(TPS) Israelis reacted with scorn and disappointment at President Joe Biden, who threatened to halt arms deliveries if Israel invades the southern Gaza town of Rafah, Hamas’s last stronghold.
“President Biden revealed his true face, he proved to us that we are not real allies, in the sense of “you stand with us against the world,” Tzvika Mor told The Press Service of Israel. His son, 23-year-old Eitan, was a security guard at the Nova music festival and taken captive.
“Rafah is not a whim of Israel. The elimination of Hamas is the war’s objective stated by the Israeli government at the beginning of the war, it is impossible to eliminate Hamas without entering Rafah,” Mor insisted. “By his actions, Biden is strengthening the axis of evil in the world, and against the axis of evil he says that Israel is left alone.”
He added, sadly, “The situation reminds me as a descendant of a family of Hungarian Holocaust survivors of the fact that during the Second World War the Americans did not bomb the extermination camps in Auschwitz, or the railroads to the camps. They could have prevented the extermination of the Hungarian Jews that way, and now the same happening here.”
Residents of communities near the Gaza border said Biden’s warning betrayed a lack of understanding.
Yishai Sfez is a farmer who lives on Moshav Yated, near the point where the Israeli, Gazan and Egyptian borders converge. On October 7, terrorists reached his house. After being evacuated for several months, the family of seven returned to Yated because “one has to live in his home,” he explained to TPS-IL.
“It’s a fact that today there are international entities that are willing to put up with the situation in which Hamas remains existent as an acceptable situation, but we as Israelis should demand from our decision makers not to take this as a consideration,” Sfez said.
Returning home has meant living in what he calls an “abnormal reality.”
“The fact that my children sleep in my bed and do not dare to go outside the house or open the window blinds stresses that we came back to an abnormal life. This situation does not allow any other end to the war except the collapse of Hamas.”
Sfez added, “The State of Israel is obligated to us and not to Biden, we have sacrificed enough need to return to a life of peace.”
He stressed, “In the end, the responsibility is ours, and we went to war to eliminate Hamas from the world, and it is important for the world to understand.”
Sfez and many other Gaza-area residents are members of the “Forum of Otef Israel,” where they can assert themselves through civil activism to improve their situation.
“So many of our soldiers have fallen so far, so many bereaved families emerged there is no one in the South whose home was not touched by bereavement in the last seven months, and the situation is not changing,” Adi Faina, of Sderot, a mother of two and member of the forum, explained to TPS-IL.
“We are the ones who experienced the horrors of October 7th closely, and now we feel that all the politics behind the war comes at our expense. The poor management of the Biden administration affects Israel’s conduct of the war, and it will bring Hamas the victory.”
Said Faina, “President Biden doesn’t live in my house. He doesn’t see the reality I live in. He does not take care of my children who wet the bed at night because of the fear of the rocket alarms.”
But despite Biden’s threat, Israelis believe that the general American population is on their side. They also believed that national resolve would prevail over the White House’s opposition to invading Rafah.
“I am sure that sympathy for Israel in the US will increase in light of this,” Mor insisted. “If the Prime Minister keeps his promise and goes to Rafah in any case, the whole world will know that Israel is not giving up in any way and can stand alone against evil.”
Said Sfez, “We understand that in the US there are a variety of voices that call for unequivocal support for Israel without conditions, and I believe that if we take care of ourselves in the end, we will receive the support of many people in the world.”
At least 1,200 people were killed and 240 Israelis and foreigners were taken hostage in Hamas’s attacks on Israeli communities near the Gaza border on October 7. Around 30 of the remaining 132 hostages are believed dead.
