Can Israel Count on America to Have Its Back?

Israeli soldiers carry the flag-covered coffin of Maya Villalobo during her funeral at the military cemetery in Givatayim, Israel, on Oct. 13, 2023. Francisco Seco/AP

Commentary

On the night of Oct. 12, at the 25th-anniversary celebration of Encounter Books, I was chatting with the event’s honoree, Victor Davis Hanson, a man I have known and hugely admired for two decades, when Victor asked me, “How long will it be before Biden puts the brakes on Israel? Ten Days?”

“Eight,” I shot back, not that I knew.

We were both wrong. It was one day!

On Oct. 13, President Joe Biden told the world on global television and passed the information via his various surrogates that Israel should pause its war on the terrorist group Hamas to allow Gazans to flee and protect themselves.

“The vast majority of Palestinians have nothing to do with Hamas,” according to the president.

Nothing? Oh, really?

In 2007, the Gazans actually elected Hamas, tossing out the Palestinian Authority.

They have been living under this terror regime ever since, with the organization making significant, possibly majority, inroads on the West Bank as well, not that Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas is likely to schedule elections there.

Or perhaps President Biden gets his information from his national security adviser, Jake Sullivan, who, just eight days before the Hamas attacks, blithely told The Atlantic that “the Middle East region is quieter today than it has been in two decades.”

Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.) is calling for Sullivan, who also was deeply involved in the botched Afghanistan withdrawal, to be removed from his post.

Justified as her idea is, it’s unlikely to happen, just as another piece of smart legislation proffered by Rep. Michelle Steel (R-Calif.) is unlikely to pass. Ms. Steel is proposing legislation to cut all U.S. aid for the Palestinian territory until the Palestinian Authority renounces Hamas and recognizes Israel.

“This is common sense,” Ms. Steel said in a statement. “Not a single American taxpayer dollar should be sent to the corrupt, murderous Palestinian Authority until we have full confidence that it will never allow an evil like this to happen again.”

President Donald Trump essentially did that, but the Biden administration evidently feels differently.

President Biden is also likely still trying to preserve in some way or another his administration’s relations with Iran.

Israel, moreover, may not be obeying our president completely. Despite the arrival of Secretary of State Antony Blinken on Israeli soil with the apparent intention of keeping Israel in check, Axios, at least, is reporting that Israel has told the United Nations to evacuate northern Gaza within 24 hours.

This doesn’t sound like a nation about to stand down.

For many years, the Jewish state has done so, acceding to U.S. and global wishes for a “negotiated settlement.” Yet, Hamas never changes its behavior. Now, Israel appears to be fed up. Fool me once, as they say ... well, it was four or five times, maybe more.

Hamas’s 1988 charter, known in English as “The Covenant of the Islamic Resistance Movement,” has been compared to a modern-day “Mein Kampf” in its urgency to kill all Jews, even something called “Jewish trees,” whatever that may be.

Whether for public relations or not, the 2017 version revises this, stating:

“Hamas is of the view that the Jewish problem, anti-Semitism and the persecution of the Jews are phenomena fundamentally linked to European history and not to the history of the Arabs and the Muslims or to their heritage.”

It isn’t clear whether the terrorists who stormed across the border on Oct. 7 would agree.