(Official Washington Examiner editorial, July 13) With a barely adequate press conference at the NATO summit, President Joe Biden may or may not have temporarily tamped down the Democrats’ rebellion seeking to remove him from office.
But his comments there on the Israel–Hamas war were a disgrace. Their entire tenor was critical of Israel, with barely a word supporting our ally or denouncing Hamas. He once again failed to make forceful demands for the release of U.S. hostages held by the terrorists. And at a time of massively rising antisemitism, the president failed to put down a moral marker against that vile and virulent prejudice.
Combined with Biden’s frequently unhelpful interference in Israeli war plans and his embarrassing sponsorship of a pier for humanitarian aid that proved to be an utter fiasco, Biden has been an impediment to resolving the conflict after a suitable show of support for Israel that ended a week after Hamas’s barbaric attack last Oct. 7.
Biden’s opening statement included six short sentences on Gaza, with a bare five words about bringing hostages home and a blanket declaration that “this war … should end now.” It was as if the problem is the “war” itself rather than Hamas’s evil and its use of human shields while brutalizing innocent hostages.
Later, Asma Khalid with NPR asked Biden “if there’s anything that you feel personally you wish you would have done differently over the course of the war.”
Biden’s immediate reply was to talk about all of his work with Arab partners to get “more aid and medicine into the Gaza Strip.” What about the need to destroy Hamas? Not a word. But he did manage to get in a dig at Israel right away, claiming it had been “less than cooperative” with aid, even though its army pleaded with Egypt to open its border to aid trucks and helped to set up aid corridors within Gaza itself…. [The full column is at this link.]
