President Joe Biden on Thursday hailed the elimination of Hamas “absolute leader” Yahya Sinwar by Israeli Forces on the first day of the Jewish holiday of Sukkot, calling it a “good day for Israel, for the United States and for the world.”
“As the leader of the terrorist group Hamas, Sinwar was responsible for the deaths of thousands of Israelis, Palestinians, Americans, and citizens from over 30 countries,” Biden noted. “He was the mastermind of the October 7th massacres, rapes, and kidnappings. It was on his orders that Hamas terrorists invaded Israel to intentionally – and with unspeakable savagery – kill and massacre civilians, a Holocaust survivor, children in front of their parents, and parents in front of their children. Over 1,200 people were killed on that day, the deadliest day for Jews since the Holocaust, including 46 Americans. More than 250 were taken hostage, with 101 still missing. That number includes seven Americans, four of whom are believed to still be alive and held by Hamas terrorists. Sinwar is the man most responsible for this, and for so much of what followed.
“Shortly after the October 7 massacres, I directed Special Operations personnel and our intelligence professionals to work side by side with their Israeli counterparts to help locate and track Sinwar and other Hamas leaders hiding in Gaza. With our intelligence help, the IDF relentlessly pursued Hamas’s leaders, flushing them out of their hiding places and forcing them onto the run,” Biden said. “There has rarely been a military campaign like this, with Hamas leaders living and moving through hundreds of miles of tunnels, organized in multiple stories underground, determined to protect themselves with no care for the civilians suffering above ground. Today, however, proves once again that no terrorists anywhere in the world can escape justice, no matter how long it takes.
“To my Israeli friends, this is no doubt a day of relief and reminiscence, similar to the scenes witnessed throughout the United States after President [Barack] Obama ordered the raid to kill Osama Bin Laden in 2011.
“Israel has had every right to eliminate the leadership and military structure of Hamas. Hamas is no longer capable of carrying out another October 7,” Biden said, adding that he would soon be speaking with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu “and other Israeli leaders” to congratulate them, “to discuss the pathway for bringing the hostages home to their families, and for ending this war once and for all, which has caused so much devastation to innocent people.
“There is now the opportunity for a “day after” in Gaza without Hamas in power, and for a political settlement that provides a better future for Israelis and Palestinians alike. Yahya Sinwar was an insurmountable obstacle to achieving all of those goals. That obstacle no longer exists. But much work remains before us.”
It is ironic that President Biden is praising Israel’s success in finally reaching and destroying the enemy who masterminded the deadliest attack on the Jewish People since the Holocaust, after having threatened to sabotage that very same mission just a few months prior.
The Biden Administration worked very hard to pressure Netanyahu into ordering the Israeli military to refrain from entering the southern Gaza city of Rafah, where Sinwar was finally eliminated. In fact, the White House threatened in an interview with CNN this past May to halt additional shipments of offensive weapons to Israel if the IDF launched a ground invasion of Rafah.
“I made it clear that if they go into Rafah – they haven’t gone in Rafah yet – if they go into Rafah, I’m not supplying the weapons that have been used historically to deal with Rafah, to deal with the cities – that deal with that problem,” Biden said. “We’re not walking away from Israel’s security. We’re walking away from Israel’s ability to wage war in those areas … “We’re going to continue to make sure Israel is secure in terms of Iron Dome and their ability to respond to attacks that came out of the Middle East recently. But it’s, it’s just wrong. We’re not going to – we’re not going to supply the weapons and artillery shells.”
Netanyahu elected to proceed with the defense of Israel and its citizens, despite Biden’s attempt to prevent an Israeli victory, and approved the invasion of Rafah. Within weeks, Israeli forces discovered some 150 terrorist tunnels and countless supplies of sophisticated weapons — and the bodies of six hostages (including that of Israeli-American Hersh Goldberg-Polin) were found, having been executed by Hamas two days before Israeli forces reached them in a tunnel 65 feet beneath the surface. The bodies were discovered approximately one kilometer (less than a mile) from a tunnel in which hostage Farhan Alkadi was found and freed, still alive.
The United States meanwhile continues to withhold delivery to Israel of 1,800 “bunker buster” 2,000-pound bombs that could have been used to destroy the massive subterranean Hezbollah tunnels located even deeper throughout Southern Lebanon than those of Hamas in Gaza. The White House in July green-lighted partial delivery of 1,700 500-pound bombs that were also being withheld.
