Biden, in Full Hypocrisy Mode, Slams Israel Over Mishap Under this kind of pressure, can Israel still defeat Hamas? P.David Hornik
On Monday night, in a tragic and painful incident, seven aid workers from the World Central Kitchen charity organization were killed in an errant Israeli drone strike on their three-car convoy in Gaza.
The words “tragic and painful” are not de rigueur. WCK’s work, which involved providing food both to Israelis and to Palestinians displaced by the war, was much appreciated by Israelis—not least because WCK was filling the shoes of UNRWA, the UN’s “pro-Palestinian” organization whose work in Gaza has been suspended because of their systemic collusion with Hamas.
When Israelis say that painful things happen in the fog of war, we know what we’re talking about and we mean it. On December 15, three Israeli hostages, young men who had escaped Hamas captivity in Gaza, were errantly shot dead by Israeli forces who feared they were Hamas terrorists pretending to be escaped Israeli hostages. Considering that Hamas regularly uses such tactics, and, in general, manipulates human beings to protect itself at a level unprecedented in history, the fear was understandable even if it had a terrible result.
Meanwhile Israeli leaders have sincerely apologized for the aid-workers incident and the IDF is investigating it thoroughly. We know so far that it happened at night, and that whoever gave the order for the drone strike was convinced there were armed terrorists in the convoy. Of course, that doesn’t rule out poor judgment or malfeasance.
But nothing, in any case, will put a dent in the uproar of harsh criticism of Israel over the mishap—and not least from that place of special geopolitical significance for Israel, Washington.
In a press statement issued on Tuesday, President Biden had, among others, these things to say:
I am outraged and heartbroken by the deaths of seven humanitarian workers from World Central Kitchen, including one American, in Gaza yesterday…. [T]his is not a stand-alone incident. This conflict has been one of the worst in recent memory in terms of how many aid workers have been killed…. Israel has not done enough to protect aid workers trying to deliver desperately needed help to civilians. Incidents like yesterday’s simply should not happen. Israel has also not done enough to protect civilians.
Biden’s words are, of course, part of a genre of relentless US criticism of Israel over the last few months, among whose key themes is an alleged failure to protect noncombatants. This at a time when—in a direct inversion of Hamas’s unprecedented cynicism regarding noncombatants—Israel is actually taking unprecedented measures to protect civilians. We know, though, that we’re on a treadmill and the severe public rebukes—whatever’s motivating them—from Messrs. Biden, Austin, Blinken, Sullivan, and others in Washington will continue no matter what we do.
But Biden’s statement is disturbing for other reasons as well. One is its rapidity; he wasn’t going to waste a moment—and certainly not wait for the results of the investigation—to jump on yet another chance to pound Israel. And there’s also the matter of the “fog of war”—a term that doesn’t apply only to Israeli wars. In fact, it can be applied to American wars too—but sans the stern, distant patron always primed to scold you.
It was on Biden’s watch as president, after all, that a US drone strike in Afghanistan on August 29, 2021, killed ten civilians including seven children. In an analysis half a year later, the New York Times said the US military had “made a life-or-death decision based on imagery that was fuzzy, hard to interpret in real time and prone to confirmation bias.” In other words, the sorts of things that can go wrong in war—but you can be sure Jerusalem didn’t lambast the United States for the incident.
It was even worse on October 3, 2015, when a US Air Force gunship attacked a hospital in Afghanistan, killing 42 people and injuring 30. General John F. Campbell, then the US commander in Afghanistan, called the strike “a mistake” and said “We would never intentionally target a protected medical facility”—true, but things go wrong sometimes. That was on the watch of President Obama and VP Joe Biden, who undoubtedly has a memory of the incident.
But no matter; the Israel-bashing train rolls on. Whether Israel can keep fighting Hamas effectively under this pressure, which seems designed to prevent it from doing so—that is the question.
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