Biden’s UN Betrayal of Israel is a Victory for Hamas

March 27, 2024

by: Jonathan S. Tobin ~ JNS

Wednesday, 27 March 2024 | Don’t believe the Biden administration’s claim that it hasn’t changed its stance on Israel’s war on Hamas. The US abstention on the vote in the United Nations Security Council [UNSC] for an “immediate cease-fire” in Gaza isn’t just a routine political or diplomatic maneuver. It’s a fundamental betrayal of the US–Israel alliance.

Rather than merely sacrificing Israel’s security, it is also handing a major victory to both Hamas and its Iranian allies. With the UN demanding an end to the war, there is no reason for Hamas to stop trying to hold onto those parts of Gaza it still controls. Nor is there any reason for it to release the hostages it still holds captive, except for a deal that will force Israel to acquiesce to a return—in one form or another—to the pre-October 7 status quo. That will ensure that it gets away with having committed the largest mass slaughter of Jews since the Holocaust, as well as asserting its primacy over Palestinian politics in the foreseeable future.

The administration’s supposed quest for Middle East peace is a sham, since it is essentially anointing an organization pledged to Israel’s destruction and Jewish genocide as the primary voice of Palestinian nationalism. That sends a signal to world that the US is no longer interested in defeating Islamist terrorism or in keeping faith with allies.

A Two-faced Strategy

UNSC resolutions have the force of international law, and if Israel continues its operations to eliminate Hamas—as its government has rightly said it must—this resolution could be used as a basis for international sanctions against the Jewish state. Yet the Biden administration claimed that the resolution, which called for a cessation of fighting for the remaining two weeks of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan (though the world body had nothing to say about Muslim attacks on Jewish holidays like Simchat Torah [rejoicing in the Torah], the day of the October 7 atrocities), as well as the release of the hostages and for the free flow of aid into Gaza, is “non-binding.” In this way, it continues to try and talk out of both sides of its mouth about the war: on the one hand seeking to stop Israel from winning while claiming on the other that it’s still a faithful ally.

Given that Hamas has not ceased its violence and continues to hold Israeli hostages, it can be argued that Israel has a legal right to continue its battle. But Israel’s enemies around the world—at the UN and in the US—aren’t interested in the fine points of international law. What they want is for the fighting to conclude with Hamas still standing with the ability to regroup and rearm, and make good on its promises to keep killing Jews.

While the UN vote must be considered a turning point in the history of relations between the US and Israel, it cannot be considered a surprise. President Joe Biden has been steadily walking away from his initial pledges of support for Israel after the October 7 massacre. At the time, Biden didn’t just condemn the barbaric terrorist, he [originally] agreed with Israel’s government that Hamas must be eliminated.

Letting Hamas Get Away with Murder

Ever since then, Biden and his foreign policy team have shown themselves to be more worried about conforming to a narrative in which the suffering that the Palestinians brought upon themselves by starting a war that included rape, torture and firebombing homes, in addition to killing and kidnapping, invalidates Israel’s right of self-defense or any accountability for barbaric crimes.

The notion that Israel’s counter-offensive into Gaza was “over the top,” as Biden mischaracterized it (let alone the big lie put forward by Hamas propagandists and their Western dupes that it was “genocide”) remains contrary to the facts. Though many Palestinians have died, Israel’s efforts have been more measured than those of any other modern army faced with similar issues related to urban warfare and resulted in historically low levels of civilian casualties relative to those of enemy combatants.

If Hamas is to be defeated—and it must be if justice is to be served and the security of Israelis assured—then the Israel Defense Forces [IDF] must be allowed to finish the job it started after October 7. The Israeli government is right to assert that it has a moral obligation to root it out of its remaining stronghold in Rafah, as well as guarantee that it doesn’t use its tunnel network to reassert control in other parts of Gaza.

But unlike any other war that has been waged by Western forces against Islamist terrorists, the international community appears to be unwilling to tolerate an Israeli victory if it means the elimination of Hamas. The reason why Israel is treated in this way has nothing to do with the graphic pictures of Palestinian suffering or even the inflated statistics about deaths in Gaza supplied by Hamas to its willing accomplices in the corporate media.

At the heart of this betrayal is a belief that Israel and its genocidal Islamist opponents are somehow morally equivalent. Were Biden trying to maintain the alliance with Israel, then he would have continued to assert that Hamas must be defeated before any cease-fire and that any aid going into Gaza—most of which has been stolen by Hamas for use by its remaining forces hidden in the tunnels with the hostages they are holding—must be kept out of its hands.

A morally serious American government would assert that any and all casualties in Gaza are the responsibility of Hamas, not Israel, and that the only way to save the Palestinian people from more suffering is the immediate and unconditional surrender of the terrorists. But for Biden, Vice President Kamala Harris and the liberal media outlets clamoring for a cease-fire are not interested in Hamas’s surrender. They insist that the impact of the war on the Palestinians is more important than ensuring that Gaza is no longer controlled by people who are intent on using it as a platform to carry on a century-old war on the Jews.

Escalating Pressure on Israel

As the New York Times reported, the abandonment of Israel in the UN is just one prong of a multifaceted plan of action being employed by the White House to force Israel to tolerate a Hamas victory in the war. It is prepared, as the Times aptly put it, to “coerce” Israel to give up the war by starting to stop weapons shipments that enable Israel to continue fighting effectively. If that doesn’t work, the article, based on calculated leaks from the administration, said that Biden will then proceed to enact sanctions on Israeli officials.

In plain terms, Biden is contemplating applying measures to Israel that it has used against Russia for its invasion of Ukraine.

This turn against Israel won’t help the Palestinians. Allowing the cease-fire resolution to pass will only deepen Hamas’s resolve to keep fighting and to hold onto the hostages. They deliberately created a situation in which their human shields are being killed or enduring privations precisely in order to orchestrate international pressure against Israel. The more the Palestinians are hurt by the war, the better it is for Hamas.

Nor will it speed up the release of the hostages, since the resolution encourages Hamas to refuse to give in, secure in the knowledge that support from the international community gives them the leverage to hold them in captivity indefinitely until Israel not only pays an exorbitant price in ransom but also acknowledges that Gaza will remain in Hamas’s hands.

Biden’s Political Motives

Biden and his advisers are obsessed with the idea that criticism of his early support for the war will cost him the election because left-wing activists and Arab–Americans—cheered on by liberal media—think that Israel, and not Hamas, is the villain of the war. They have tried to have it both ways for months, simultaneously genuflecting to leftist critics of Israel by validating the smears of its conduct in Gaza while maintaining both support in the UN and the flow of arms.

Biden has, at a minimum, another 10 months left in office. Which could have a devastating impact on the Jewish state’s ability to go on functioning in the world economy. This shift in policy means that if Israel is to defeat Hamas, it will have to do so alone.

Posted on March 27, 2024

Source: (Excerpt of an article originally published by the Jewish News Syndicate on March 26, 2024. Time-related language has been modified to reflect our republication today. See original article at this link.)

Photo Credit: Loey Felipe/UN Photo/jns.org