During his March 7, 2024 State of the Union Address, President Joe Biden bragged about “leading international efforts to get more humanitarian assistance into Gaza,” and called for the creation of a temporary offshore pier. Elizabeth Samson, an international lawyer and the Henry Jackson Society’s star fellow, called the pier plan “politically cynical” and “misguided.” “At face value, this latest objective seems like a virtuous humanitarian effort,” she explained, “But upon closer examination it is damaging on many levels, to Israel, the Palestinians, and ultimately the U.S. as well.”
She is right.
First, Biden’s cynicism is reprehensible. In 2019, I walked through the streets of Mosul and Raqqa after their liberation from the Islamic State. Their destruction was incredible, the result not of Islamic State occupation but of U.S.-directed urban warfare. If Benjamin Netanyahu is a war criminal for liberating Gaza from an Islamist terrorist group, then so are Biden, National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan, and Secretary of State Antony Blinken, each of whom held key positions during the Obama administration’s fight against the Islamic State.
Second, to demand a ceasefire and channel humanitarian aid to a region in which Hamas could use aid workers as human shields would be akin to providing the Islamic State with new fodder for beheading videos in order to win Michigan’s 15 Electoral College votes. Should the international community cut Hamas out of humanitarian delivery, Hamas would strike at the pier and blame Israel. The pier’s destruction would create a new USS Liberty incident to fuel antisemitic conspiracies for future decades.
Third, short of allowing Israel to defeat Hamas, the White House will hand victory to Hamas and its Iranian and Turkish backers. …Source
