Did the Israelis tell Joe Biden not to move on Chicago, too? That’s our third-largest city, just as Haifa is Israel’s.
Forget Uncle Bozey for a moment. (But only for a moment; read David’s post from earlier and a killer column from Duane coming up!) This demonstrates Biden’s incompetence on more significant issues than Biden’s usual fabulism. Even the cognitive decline on display here amounts to a secondary issue:
BIDEN: “I made it clear to the Israelis — don’t move on Haifa!”
Haifa is a major city *IN* Israel. pic.twitter.com/BdNgoDlGkM
— RNC Research (@RNCResearch) April 18, 2024
President Biden on Tuesday confused the Israeli port city of Haifa with the last refuge for civilians in the Gaza Strip — Rafah — in a stunning blunder.
The 81-year-old president made the gaffe when asked in a one-on-one interview with Nexstar Media’s Reshad Hudson about his plan to win back pro-Palestinian voters in the wake of Israel’s war against Hamas.
“I’ve been meeting with them, number one,” Biden said. “Number two, I made it clear that we have to vastly increase the amount of food, water, healthcare going into Gaza.”
“And I made it clear to Israelis – don’t move on Haifa,” he added, apparently meaning to say Rafah.
Again, that’s only a secondary blunder. One has to hope Biden was engaging in his usual fabulism, telling lies designed to paint himself as The Awesomest Dude In Any Room. Should we imagine that he really told the Israelis not to invade their own city as part of his demands for US support?
One shudders to think. More likely, Biden didn’t say anything of the sort about Haifa or Rafah. In fact, it might be a safer bet that Biden’s handlers/nurses in the White House kept him as far as possible from actual negotiations, lest Uncle Woozy start making demands that Israel withdraw from the Sinai as a condition for a hostage swap.
The bigger issue here, though, is that Biden’s telling Israel not to go into Rafah, even if he’s too non compos mentis to get the names correct. Rafah is where Hamas has holed itself up after starting a war with Israel by raping and murdering over 1200 unarmed Israelis on October 7 and kidnapping 250 of them. Israel has already smashed Hamas in Gaza City, Khan Younis, and other lesser parts of the Gaza Strip, but Hamas still has four organized brigades in Rafah, not to mention what’s left of the 130-odd hostages they still hold.
This is sheer idiocy, far worse than mistaking Rafah for Haifa. Hamas has made clear that they will destroy Israel and enslave the Jews if they survive long enough to have the opportunity. That’s not hyperbole, either — that is the plan Hamas had on October 7. Literally, Haaretz reported almost two weeks ago, in a stunning exposé that almost no media outlet has picked up since:
One issue was how to treat the Israelis. “In dealing with the Jewish settlers on Palestinian land, there must be a distinction in attitudes toward [the following]: a fighter, who must be killed; a [Jew] who is fleeing and can be left alone or be prosecuted for his crimes in the judicial arena; and a peaceful individual who gives himself up and can be [either] integrated or given time to leave.” They agreed that, “This is an issue that requires deep deliberation and a display of the humanism that has always characterized Islam.”
More specifically, the issue of a brain drain was discussed. “Educated Jews and experts in the areas of medicine, engineering, technology and civilian and military industry should be retained [in Palestine] for some time and should not be allowed to leave and take with them the knowledge and experience that they acquired while living in our land and enjoying its bounty, while we paid the price for all this in humiliation, poverty, sickness, deprivation, killing and arrests,” the conference’s concluding statement asserted.
Hamas has made clear that it will remain an implacable enemy with ambitions of annihilation and enslavement. Israel has to destroy this enemy on that basis alone. Hamas started the war and uses Gazan civilians and civilian structures to hide themselves, a war crime that makes Hamas responsible for the consequences of the war it started, not Israel.
At the same time, Iran launched an unprecedented and massive direct missile attack on Israel, part of an escalating tit-for-tat that began with Iran’s involvement in wars started by their proxy terror networks Hamas and Hezbollah. Biden is also demanding that Israel do nothing about that too. Perhaps that might make sense if Biden was encouraging Israel to finish the war with Hamas first, but he’s publicly demanding they end that war with Hamas still operational on their border, too. In other words, he wants Israel to do nothing except sit around and take more such attacks without making a fuss about them.
That’s not just stupid, it’s suicidally insane for Israel. This isn’t the advice of an ally; it’s a demand from someone who wants to sacrifice an ally in order to improve his standing in Tehran and Dearbornistan. It’s almost as cowardly and craven as Biden’s Kabul bug-out, abandoning 14,000 Americans to the Taliban and costing the lives of 13 American troops.
Biden’s cognitive decline is a real problem, an embarrassment, and a national security risk. But it’s his cowardice and incompetence that’s getting people killed and emboldening our enemies, and that’s the biggest crisis facing the US.