Avi Benlolo: Israel can't afford to let Hamas win, no matter what Joe Biden says

Article content

President Joe Biden is engaging in a risky game of chicken with his greatest ally in the Middle East, Israel. While his support for Israel’s war effort has been commendable, in recent days, his rebuke of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has become sharper. A few days ago, he had the audacity to say of Netanyahu, “he must pay more attention to the innocent lives being lost as a consequence of the actions taken…. He’s hurting Israel more than helping Israel.”

Given this false narrative, it’s Biden who is hurting Israel by failing to recognize the impossibility of the situation. To back Israel in destroying Hamas on one hand, and tell its prime minister to effectively stop the military campaign against what is arguably the most dangerous terrorist group on the planet, is duplicitous. Now, the Senate majority leader of the United States, Chuck Schumer, is reinforcing Biden’s message by calling for early elections in Israel, crossing the Rubicon of respecting the nation’s sovereignty.

But the doublespeak continues. Biden and the White House are denying setting any red lines to withhold arms shipments. At the same time, it’s discouraging Israel from clearing out the hornets’ nest in Rafah, near Gaza’s southern border with Egypt. Leaving Rafah intact with the Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar and four of the terror group’s battalions in charge would be suicidal for Israel. Allowing the terrorist group to reconstitute and re-establish control of Gaza would disallow Israel a decisive victory. Why would anyone in their right mind agree?

Most significantly, since Hamas has rejected all recent ceasefire initiatives, it’s abundantly clear that the return of 134 Israeli hostages is dependent on military intervention. Undoubtedly, Sinwar and his thugs are keeping them close by as human shields, for their final stand. What’s more, like any government, Israel is required to re-establish security for the towns and villages near Gaza, where some 80,000 civilians reside.

Few military experts agree with Biden’s presumption. In their view, Israel has quickly figured out the most effective methodology to conduct urban warfare against an unprecedented combat situation. It must confront terrorists who are hiding behind civilians, scurrying about in hundreds of miles of tunnels and weaponizing every building and road within its reach.

While Israel is doing everything within its power to preserve civilian lives, Hamas wants as many civilian deaths as possible to sow division among Israel’s allies. Speaking to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) this week, Netanyahu pressed the point that Israel goes out of its way to protect civilians. He said, “for Israel, every civilian death is a tragedy. For Hamas, every civilian death is a strategy.”

Netanyahu’s right when he says it’s wrong and immoral to hold Israel to a standard not applied to any other country on the matter of avoiding civilian casualties. Those nations that say Israel has a right to exist, but disallow it from exercising the right to defend afforded every other nation on Earth. For this basic reason, Israel is unified in its desire to bring security back by destroying and dismantling Hamas.

Netanyahu’s message at AIPAC to world leaders was: “You cannot say you support Israel’s right to exist and to defend itself and then oppose Israel when it exercises that right. You cannot say you support Israel’s goal of destroying Hamas and then oppose Israel when it takes the actions necessary to achieve that goal. You cannot say that you oppose Hamas’s strategy of using civilians as human shields and then blame Israel for the civilian casualties that result from this Hamas cynical strategy.”

Hamas plays on world sympathy by allowing its people to starve on the street. It could have laid down its arms and surrendered to Israel to end the fighting. It could have allowed for a ceasefire and a return of the 134 Israeli hostages in these last few months. It could have allowed the aid and humanitarian convoys to reach the civilian population peacefully. It has not.

In all this, it’s become clear that Hamas’s Islamist fervor that preaches death to the last man, woman or child is an element the West refuses to understand. This week, on Parliament Hill in Ottawa, we heard the same sentiment from dangerous radicals right here in Canada, threatening our national security, while our government stands by.

Interrogation videos of Hamas terrorists who participated in the killing of women and children on Oct. 7 shockingly reveal the banality in which Hamas terrorists murdered. Not dissimilar to the fervor demonstrated by Nazis to kill as many Jews as possible, in interrogation videos, Hamas soldiers hardly flinch when describing themselves raping women.

They have been taught to hate Jews with a religious fervor since birth. Their hatred was aided by Hamas-run camps for children, an education system funded by the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA), and a closed society that lived and breathed a hatred for Israel. Biden should know this is the crux of the matter. Israel has been left with very little choice but to destroy an enemy that is cruel, religiously motivated and willing to put its own civilian population in harm’s way.

National Post

Avi Benlolo is the founder and CEO of The Abraham Global Peace Initiative.