I understood and agreed with the criticism aimed at the Biden administration last Saturday when it took half a day for the President of the United States to offer any kind of official statement condemning the coordinated, murderous invasion of Israeli neighborhoods, communities, businesses, and homes committed by Hamas terrorists. The deafening silence from the White House was unacceptable from every angle.
From a moral perspective, it was egregiously passive. For the leader of a progressive movement that prides itself on the silly pretension it champions both women and human rights, the sight of the unfolding horror demanded immediate, thunderous condemnation.
From a strategic perspective, it was more than a little revealing. While Biden surrogates vowed repeatedly that the $6 billion the administration just unfroze and sent to Iran had not gone to fund the October 7th assault, the optics are horrendous for America. Money is fungible. We have sent $6 billion to a country that is directly funding terror attacks on one of our two greatest allies. Good grief.
From a political perspective, it was a nightmare. Joe Biden has been dogged his entire term for being completely unaware of his surroundings and utterly incapable of conducting the duties of his office with alertness and competence. He's known to sleep in on weekends, has taken more vacation days than any president in history, and naps frequently. His feebleness has become an international embarrassment, with multiple countries laughing at his weakness. No one in Israel was laughing Saturday.
But it wasn't just President Biden that deserved harsh criticism for his response, or lack of response to the Palestinian terror attacks. Palestinian-friendly lawmakers in the Democrat caucus were first silent, then intentionally cryptic in their words.
Representative Ilhan Omar, who has a history of pro-Palestinian, anti-Semitic sloganeering since coming to Congress, offered what appeared to be a condemnation of the slaughter in Israel. But upon close inspection, she did more than that.
Note the words, "such senseless violence will only repeat the back and forth cycle we've seen." It is appropriate that she deems the actions of Hamas terrorists to be "senseless violence." It is wholly inappropriate and outrageous that she suggests they are furthering a "back and forth," given that it attempts to indict Israel for similar actions.
While it is true that innocent Palestinians have died as the result of Israeli military operations over the years, I would ask Omar to point to one incident where Israel conducted sneak attacks on purely civilian targets for the sole purpose of murdering innocent people. This is the conduct and character of one side and one side only. Her intimation otherwise reveals a stunning ability to draw moral equivalence between terror attacks and the military response they provoke.
Meanwhile, her fellow Democrat Representative Ayanna Pressley - a woman who has repeatedly engaged in slanderous attacks against Israel from the House floor - offered thinly-veiled equivalence as well:
Her call for "immediate ceasefire and de-escalation" is framed as an appeal for peace. But in actuality, it would (as I suspect she knows) accomplish the precise opposite. Without a forceful, devastating response from Israel, what is the lesson that would have been taught by Saturday's events? What would Israeli citizens be taught? What would Hamas terrorists learn?
As Jeremy Redfern, the press secretary for Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, put it when responding to what he called Pressley and Omar's "Hamas Caucus," "Terrorists don't get to drag families out of their homes, murder or kidnap and torture them, and then kindly ask for a ceasefire.'
There is no moral equivalence between the two sides here. The peace that evades Gaza is only because the Palestinians living there have chosen to empower Hamas, a terrorist group that utterly refuses to be peaceful.
Muslims and Jews co-exist sans violence in other areas of Israel. If the Palestinians in Gaza had desired it, they could have turned that entire area into a thriving, prosperous, tourist-laden beach resort destination. Instead, they've chosen endless jihad. There is no reason Israel should be expected to continue tolerating it.
And there's no reason Americans should continue tolerating the congressional careers of lawmakers who disagree.
