The most basic function of all governments is to provide for the collective defense of the governed. The most basic foundation of sovereignty is a state’s right to defend its country from aggression. Take away a state’s right to self-defense, and you’ve effectively transformed it into a non-sovereign state.
Six Biden administration actions and policies subvert Israel’s right to self-defense. Whether analysed separately or all together, they make it difficult to avoid the conclusion that the administration’s ultimate end is to undermine to the point of ending Israel’s right to self-defense, and so end Israel’s sovereignty, for all intents and purposes.
The six policies the administration is undertaking relate to the battle in Rafah, Gaza’s border town with Egypt; its posture vis-à-vis the International Criminal Court amidst the ICC’s stated intention of issuing arrest warrants against Israel’s leaders on false war crimes charges; the administration’s effort to coerce Israel into accepting Palestinian Authority control over post-war Gaza as a stepping stone towards the swift establishment of a Palestinian state in Gaza, Judea and Samaria, and parts of Jerusalem; the administration’s policies in relation to Saudi-Israeli normalization; and finally, the administration’s determination to block Israel from taking any effective action to prevent Iran from building a nuclear arsenal.
- Rafah
Sunday, the IDF carried out an airstrike targeting two senior Hamas terrorists in Rafah. Some 45 people Hamas asserts were civilians were also killed in the bombing. Immediately after the incident, the administration harshly criticized Israel for the operation. Vice President Kamala Harris said “the word tragic doesn’t even begin to describe” the loss of human life in the incident. Other senior officials voiced similar revulsion at Israel’s alleged killing of innocent civilians as a result of its killing of two senior terrorists. The U.S. State Department announced it would investigate the incident, which it referred to as “heartbreaking.”
Within moments of the airstrike, IDF forces on the ground were reporting that the fire that caused the deaths of the additional Palestinians was sparked by a secondary explosion. Early assessments were that the explosion was caused by Hamas rockets hidden adjacent to the encampment.
It was also clear, immediately after the bombing, that the operation was not carried out in a humanitarian safe zone, as Hamas alleged. At Israel’s urging, in recent weeks nearly a million residents of Rafah fled to the zones, which the IDF set up to protect them from the crossfire of battle. The bombing was carried out in the war zone, where civilians had already left.
It was also known immediately after the incident that the Air Force used the smallest ordnance permitted to limit to the greatest degree the possibility of the attack causing additional deaths beyond the two terror commanders Israel targeted.
In the two days after the incident, the IDF released intercepted phone conversations between people on the ground who stated outright that the fire in the tents that caused the additional deaths was the result of a secondary explosion of Hamas munitions. Israel played no role in the carnage. Hamas was entirely responsible for everything that had happened.
Given the fact that Israel’s careful prosecution of the war has led to the smallest ratio of civilians to militants killed in the history of modern war, its ally, the United States, could have been expected to give it the benefit of the doubt and not rush to pile on international condemnations of the Jewish state based entirely on Hamas footage and propaganda.
But the fact is that for months, Washington did everything possible to block Israel from carrying out its vital operation in Rafah, knowing all along that Israel cannot defeat Hamas if it leaves the international border under Hamas’s control. The administration’s latest effort to delegitimize Israel’s operation in Rafah by embracing Hamas’s quickly discredited rendition of events follows the administration’s now-established pattern of undermining the operation.
The administration’s tireless efforts to first block Israel from seizing control over Rafah and then embrace Hamas’s lies to criminalize the Jewish state signal that its opposition is not about humanitarian concerns.
If the United States successfully coerces Israel to abstain from controlling Rafah, including the border zone, then Hamas will survive. And if Hamas stays in power, Israel will lose the war. So by undermining Israel’s operation in Rafah, the administration is protecting Hamas from destruction while effectively criminalizing Israel’s war to protect itself from further aggression against Hamas.
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