Dems’ cynical Israel demand
‘THE Ukrainians must stop fighting in case they defeat Putin.” Have you heard any of our leaders say that in the last two years? As Ukraine enters its third year of war, it is striking how committed political leaders of all parties are to that war. And not just here but across the West.
At home — Democrat or Republican — almost everybody is committed to arming Ukraine until victory. They don’t want Ukraine to fight to a stalemate. They don’t want it to stop just before winning. They want it to beat Putin back.
So how strange it is that another war, involving a far closer ally, gets such different treatment.
Double standard
The historian Niall Ferguson noted the curious double standard this week after a visit to Israel. In Washington, London and every other Western capital, political leaders are not saying that they will stick with Israel until it defeats Hamas.
They are not saying “victory at any price and at any cost.”
Instead, they are insisting that Israel stop its war against Hamas as soon as possible. This week, President Biden suggested that there might be a peace deal by Monday. And he seemed positively happy about the fact. Despite the deal being disastrously anti-Israel and Hamas having already rejected it.
But why do people like Biden want peace in Gaza? Why should anybody want Hamas to crawl out of this war, dust itself off and be able to carry out the same terror against Palestinians and Israelis that it has carried out for years? Why shouldn’t people want Israel to win just as much as they want Ukraine to win?
It can’t be a matter of the death toll. Hamas claims that up to 30,000 Palestinians (which includes Hamas “fighters”) have been killed since the start of the war. And the whole world seems to be appalled by this. But earlier this month, the US government estimated that as many as 315,000 casualties have been suffered by Russia in Ukraine, while the Ukrainians claim they have lost 31,000 troops since the invasion by Russia.
Is anyone talking about “proportionality” in that conflict? If so, I haven’t heard it. Has anyone in DC expressed fear and sorrow over the Russian lives lost? If they have, it hasn’t come my way.
Instead, like the world’s media, they are obsessing over the city of
Rafah (in the south of Gaza) where the remainder of Hamas’ leadership — and the remaining Israeli hostages — are thought to be.
If this was Ukraine, right before the point of victory, with the enemy almost defeated, the West would be urging our ally on. But with Israel, America and the world is begging them to stop.
Why? Why should Israel have done all it has to defeat Hamas only to release the stranglehold and let it breathe again? It makes no sense. There is zero point in a war fought to such a compromise. All it will ensure is another IsraelHamas war in the near future.
Still, the double standard is shocking.
Here in the US, it has some very clear domestic explanations. Kamala Harris and Joe Biden are apparently deeply concerned about the possibility of Muslim voters in Michigan turning against the Democratic Party and staying home in November.
Let terrorists escape?
As a result, senior officials are imploring their Israeli counterparts to ease off with the war in order to give the Democrats an advantage in a tight election year.
To realize how bizarre this is, just imagine it the other way around. Imagine the Israeli prime minister calling up the White House. “Sorry Joe, but we’re going to have to ask you to put the security of the American public on the back burner. Our domestic polling in Caesarea doesn’t look too good. So would you mind putting your own people second?”
It’s unthinkable. But it is just as unthinkable the way it is working at the moment.
When a country has to tell its allies to put their own security second for local political reasons, you become a deeply unstable ally.
I’d like to think that our political leaders can be driven by principle. But sometimes you do have to wonder. I had imagined that the united front in support of Ukraine was a matter of conscience as well as statecraft. But who knows. I thought the same about America’s stance on Israel.
But now we know how easily they can be swayed. Perhaps if America had imported a very large number of Russian nationalists in recent decades and they’d congregated in a couple of swing states, we would betray Ukraine, too.
Anyway, the double standard is glaring.
If our politicians and media are demanding a cease-fire in Gaza but not in Ukraine, perhaps they could just ask themselves why?