There’s a famous comic from 2014, during the last major war between Israel and Hamas. It was done by cartoonist A.F. Branco, and it depicted then-Secretary of State John Kerry sitting between Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and a member of Hamas. The Hamas terrorist has a baby strapped to him with dynamite; he holds a paper reading, “DEMANDS: DEATH TO ALL JEWS.” Kerry is asking Netanyahu, “Could you at least meet him halfway?”
A.F. Branco. LegalInsurrection.com. @2014.
The more things change, the more they stay the same.
This weekend, Rep. Pramila Jayapal, chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, appeared on CNN, where she was asked about why there hasn’t been more international outrage over Hamas’ systematic rape of Israeli women. The accounts of Hamas rapes have been legion — over the weekend, 39-year-old Yoni Saadon told the U.K.’s Sunday Times that he saw a beautiful woman “and eight or 10 of the fighters beating and raping her. She was screaming, ‘Stop it already! I’m going to die anyway from what you are doing, just kill me!’ When they finished,” Saadon said, “they were laughing, and the last one shot her in the head.”
Jayapal stated, “I think we have to be balanced about bringing in the outrages against Palestinians.”
Balance, you see, is the key.
Balance in all things.
Never mind the new reports emerging from hostages about just what they experienced in Gaza at the hands of Hamas. According to the Daily Mail, “For weeks, they were starved, beaten, drugged, branded and made to watch footage of Hamas terrorists invading their homeland with weapons pointed to their heads, until the moment was right for the terror group.” One hostage was operated on by a veterinarian. Many of the hostages were kept with supposed civilians in the Gaza Strip, giving the lie to the hard-and-fast distinction between Gaza’s Hamas members and the civilian population.
But still, why can’t the Israelis meet their Jew-hating terrorist enemies halfway?
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Increasingly, this seems to be the logic of the Biden White House. Although, to be clear, they aren’t actually asking Israel to meet the Palestinians halfway — they’re asking them to meet them 80% of the way. As Israel’s offensive against Hamas renews in Southern Gaza, the White House has now ratcheted up its absurd and continuous demands for Israel to do a better job protecting civilians, as though Israel is in the business of murdering civilians the same way Hamas is or as though Israel isn’t taking insane precautions to avoid their killing. Israel is actually taking more precautions to avoid civilian deaths than any army in modern history, as Ron Dermer, Israeli Minister of Strategic Affairs, pointed out over the weekend.
“I think what the Israeli army has done — in prosecuting this war is unprecedented in the history of warfare,” Dermer stated. “When you have an enemy right on your border, and you’re doing everything to get the civilians of that enemy out of harm’s way, I don’t think any other country, including the United States — I don’t know if you ever faced a situation like this — would take such great care.”
Yet Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin spent the weekend warning the Israelis that the government risks “strategic defeat” in Gaza even if they win a “tactical victory” because Palestinians might be driven “into the arms of the enemy.” This, naturally, creates a catch-22: Israel can’t get rid of Hamas without civilians dying, specifically because Hamas wants civilians to die; if Israel does get rid of Hamas and civilians die, by Austin’s logic, Israel will suffer a “strategic defeat”; if Israel doesn’t get rid of Hamas, Israel will suffer an actual defeat.
That’s a no-win scenario.
And yet the White House seems eager to provide Israel with no-win scenarios. Thus, the Biden administration is reportedly encouraging Israel to restore humanitarian aid into Gaza at the same levels as they did during the recent ceasefire. That’s political idiocy.
First off, it removes all incentive for Hamas to come back to the table: If the aid is something Hamas wants, since they steal it all, giving them the aid while Hamas continues to hold hostages is idiotic.
Second, Israel is currently at war. The fuel the U.S. wants shipped into Gaza goes largely to Hamas. Then, of course, the media lie about it, leading to awkward exchanges.
A Sky News reporter berated an IDF spokesman, saying residents would not be able to access the digital map of Gaza the IDF published because residents didn’t have “power to power up their cell phones.”
The IDF spokesman responded by noting, “All of your viewers saw our hostages being paraded through the streets as they were released to Israel over those seven nights and hundreds of Gazans holding their phones videoing them. So clearly, there’s enough power to power their phones when they’re parading our hostages throughout Gaza. Now that same power to their phones will be to get the maps, download the maps, look at the flyers.”
The Sky News reporter immediately shut down the interview.
