A decade ago, former US Secretary of Defense Robert Gates declared that Joe Biden “has been wrong on almost every major foreign policy and national security issue over the past four decades.”
Secretary Gates: You will never believe what Joe has done now.
President Biden has made perhaps his most incompetent political mistake yet (at least since his disastrous withdrawal from Afghanistan).
In an interview on Wednesday, Biden threatened to block the transfer of American weapons to Israel if the Jewish state launches a military operation against the last remaining Hamas stronghold in southern Gaza.
Their ultimatum comes almost seven months after the day of the Oct. 7 massacre, and after the White House admitted that they had already secretly stopped the delivery of bunker-busting bombs that Israel needs to root out terrorists hiding in underground tunnels. deeply buried.
In fact, the mastermind of the Hamas massacre, Yahya Sinwar, is believed to take refuge in these tunnels, cynically dug under the feet of around 1.3 million Palestinians.
It is not just layers of concrete, dirt and sand that protect these terrorists from the Israeli army. These monsters hide under women and children.
But Biden blames Israel.
It is not just layers of concrete, dirt and sand that protect these terrorists from the Israeli army. These monsters hide under women and children. (Above) Palestinian children in central Gaza on May 11
In fact, the mastermind of the Hamas massacre, Yahya Sinwar (above), is believed to take refuge in these tunnels, cynically dug under the feet of around 1.3 million Palestinians.
In an interview on Wednesday, Biden threatened to block the transfer of American weapons to Israel if the Jewish state launches a military operation against the last remaining Hamas stronghold in southern Gaza.
“Civilians have been killed in Gaza as a result of these [U.S.] bombs,” Biden told CNN’s Erin Burnett. ‘…it’s just wrong.’
Let’s consider the impact of this new Biden Doctrine: it is nothing less than an endorsement of Hamas’s use of human shields.
The President’s message to terrorists around the world is that if they infiltrate mosques, schools, hospitals, homes and refugee camps, the United States of America will protect them.
What an atrocious new precedent… and it didn’t have to be this way.
There were many viable policy alternatives that President Biden could have pursued before validating Hamas’s strategy of maximizing civilian casualties.
BLOCK AID FOR EGYPT, NOT WEAPONS FOR ISRAEL
Instead of cutting off arms transfers to Israel, the Biden administration could have mobilized $1 billion in annual US military aid to Egypt to force President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi to accept refugees from Gaza.
Egypt has all the capacity necessary to temporarily house Palestinians in the vast empty spaces of the Sinai Peninsula, the region just west of Rafah and almost the size of West Virginia. This would allow for the evacuation of civilians and the final defeat of Hamas before the gradual return of Palestinians to Gaza.
To date, Egypt has refused to accept refugees because El Sisi sees elements of the Palestinian population, especially Hamas, affiliated with the Muslim Brotherhood, as an extremist threat to his government.
Egypt has all the capacity necessary to temporarily house Palestinians in the vast empty spaces of the Sinai Peninsula, the region just west of Rafah and almost the size of West Virginia.
Instead of cutting off arms transfers to Israel, the Biden administration could have leveraged $1 billion in annual U.S. military aid to Egypt to force President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi (above, right) to accept refugees from Gaza.
Western government officials have told the Foundation for Defense of Democracies that several Gulf states have even offered El-Sisi an additional $40 billion in economic aid to open Egypt’s northern border to Palestinian refugees.
Still, it hasn’t moved.
American pressure would surely change that calculus.
American aid to Egypt should be conditional on Cairo alleviating humanitarian suffering in Gaza. And el-Sisi should be held accountable for allowing Hamas, for years, to smuggle weapons from Egypt to Gaza, exacerbating the current crisis.
PUT MOSSAD TARGETS ON HAMAS LEADERS
While Palestinians suffer under the control of Hamas, the terrorist group’s leaders live in luxury more than a thousand miles away, in the small Persian Gulf nation of Qatar.
Today, Hamas political chief Ismail Haniyeh and his commanders living in Doha, Qatar, are estimated to be worth $11 billion. They stand in the way of an immediate and temporary ceasefire by refusing to release 132 Israeli hostages still being held in Gaza.
But, perversely, President Biden rewarded Qatar by naming the country “America’s top non-NATO ally” in 2022, despite having harbored Hamas, which was designated a terrorist organization by the United States as early as 1997.
Today, Hamas political chief Ismail Haniyeh (seated above right) and his commanders living in Doha, Qatar, are estimated to be worth $11 billion.
The United States should give Doha a two-week deadline: convince its Hamas guests to release the hostages or the Biden administration will revoke Qatar’s status as a non-NATO country and designate it as a state sponsor of terrorism.
In the long term, the United States should pressure the emir of Qatar to completely oust the Hamas leadership and then let the Mossad deal with them.
STRANGLE HAMAS SPONSORS
According to Israel, the Islamic Republic of Iran sends $100 million to Hamas, $700 million to Hezbollah and tens of millions to Islamic Jihad each year. President Biden can take action today to cut off this terrorist financing channel.
First, the White House could end its appeasement policy toward Iran by halting the release of billions of dollars in oil funds, which were frozen during the Trump administration. These monies finance the Iranian Revolutionary Guard and terrorist proxies throughout the Middle East.
Second, the administration can do more to stop the flow of revenue from illicit oil sales that continues to flow into Iran.
For example, Malaysia’s Prime Minister, who refused to condemn the October 7 massacre, has vowed to maintain ties with Hamas even if it leaves Kuala Lumpur vulnerable to Western sanctions. The US Treasury Department has discovered that Malaysia is buying oil from Tehran in clear defiance of sanctions.
President Biden should set an example for Malaysia by cracking down on this illicit trade that fuels international terrorism.
Instead, the White House took a different approach and abandoned an ally in the process.
Maybe it’s presidential politics: Biden has been desperate to shed the ‘Genocide Joe’ label placed on him by Hamas sympathizers inside and outside the Democratic Party.
He hopes that by betraying Israel, he will win back far-left supporters who are threatening to withdraw their support in November. But this cynical strategy is destined to fail.
Biden will not appease the ‘From the River to the Sea’ radicals on American universities, bring the war in Gaza to a quicker conclusion, or secure the release of a single hostage, dead or alive.
However, it has established a perverse new doctrine that generations of Americans will come to regret.
Mark Dubowitz is the executive director of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. Ben Cohen He is a senior analyst at FDD
