Jonathan S. Tobin
JNS, Mar. 26, 2024
“A rational U.S. policy would have been one in which the U.N. Security Council would not be allowed to become a forum in which Hamas terrorism was effectively endorsed and Israeli self-defense treated as a war crime.”
Don’t believe the Biden administration’s claim that it hasn’t changed its stance on Israel’s war on Hamas. The U.S. abstention on the vote in the U.N. Security Council for an “immediate ceasefire” in Gaza isn’t just a routine political or diplomatic maneuver. It’s a fundamental betrayal of the U.S.-Israel alliance, whose consequences go far beyond the immediate circumstances in which the White House believes that its political interests require it to force the Jewish state to give up its goal of eliminating Hamas from the Gaza Strip.
Rather than merely sacrificing Israel’s security, it is also handing a major victory to both Hamas and its Iranian allies. With the United Nations demanding an end to the war, there is no reason for Hamas to stop trying to hold onto those parts of Gaza it still controls. Nor is there any reason for it to release the hostages it still holds captive except for a deal that will force Israel to acquiesce to a return, in one form or another, to the pre-Oct. 7 status quo. That will ensure that it gets away with having committed the largest mass slaughter of Jews since the Holocaust, as well as asserting its primacy over Palestinian politics in the foreseeable future.
That doesn’t just expose the administration’s supposed quest for Middle East peace as a sham, since it is essentially anointing an organization pledged to Israel’s destruction and Jewish genocide as the primary voice of Palestinian nationalism. It also sends a signal to the region and the rest of the world that the United States is no longer interested in defeating Islamist terrorism or in keeping faith with allies.
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