Then there’s the no-win scenario being pressed forward by the White House after Hamas falls — the supposed option of the Palestinian Authority taking over in the Gaza Strip. Vice President Kamala Harris, fresh off her disquisitions on the power of school buses and Venn Diagrams, claimed we have to “revitalize the PA.
Revitalize the PA? The PA doesn’t even have full control of its citizens in Judea and Samaria.
The Arab world thinks Mahmoud Abbas, president of the PA, is a joke — and so do the people he rules over. If elections were held in the West Bank today, Hamas would likely win.
All of this is silly nonsense.
And the White House knows it is silly nonsense.
In fact, because the radical Muslim world perceives the White House’s weakness, they’re pushing. Hard.
According to the Associated Press:
Three commercial ships in the Red Sea were struck by ballistic missiles fired from Houthi-controlled Yemen on Sunday and a U.S. warship shot down three drones in self-defense during the hourslong assault, the U.S. military said. Responsibility for the attack was claimed by the Houthi rebels, who are backed by Iran. …
In a statement, U.S. Central Command said the attacks “represent a direct threat to international commerce and maritime security. They have jeopardized the lives of international crews representing multiple countries around the world.” It said the three commercial ships and their crews are connected to 14 countries.
According to Central Command, the USS Carney, a Navy destroyer, detected a ballistic missile fired from Houthi-controlled areas of Yemen at the Bahamas-flagged bulk carrier Unity Explorer. The missile hit near the ship. Shortly afterward, the Carney shot down a drone headed its way, although it’s not clear if the destroyer was the target. The drone was also launched from Yemen.
Now, in a normal time, this would be an act of supreme idiocy. The United States Navy remains the world’s foremost guardian of the freedom of the seas; the Bab el-Mandeb Strait is the route by which 10% of all global trade passes. Attacking the U.S. Navy directly is absolutely insane.
Unless you believe that the United States is weak.
So why would the terrorists believe that?
Perhaps because the Democratic Party’s base is showing sympathy for terrorism.
The latest Gallup poll shows that 50% of Americans approve of Israel’s military action in Gaza, with 45% disapproving — but there is a heavy partisan breakdown here. 71% of Republicans agree with Israel’s actions; just 36% of Democrats do. What’s more, just 30% of people aged 18 to 34 do, compared with 67% who don’t; and only 30% of people of color do, compared with 64% who don’t. 55% of Democrats think the U.S. should send more humanitarian aid to the Palestinians, compared with just 12% who think more military aid should be sent to Israel.
Meanwhile, domestic Muslims are mobilizing to pressure the Biden administration.
According to Axios, “Muslim American leaders from Michigan, Minnesota, Arizona, Wisconsin, Florida, Georgia, Nevada, and Pennsylvania are expected to meet in Dearborn, Mich.” to launch what they call an #AbandonBiden campaign. “Leaders from swing states,” they say, “will work together to guarantee Biden’s loss in the 2024 election.”
It should be noted, by the way, that the leaders of this campaign have their own ugly histories. According to Jewish Insider, one of the leaders, Hassan Shibly, was forced to step down as a local head of the Council on American-Islamic Relations for alleged domestic abuse and sexual misconduct and calls Israel “Zionist ISIS”; several of the leaders supported October 7.
This is the kind of action the terrorists are looking for. They believe if they create enough trouble, they’ll get Americans thinking twice about supporting Israel.
This is nothing new, of course. In fact, it was precisely Osama Bin Laden’s strategy in the 1990s. He believed America was a “paper tiger and after a few blows ran in defeat.” An hour-long interview with Bin Laden in May 1998 documents this: “Bin Laden believes that what we consider to be terrorism is just the amount of violence required to get the attention of the American people. His aim is to get Americans to consider whether continued support of Israel is worth the bloodshed he promises.” Bin Laden told the interviewer, “So we tell the Americans as people and we tell the mothers of soldiers and American mothers in general that if they value their lives and the lives of their children, to find a nationalistic government that will look after their interests and not the interests of the Jews.”
This tactic seems to be working, at least with the members of the political Left. That’s why members of the Progressive Caucus have to downplay the mass rape of women — because they want to cave in precisely the way Hamas, the Houthis, and Iran wish them to cave, but they don’t want to lose all moral credibility. So instead, they sort-of condemn rape — but they have to make sure to retain balance.
Cowardice requires balance, after all.