If we observe the rule, we must dismiss the administration’s nod to the value of dispatching with a figure implicated in the slaughter of Americans.
There’s a rule of thumb that loosely prescribes disregarding everything that precedes the “but” in a compound sentence. The introduction is a throat-clearing concession designed to soften the blow of what’s about to follow, and what follows invariably contradicts the introduction. If we observe that rule, Axios’s latest report on how the Biden White House is reacting to Israel’s targeted assassinations of the leaders of U.S.-designated terrorist groups is a doozy of a “but.”
Reporter Barak Ravid revealed on Friday that Joe Biden insisted upon holding a “tough” call with Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu in which the president conveyed how “deeply frustrated” the administration is by Israel’s actions.
“U.S. officials don’t mourn the deaths of either Hezbollah’s top military commander Fuad Shukr, who was involved in killing 241 U.S. Marines in Beirut in 1983, or Hamas political leader Ismail Haniyeh, who celebrated the Oct. 7 massacre,” the report read. Here it comes . . .
“But,” the subsequent paragraph began, “they feel that Netanyahu kept Biden in the dark over his plans to carry out the assassinations after leaving the impression last week that he was attentive to the president’s request to focus on getting a Gaza deal.”
Given the observable frustration Biden has allowed himself to display in his reaction to the assassination of the political leader of Hamas, Israel was probably well-advised to preserve the operational security around the plot that culminated after months of preparation in the neutralization of Ismail Haniyeh.
Likewise, the air strike that killed Shukur — a murderer with American blood on his hands and a $5 million bounty on his head — should be met with applause in Washington. But insofar as the Biden White House is wedded to a paralyzing fear of escalation, divulging Israel’s plans to dispatch with the Hezbollah commander might have jeopardized the mission.
If we observe the “before the but” rule, we must summarily dismiss the administration’s perfunctory nod to the value of dispatching with a figure implicated in the slaughter of American service personnel.
Even when Israel is doing precisely what its critics insist it should by conducting pinpoint operations designed to eliminate individual terrorist actors with minimal collateral damage, it is still subjected to finger-wagging. The very act of pursuing the terms Israel established for its own victory in the war the 10/7 massacre imposed on it — the destruction of Hamas — represents an obstacle to peace, in the Biden administration’s estimation.
The White House seems to define peace as the absence of active hostilities. Israel defines it as the absence of threat.
That pathological commitment to process for process’s sake has now led White House officials to feed Axios a narrative that all but mourns the demise of the executors and exporters of terror. It may be possible to iron out durable peace terms with a Palestinian leadership in postwar Gaza that is no longer under Iran’s influence. It’s abundantly clear by now that there are no such terms to be established with the constellation of Tehran-led terror groups in the Middle East.
At least, that outcome will be out of reach while combat operations against Hamas are under way. Unfortunately, the Biden White House seems to have all but abandoned its initial support for the elimination of that terrorist group. According to Ravid, “Biden also warned Netanyahu that if he escalates again, he shouldn’t count on the U.S. to bail him out.”
In other words, if Iran reacts to future Israeli efforts to deter Hezbollah, retaliate against the Houthis, or ensure that Hamas can never again be a political and military force in the Gaza Strip, Israel will be on its own. To this incendiary provocation, Ravid closed, “The White House declined to comment.”
Not good enough. Whoever Ravid is speaking with is setting U.S. policy on terms that are — or should be — unacceptable to the majority of Americans who support the elimination of the terrorists (who target and kill Americans) on the battlefield. The White House must make itself clearer. That is, unless everything before the “but” is bull.