Half a loaf is better than none, as the saying goes, but America rarely plays that game with its allies when it comes to shipments of arms in a defensive war for survival.
The Biden Administration, however – like President Joe Biden’s prior boss, then-President Barack Obama – plays exactly that game when it comes to the State of Israel.
The Biden Administration has for months withheld shipments essential ordnance for the Jewish State to punish Israel for not obeying the president’s order to stay out of the southern Gaza city of Rafah.
But in the face of upcoming presidential elections along with diplomatic and media pressure generated by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, the White House has grudgingly signaled it will release half of the original 1,700 500-pound bombs to Israel.
It’s not clear when they are expected to arrive.
US officials quoted by The Wall Street Journal said they are “in the process of being shipped.”
The other half of the shipment apparently remains in abeyance, as does an entire shipment of 1,800 2,000 pound bombs that were originally intended to be sent at the same time.
The Biden Administration has withheld the arms, essential to Israel’s battle against the Iranian-backed Hamas and Hezbollah terrorist organizations who have both pledged to annihilate the Jewish State, for months.
The move came in response to the entry of Israel Defense Forces into the southern Gaza city of Rafah, where the White House claimed more than one million civilians would be at risk.
As with other cities invaded by Israeli forces to pursue the terrorists who embed themselves within the civilian population, Israel warned the residents of Rafah to evacuate ahead of the impending combat, and head via a humanitarian corridor to a safe zone a couple of miles away.
The Gazans rapidly relocated to the safe zone, which was also prepared by Israeli forces and is supplied with food, water, medicine and clinics for the evacuees.
“Our main concern had been and remains the potential use of 2,000-pound bombs in Rafah and elsewhere in Gaza,” a US official said. “Because our concern was not about the 500-pound bombs, those are moving forward as part of the usual process.”
Well, at least half a shipment, anyway.
In Rafah, meanwhile, Israeli forces have since uncovered at least 50 subterranean tunnels — some as big as actual highways — leading from Gaza to Egypt and which have been used to smuggle everything from high-end vehicles to arms from Iran and actual terrorists as well.
The heavy bombs are needed to destroy the tunnels.
Nevertheless, Biden continues to withhold arms essential for Israel’s war for survival, even in the face of pro-Hamas nations who have halted their own shipments of raw materials used by Israel to produce its own materiel.
Israeli forces have destroyed just 14 of the 20 tunnels discovered within Rafah itself, some of them more than a mile long. At least 20 additional tunnels have been uncovered in the Philadelphia Corridor, a strip of land along the border that was supposed to be a buffer between Gaza and Egypt.
Some of those tunnels are far more sophisticated than any seen in central and northern Gaza, with up to three levels within the subterranean complex.
All of the tunnels, sophisticated and not, must be destroyed to prevent the terrorists from threatening Israel’s existence. But without the proper ordnance, that task will be much more difficult and take much longer.
Because the president has chosen to slow-walk the needed ordnance for the task, the Biden Administration has effectively moved to extend the war, rather than allow Israel to achieve its objectives and end it.
