill us is removed, or we’re dead. … There’s no happy middle. … [W]e are facing genocidal foes. They showed that very clearly on October 7th. … Nobody was able to delude themselves into thinking that what happened was something else.”
As for the chaos Biden is causing, the White House’s real priorities are no secret. “I think that the sense among Israelis is that the American election is playing into the American antagonism — meaning, it was one thing when most Israelis trusted Biden and felt that he was our ally in this war, and that he meant it when he said that he had Israel’s back, and that his commitment to Israel’s security was ironclad,” Glick acknowledged. “… But what Israelis have seen over the past three months … is that Biden is openly hostile to Israel’s goal of victory.”
It’s all a very transparent political ploy, she knows. “The widespread sense among Israelis is that what’s motivating him is not some sort of a substantive, understandable, rational disagreement about tactics to reach the common end with Netanyahu, but rather his electoral fortunes. And Israeli parents aren’t willing to endanger their children just to help Biden win in Michigan.”
This story originally appeared here.
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