The Free World Needs a Strong America and Safe Israel

Everyone now knows that Biden’s faculties are impaired, but his politics have always been defective.

By: Ruthie Blum

U.S. President Joe Biden was at it again on Thursday, showing the world observing the Washington NATO summit that he’s unfit for his job. It didn’t help matters that his first solo Q and A with reporters in seven months was dubbed sarcastically ahead of time by Bloomberg journalist Justin Sink as his “big boy press conference.”

Nor did it do him any favors that National Security Communications Adviser John Kirby and White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre appropriated the condescending description. Naturally, this sparked much ridicule. It was thus hard to blame Sky News host Danica De Giorgio for asking, “Will they take him to potty training next?”

On the other hand, all of the above was in keeping with the first lady’s attitude toward her husband when he completed his cringe-inducing performance during the June 27 presidential debate.

“You answered all the questions!” Dr. Jill cheered in the singsong of a nursery-school teacher. “You knew all the facts!”

Apparently, then, Biden’s inner circle had no recourse but to pray that Joey would be kindergarten-ready by July 5, when he sat down for a one-on-one with ABC’s “This Week” anchor George Stephanopoulos. To their dismay, the president’s appearance—made even more ridiculous by his deep orange makeup—did nothing to restore confidence in the president’s cognitive capabilities.

On the contrary, it caused even Stephanopoulos to join the growing chorus of journalists and other Democrats to remark, “I don’t think [Biden] can serve four more years.”

His confusion during and after the NATO summit (where he referred to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy as “Putin” and said he wouldn’t have appointed Donald Trump as his V.P. if “she” weren’t capable of taking over if the need arose) not only reinforced the sense that Biden shouldn’t run for re-election, but hit home the horror that he is currently the commander-in-chief of all U.S. armed forces.

You don’t need to be a neurologist—or a political scientist, for that matter—to grasp that whether the man in the Oval Office is wearing “big boy pants” or adult diapers, the policies of his administration have been an unmitigated disaster, certainly where Israel is concerned.

Even many of those who believed nine months ago, when Hamas committed the worst atrocities against Jews since the Holocaust, that he and his team were treating Israel like the true ally it is have come to realize that Washington’s bear hug has been more like a stranglehold.

Biden was actually clear about this, despite his overall haze at the press conference. Asked by NPR White House correspondent Asma Khalid, in a Muslim headscarf, about whether there’s anything he “feels personally” he wished he’d done differently during the course of the war in Gaza, the president replied, “[A]s you recall, from the very beginning, I immediately—I went to Israel, but I also got in immediate contact with el-Sisi in Egypt. I met with the king of Jordan. I met with most of the Arab leaders to try to get a consensus going as to what had to be done to deal with getting more aid and food and medicine into the Gaza Strip. And we pushed it really hard. And Israel occasionally was less than cooperative.”

Senility intact but irrelevant in relation to the administration’s skewed view of Israeli behavior, the president didn’t need a teleprompter to mumble a roughly accurate version of his team’s mendacious talking points. Normally, these would have been quoted fawningly as gospel. But they simply couldn’t compete with the gasp-inducing gaffes that made Biden’s Cabinet secretaries blanch and the Democratic Party as a whole search for the right carrots and sticks to cause Biden to quit the race.

No wonder his tweet the following day, written by some staffer who’d do well to be on the lookout for alternative employment come November, elicited barely a yawn. After all, it’s hard to take Biden’s statements seriously anymore, regardless of whose keyboard pecked them out.

“Six weeks ago, I laid out a comprehensive framework for how to achieve a ceasefire and bring the hostages home,” read his post on X. “There is still work to do and these are complex issues, but that framework is now agreed to by both Israel and Hamas. My team is making progress and I’m determined to get this done.”

Never mind that Hamas hadn’t really consented. Instead, the terrorist group added what Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said the next night were 29 changes to the framework.

Bibi pointed this out in his press conference on Saturday evening, in which he announced that Israeli security forces had “attacked a target in Gaza today in order to eliminate Muhammad Deif and his deputy Rafa’a Salameh. While there is no absolute certainty yet that they were eliminated, I would like to assure you that one way or another, we will reach the entire Hamas leadership.”

He went on: “Mohammed Deif is an arch-murderer, the Hamas chief-of-staff, the No. 2 in the chain of command. It was Deif who planned and led the Oct. 7 massacre and many additional terrorist attacks. His hands are soaked in the blood of many Israelis.”

Since he made that statement, Palestinian sources have acknowledged that Salameh was indeed killed in the strike, though Deif’s death hasn’t been confirmed. What’s indisputable, however, is that such military pressure is crucial to Israeli leverage in the hostage-release negotiations.

And assassinating Deif, if the operation succeeded, is precisely the message that Israel needs to convey to Hamas—one that Team Biden keeps trying to drown out through digs at the Netanyahu government and winks at Israel’s enemies.

What happened a mere four hours after Netanyahu’s declaration that he wouldn’t budge on his red lines made everything else suddenly pale in comparison. While addressing supporters at a campaign rally in Pennsylvania, Trump was nearly killed by a sniper.

Thankfully, the assassination attempt failed. Miraculously, Trump turned his head at the split second that the shot was fired, so the bullet grazed his ear, but missed his brain. One hopes that Deif wasn’t so lucky.

Which brings us to the problem of moral equivalence in general and that which the Biden administration has been applying to Israel and Gaza specifically. (The progressives in the Democratic Party don’t bother with false comparisons; they simply consider Israel to be culpable of all crimes.)

Killing individuals or groups who set out to annihilate you, especially if they manage to accomplish part of their mission, is a worthy aim. Understanding, empathizing with or appeasing them is exactly the opposite.

It is therefore good to wish Deif dead and be happy that Trump’s would-be assassin was taken out. It is honorable to battle forces of evil, and shameful to succumb to their blackmail. The concept isn’t all that complicated.

When he was president, Trump’s less-than-complex instincts led him to starve the regime in Tehran of the resources that his predecessor, Barack Obama, had heaped on it in order to cut America down to the size of its inferiors. To the amazement of his detractors, the same gut feelings—coupled with top-notch advisers—resulted in the Abraham Accords.

When Biden took the reins, he resuscitated Obama’s “leading from behind” doctrine. And here we are.

Everyone now knows that Biden’s faculties are impaired, but his politics have always been defective. Replacing him with Kamala won’t make the slightest bit of difference on that score.

Nor can eradicating Trump—through lawfare or bloodshed—obfuscate the need of the free world for a strong America and safe Israel.

          (JNS.org)