President Biden assumed office with a pledge to restore long-standing alliances and champion democracy on the global stage, writes Lulu Garcia-Navarro in the NY Times Sunday magazine (Antony Blinken Insists He and Biden Made the Right Calls). Entrusted with this mission was Secretary of State Antony Blinken, a seasoned diplomat and close Biden ally with two decades of experience by the president’s side. The administration signaled to allies and adversaries that a new era of stability had arrived.
But Blinken quickly found himself navigating an onslaught of international crises. The chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan left deep scars, soon overshadowed by the monumental challenge of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Hamas’s brutal attack on Israel, followed by Israel’s devastating military campaign in Gaza, not only plunged the region into turmoil but also intensified political divisions back home.
And yet, as the good reader has already discerned from the title, at the end of his term, a modern Emperor Nero after burning down Rome, Blinken remains convinced he did the right thing.
After responding to the interviewer’s challenge regarding the need for the US to continue arming Israel after Hamas has been essentially eliminated (it helps Israel’s deterrence), Blinken says this:
“We continue to believe that the quickest way, the most effective way to have an enduring end to Gaza is through an agreement on a cease-fire that brings the hostages home. The two biggest impediments to getting that over the finish line – and we’ve been so close on several occasions and as we speak today, we’re also very close – there have been two major impediments, and they both go to what drives Hamas.”
I ask the good reader to focus here because the departing secretary is about to reveal a truth the right in Israel has been shrieking about for more than a year while the left remained in an autistic high over it:
So spoke Blinken about the two major impediments to the release of the hostages:
1. “Whenever there has been public daylight between the United States and Israel and the perception that pressure was growing on Israel, we’ve seen it: Hamas has pulled back from agreeing to a cease-fire and the release of hostages.”
2. “And so there are times when what we say in private to Israel where we have a disagreement is one thing, and what we’re doing or saying in public may be another. But that’s in no small measure because, with this daylight, the prospects of getting the hostage and cease-fire deal over the finish line become more distant.”
These are not two impediments, but one: Hamas navigates its hostage release deal, assuming it even wants one, to influence American policy. Add to that Hamas’s manipulation of the Israeli left, teasing their responses skillfully, and you’ll get a puppet master who, despite its military inferiority and enormous losses, succeeds in utilizing its captives to the max.
HOW THE US SABOTAGED VICTORY OVER HAMAS
But wait, there’s more. The worst failure of the IDF was its inability to maintain control over the territories it had taken. Over the past 15 months, Israeli troops were forced to reoccupy some areas three times, after Hamas had retaken them. It’s understandable that due to its limited manpower, the IDF could not maintain its units everywhere – but why couldn’t it eradicate the enemy in every area that it had subdued?
The answer, once more, was provided by Antony Blinken. You may recall that immediately following the October 7 massacre, the Israeli government announced that it would deprive Gaza of food, drink, electricity, and fuel. Had we been able to enforce these limits, surrender would have come in a few months, especially when the total blockade was accompanied by the physical devastation of Gaza from the air, the sea, and on the ground.
Enter Tony: “We’ve gone at humanitarian assistance from Day 1, and that’s been a perennial and ongoing effort throughout this time.”
“The very first trip that I made to Israel five days after Oct. 7, I spent with my team nine hours in the IDF’s headquarters in Tel Aviv, six stories underground with the Israeli government, including the prime minister, including arguing for hours on end about the basic proposition that the humanitarian assistance needed to get to Palestinians in Gaza,” Blinken recalls.
He continues: “President Biden was planning to come to Israel a few days later. And in the course of that argument, when I was getting resistance to the proposition of humanitarian assistance getting in, I told the prime minister, I’m going to call the president and tell him not to come if you don’t allow this assistance to start flowing. And I called the president to make sure that he agreed with that, and he fully did.”
Isn’t that special. Israeli hostages are being tortured in Hamas’s tunnels, starved and raped, and beaten. Still, instead of pressing the civilian population to the point where it would be forced to release the hostages, the IDF is commanded to restore Hamas’s control by delivering tons of care packages which the terrorists promptly steal and sell, refill their coffers, and recruit new jihadists.
Finally, Blinken gets to the shedding crocodile tears phase. After 15 months in which he has abandoned Israel to international condemnations as a genocidal country, he tells Lulu Garcia-Navarro: “One of the things that I found a little astounding throughout is that for all of the understandable criticism of the way Israel has conducted itself in Gaza, you hear virtually nothing from anyone since October 7 about Hamas. Why there hasn’t been a unanimous chorus around the world for Hamas to put down its weapons, to give up the hostages, to surrender – I don’t know what the answer is to that.”
I, for one, sincerely hope that after 120, when Antony Blinken goes to the reeducation camp down under, the Lord in His wisdom will show him the PowerPoint lecture.
