Standing up to the American colossus

The Biden administration is working assiduously to block Israel from defeating Hamas or contending coherently or effectively with the growing existential threats it faces from Iran and Iran’s Lebanese and Yemeni proxies. To force Israel to stand down, President Joe Biden’s top advisers are descending on Israel one after another to pressure and coerce Jerusalem to limit its military operations in Gaza, Lebanon and the Red Sea.

Last week National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan was here to hector Israel’s leaders. Sullivan devoted most of his efforts to demanding that Israel move quickly from major combat operations in Gaza to more limited operations directed against specific “high value targets.” The idea is that Hamas can be left in place, more or less, and Israel can just seek a terror master or two to kill and declare victory.

The United States is using the Security Council as an additional cudgel to force Israel to comply with its militarily self-defeating edicts. If Israel doesn’t obey, the United States will permit a U.N. Security Council resolution requiring Israel to stand down to pass, and then Israel will face international sanctions if it continues fighting.

To maintain U.S. support, a senior administration official told the Israeli media last week, Israel needs to massively resupply Gaza and allow life to return to normal for the Palestinians in Gaza (who overwhelmingly support Hamas).

One of Sullivan’s chief demands was that Israel expand the so-called “humanitarian aid” entering Gaza, and permit that aid to enter Gaza directly from Israel. Once Israel buckled to U.S. pressure on that score and opened the Kerem Shalom crossing for additional trucks of supplies to Hamas, the administration began demanding that Israel permit the renewal of “commercial traffic” to Gaza. “The Israelis understand that the more aid that gets in, the more time they’ll have to continue operations in Gaza,” the U.S. official said.

Biden and his advisers know that the term “humanitarian aid” is a euphemism for resupply of Hamas. They know that the goods entering Gaza are transferred to Hamas, which distributes supplies first to its terror cells and units, then to apparatchiks. After Hamas terrorists and agents are supplied, the “humanitarian aid” is hawked to civilians on black markets at a massive markup.

So, by forcing Israel to permit “humanitarian aid” to enter Gaza, Biden and his top officials are compelling Israel to fortify Hamas’s position as the undisputed ruler of the region, who decides who gets what, when and under what circumstances.

This U.S. policy undermines Israel strategically and tactically in two additional ways. First, its demand that supplies enter Gaza facilitates Egypt’s policy of blocking Palestinians from leaving the war zone to seek shelter in third countries. This policy in turn requires Israel to remain in a strategic trap where it is deemed responsible for the welfare of an enemy population at war with its people, and of accepting an endgame that either enables Palestinian terrorists from Hamas to continue to rule Gaza or pretends Palestinian terrorists from Fatah, who are Hamas’s partners in the war against Israel, are not terrorists and are not Hamas’s partners, and agree that they should take control over Gaza.

Second, and in furtherance of this end, by standing with Egypt in blocking Palestinian civilians from exiting to third countries and insisting that Israel resupply Hamas and the Hamas-controlled population in the midst of war, the U.S. compels Israeli forces in the south to fight in heavily populated areas. Writing in Ynet on Sunday, reporter Yoav Zeitoun described how Israeli forces are subjected to constant danger, and are all but incapable of seizing control over battlefields in Khan Yunis and other critical areas in the south because of the U.S. prohibition on moving civilians out of the area. Operating under these U.S.-imposed limitations, the Israel Defense Forces is forced to fight Hamas while Hamas terrorists are protected by human shields. Not only does this endanger the lives of Israel’s soldiers unnecessarily, but given the U.S.’s additional demand that Israel limit civilian casualties to as close to zero as possible, it makes it all but impossible for Israel to win.

Following closely on Sullivan’s heels, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. CQ Brown arrived in Israel to badger their Israeli counterparts still further. According to media accounts of their plans, the two senior officials intend, like Sullivan and Secretary of State Anthony Blinken before them, to pressure Israel to “transition from major combat operations against Hamas to a more limited campaign.”