Israel has lost the initiative in its defensive war against Hamas terrorists in the Gaza Strip as conclusively demonstrated in the ongoing confusion in the release of hostages.
They are fighting our fight. Biden should turn them loose, but that’s not going to happen.
The Friday hostage release was made, but on Saturday, Hamas had refused to release more of them, alleging there were too few relief trucks delivering supplies to Gaza. This, despite at least two hundred trucks having entered the Strip. Those objections were overcome and the Saturday release was made later that night. A third group of hostages was released on Sunday. (READ MORE from Jed Babbin: Biden Is Bankrolling the Ayatollahs)
In three releases by Hamas, only one of the presumed dozen American hostages — four-year old Abigail Edan — was among them. That is an unmissable middle-finger salute to President Biden.
Israel needs to recover the initiative if it is to achieve its stated goals of killing Hamas leaders, destroying its infrastructure, and ensuring Hamas is incapable of again threatening Israel. At this point, those goals appear to be unachievable.
So how did we get here?
There are several reasons the Israelis find themselves in this almost impossible position. First among them is the unrelenting pressure from President Joe Biden, Secretary of State Tony Blinken, and National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan to compromise and enter cease-fire agreements.
Have you noticed that there are no announced hostage rescues? It’s because of U.S. pressure that the Israelis haven’t attempted to rescue the hostages. It’s also because some idiots — i.e., Biden & Co. — must have convinced Israel that it had to stop gathering intelligence on hostage locations using drone aircraft.
The other reasons can be summed up in the fact that there are too many fools stirring the pot. The Qataris — famous for hosting both a large U.S. Air Force Base and the leader of Hamas, Ismail Haniyeh (now reportedly in Tehran) — have set themselves up as the middle men to negotiate with Iran and Hamas on the release of hostages. Iran will not even talk directly with the Israelis or us.
Egypt is also involved in the negotiations because they are reportedly transporting some hostages to Israel and because they are dead set on not letting Gaza residents — who include members of Hamas — into their country.
Iran, of course, has Hamas under its control so it prevented the release of any U.S. citizens in the Friday, Saturday, and Sunday hostage releases. Why is Biden silent on this? He should be demanding the release of the U.S. hostages as well as the others.
As you would expect, every nation whose citizens are Hamas hostages are also involved, some — such as Thailand — in direct communication with the Iranian government. That, according to Mark Regev, a close adviser to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, is the reason the Thai citizens were released on Friday.
If that weren’t complicated enough, the United Nations has its finger in the soup, somehow “managing” and monitoring the aid shipments into Gaza. (READ MORE: Israel Fights, Too Many Democrats Rage)
Add to that the report — so far unverified — that Turkey is planning to launch a flotilla of ships and boats toward Israel to break the Israeli sea blockade on the Gaza Strip. The last time the Turkish government tried to do that was in 2010 with a ship named the Mavi Marmaria. In that incident, the ship was seized by Israeli special forces (probably Squadron 13, their equivalent of our SEALs). Shots were fired, nine Turkish terrorist supporters were killed and at least a dozen were wounded.
Israel was condemned for the raid by Turkey and the United Nations for killing the nine in “extra-legal, arbitrary, and summary execution.” If the new Turkish fleet is launched, the results will be worse for Israel unless Biden orders U.S. naval forces to block their way.
The Israelis are quietly trying to resolve the matter with Biden, the Qataris, the UN and pretty much every other nation with people held hostage that are interfering.
Neither the Qataris nor the Iranians or Hamas can be trusted.
It’s hard to second-guess the Israelis at this point but they must realize that they have to take a far harder line against Hamas and its Iranian bosses. To regain the initiative, Israel should set a very short deadline — perhaps two hours — in the event Hamas delays another hostage release.
Wars end when one side is defeated and is compelled to accept defeat.
The stated alternative to meeting the Israeli deadline would be an immediate resumption of military action against Hamas in Gaza. That would include drones gathering intelligence on the location of hostages in real time.
Hamas is undoubtedly moving hostages, perhaps more than once a night, to new hidden locations to prevent their rescue. We should be — and probably aren’t — dedicating several of our best spy satellites to help the Israelis find out where the hostages are in real time so that rescue missions can be launched.
At this point, Hamas and Iran hold all the cards. They can stretch out the supposedly four-day cease fire agreement by offering more hostage releases (and delay them on whatever false grounds they can come up with). Biden would certainly support any extension of the cease-fire.
There is a lot Biden can do to help the hostage releases and rescues, but it’s a dead-bang certainty that he’ll take none of the following actions.
First Biden should, as indicated above, reposition U.S. spy satellites to help locate the hostages.
Second, Biden should move U.S. naval forces and array them to block the proposed Turkish flotilla. That would send a strong signal to Turkey and to Iran. (Iran reportedly attacked an Israeli-owned ship in the Indian Ocean with a drone on Friday).
Third, Biden should give the Israelis a go-ahead signal to rescue whichever of the hostages they can. American lives are at stake, so we should — with our SEALs and British SAS forces already in Israel — join in the hostage rescue missions if the Israelis want the assistance. Israeli special forces are more than capable of launching those missions, successfully, alone.
Fourth, Biden should tell Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer that the House-passed bill containing only Israeli aid should be passed immediately, instead of insisting on a package deal containing Ukraine aid and “border security” funding which will do nothing to secure our southern border. (READ MORE: Killing Hamas)
Biden is playing a very dangerous game, dangerous to Israel’s future and to our national security. A New York Times Sunday editorial began with the sentence, “It is said that wars end when both sides conclude they have nothing more to gain by fighting.” It goes on to say, as Biden has, that a two-state solution is the only means of reaching a lasting peace between Israel and the Palestinians.
That is profoundly wrong. Wars end when one side is defeated and is compelled to accept defeat. And that may not be possible even in this case because the war Islam is fighting against the West is, at its core, an ideological and religious war. As I have been writing since 2006, unless the enemy’s ideology is defeated, there can be no peace regardless of any “two-state solution.”
Unless the Israelis can destroy Hamas in Gaza — and kill Hamas’s leaders wherever they are located in Gaza or Tehran — they will never regain the initiative in their constant battle against terrorism. They are fighting our fight. Biden should turn them loose, but that’s not going to happen.