With Israelis in a grueling fight against a dangerous terrorist enemy, Vice President Kamala Harris was dispatched to Dubai to deliver a scolding of our close ally for the benefit of Arab leaders. Her remarks were morally weak and untethered from reality.
In the immediate wake of the October 7 Hamas assault, and again when we gave President Biden credit for his visit to Israel, we argued that the true test of his administration’s pledges to have Israel’s back would come over time, during the slow and arduous — but necessary — process of destroying Hamas.
As time has dragged on, the public comments in support of Israel from administration officials have become more subdued, while the tongue-lashings about Israeli conduct and calls for restraint have become more frequent.
On a visit to Israel last week, Secretary of State Antony Blinken criticized Israel for inflicting too many civilian casualties and reportedly instructed the Israel Defense Forces that the successful tactics they employed in northern Gaza should not be used in the south, which is now where Hamas jihadists and operational leaders are believed to be holed up. He also said Israel didn’t have the “credit” to carry on their mission for several more months. One wonders if 1,000 more dead Jews would be needed to buy Israel more time from Blinken.
In remarks in the United Arab Emirates after meetings with leaders of the UAE, Jordan, Egypt, and the Hamas-sponsoring Iranian ally Qatar, Harris delivered a version of the same message. It was rooted in the same failed Obama-era strategy of trying to show “daylight” with Israel in the groundless hope that it will earn more trust in the Arab world. She reiterated the administration’s “steadfast conviction” that “Israel has a right to defend itself” but then insisted, “Too many innocent Palestinians have been killed. Frankly, the scale of civilian suffering and the images and videos coming from Gaza are devastating.”
The reality is that Israel is going above and beyond its responsibilities to minimize civilian casualties given that it is fighting an enemy that operates from hospitals, U.N. buildings, schools, and residential neighborhoods. Hamas operates this way as a matter of strategy, and among the objectives of that strategy is eliciting just the reaction that it has from Harris. Israel has provided regular warnings to civilians in areas it plans to target, even though it knows doing so will also alert Hamas fighters. It has allowed trucks of humanitarian aid into Gaza, even knowing that the aid will be diverted to Hamas and that Hamas will steal fuel intended for its people so it can fire rockets at Israel. Israelis have put more troops in harm’s way by carrying out a methodical ground invasion rather than simply fighting from the skies. The measures that Israel has taken to protect Palestinian civilian lives have put the lives of their own soldiers and civilians at greater risk and have meant that the operation is taking longer than it would without such precautions. And yet, they are getting attacked by the Biden administration simultaneously for not being surgical enough and for taking too much time — even after having been pressured by the U.S. into pausing combat operations.
Instead of blaming Hamas for the toll on civilians in Gaza — both for launching the war and for using its own civilians as shields — the vice president put the onus on Israel.
Even if one were to look past Harris’s moral obtuseness, her understanding of Gaza — and outlining of the administration’s hopes for its governance after the war — show a lack of understanding of reality.
Harris said, “We cannot conflate Hamas with the Palestinian people.” As a matter of the laws of war, this is a truism; as a statement about public sentiment among Palestinians, it is an absurdity. On October 7, Palestinians were seen taking to the streets to celebrate the attacks. When a dead Israeli was dragged out from a car in Gaza, a crowd started stomping on his dead body; elsewhere, a crowd cheered as Hamas terrorists paraded a semi-naked dead female body through the streets of Gaza (who we now know to be the murdered German-Israeli Shani Louk). Polling also supports the idea that the scenes were representative of the prevailing sentiment among the population. Three-quarters of Palestinians approved of the October 7 attacks, according to a November poll from the Arab World for Research and Development.
Additionally, Harris said after the war, the administration wants to see Gaza and the West Bank unified under a “revitalized” Palestinian Authority and envisions a two-state solution. This is wishful nonsense.
When Israel withdrew from Gaza in 2005, it handed over control to the PA. Within a year, Gazans elected Hamas over the corrupt PA, and within two years, Hamas drove the PA out of Gaza. In the poll taken last month, 90 percent of Gazans said they had a negative view of the PA. On top of this, PA president Mahmoud Abbas is 88 years old, and nobody knows who or what will come after him — no small thanks to his refusal to hold an election since winning his “four-year term” nearly 19 years ago. While one could understand why the current U.S. administration might have a soft spot for octogenarian leaders, the idea of America imposing an unpopular and corrupt government with an elderly leader on a volatile region with a history of terrorism is a recipe for disaster.
As for the Biden-Harris vision for a two-state solution, it is a receding fantasy that Western leaders like to promote so they have something to say about a conflict that offers no easy answers. According to the same poll, just 17 percent of Palestinians said they supported a two-state solution, compared with 75 percent who preferred a Palestinian state “from the river to the sea” — i.e., without Israel.
Instead of genuflecting before Arab autocrats, the Biden administration should deliver one simple message to Israel in its war against Hamas: Get the job done.