While Biden Pushes Ukraine to Fight, He Demands Israel Surrender

While Biden Pushes Ukraine to Fight, He Demands Israel Surrender
Ukrainian servicemen prepare their weapons during a military training exercise near the front line in the Donetsk region, on Feb. 23, 2024.(Anatolii Stepanov/AFP via Getty Images)
David Harsanyi
2/23/2024
Updated:
2/26/2024
0:00
Commentary

President Joe Biden has not only promised to veto any stand-alone Israeli aid, but he’s reportedly circulating a draft resolution within the U.N. Security Council that would compel the Jewish state to stop its ground offensive in Rafah and, effectively, give Hamas a pass. Beyond that, the United States is also reportedly thinking about circumventing Israel and formally recognizing a Palestinian state.

In other words, while Ukraine is prodded by the United States to fight for every inch of its land, Israel is prodded to commit suicide.

Anyone who dares to suggest that the United States push Ukraine to negotiate a settlement with Russia is framed as a democracy-hating Putin shill. Yet, before we even knew exactly how many Israeli women and children had been murdered, raped, and kidnapped by Hamas, Democrats were demanding Israel negotiate with Palestinians to create a potential three-front Iranian-proxy terror state on its border.

Those who wonder what the endgame of a U.S. proxy war against a nuclear power in Europe might look like are told that the only acceptable outcome is complete victory for Ukraine. The very future of world democracy, we are assured, hinges on the integrity of that nation’s borders.

Israel, though, is asked to surrender its territorial claims and reward those who supported, coordinated, and participated in a massacre of its civilians—which included 30-plus dead U.S. citizens—with a brand-new nation. It is only through this concession that peace can be realized, contends the Western foreign policy elite. Which is weird, considering that former President Donald Trump circumvented the Palestinian problem and forged a historic peace agreement. President Biden immediately reverted to Obama-era Iran coddling—and, well, here we are.

Put it this way: Imagine, if you can, the Biden administration arguing, only weeks after Russian President Vladimir Putin’s invasion, that the only way to “achieve an enduring end to the crisis” and “lasting peace and security” for Ukrainians was to create a new Russian ethnic state in the Donbas.

We are also told that if Mr. Putin is handed even a partial victory, the next thing you know Russians will be marching on Berlin. U.S. troops, we are warned, will be compelled to defend Europe. At the same time, Israel, which has never asked a single U.S. soldier to fight for it, is (yet again) expected to hand its enemies a reprieve.

Allowing Hamas to survive will do nothing to further the prospects of peace for anyone in the region. If Israel stops now, the war against Hamas will have been for naught, because a large contingent of the terror army has retreated into Rafah to hide among civilians, as is their wont. Because the U.N., Gulf theocrats, Iran, and Western powers insist on sending hundreds of millions in aid that is siphoned off by the Islamists, Hamas will reemerge in Gaza—and almost surely in the “West Bank,” should there ever be a Palestinian state.

It also needs to be stressed, however, that what President Biden demands isn’t really a “ceasefire.” It is Israel unilaterally yielding its advantage, because Hamas hasn’t agreed to any cessation of the conflict—and even if it did, its assurances wouldn’t be worth anything. Lest anyone forget, there was a ceasefire in place on Oct. 7, 2023. No, the lesson, once again, is that terror works.

While both Israel and Ukraine have a right to fight for their sovereignty and people, obviously the two conflicts are unique in numerous ways. Not all comparisons work. Jews, for instance, have far stronger historic ties to Samaria and Judea than Ukrainians have to Donetsk or Crimea—even though only one has been asked to surrender land for peace.

Indeed, the only one of these two democracies that bestows full rights to its ethnic minorities is portrayed as the apartheid state. Israel has offered Palestinians massive concessions on numerous occasions, including their own state. So even though my hope is that Mr. Putin is severely weakened by his war of aggression against Ukraine, Israel’s war against Islamism and terror is far more important in the long-term battle for “democracy.”

But the ugly truth is that President Biden’s reelection prospects are threatened by the emerging progressive left and pro-Hamas faction of the Democratic Party. And there is no one, no issue, the president won’t sell out for votes. This is why the administration sends emissaries to pacify the people who cheered the Oct. 7 attack. This is why the White House leaks snippets of President Biden insulting Israel’s (elected) leader in a way he would never think to attack Volodymyr Zelenskyy or Mahmoud Abbas or even the Iranian mullahs.

While backing Ukraine allows Democrats to virtue signal about their love of “democracy,” turning on Israel allows them to appease the growing anti-Western sentiment of their base. It’s only going to get worse in the coming years.

Views expressed in this article are opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.
David Harsanyi is a conservative journalist, syndicated author, and editor. He wrote for the Denver Post for eight years, and edited for The Federalist for more than six years before becoming senior writer at National Review in 2019. Harsanyi authored five books, including “First Freedom: A Ride Through America's Enduring History With the Gun” and “Eurotrash: Why America Must Reject the Failed Ideas of a Dying Continent.”
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