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| No deal! (TOI) |
“Why is there any incentive for the Arabs to make any compromise... if they know that they must only wait — for the U.S. will do their bargaining for them... “The absurd notion that publicly vilifying Israel will somehow change its policy.”
These words make a lot of sense. The sad reality is that Hamas no longer has any incentive to negotiate with Israel for the release of the hostages - now that the US has improved their bargaining position.
This is in essence what President Biden has done by withholding military support from Israel. Hamas must be loving it! They have given Hamas hope that pressure from the US will Israel from attacking and eventually force them to retreat. Israel will have to withdraw from Gaza since there will be no opportunity to execute the kind of ground invasion that will successfully take Hamas out. (Unless the Biden administrations has another effective plan which – despite their implication that there is - I seriously doubt.)
One might think that the above sentiments were expressed by a conservative Republican. The truth is that sentiments like these are indeed shared by the vast majority of them. And a few of the more clear thinking Democrats like Senator John Fetterman, Congressmen Jared Moskowitz, Ritchie Torres, and Lois Frankel. One may be surprised to know that these words were uttered by none other than the president himself 32 years ago when he was still a senator from Delaware. If anyone doubts this, they can watch a video recording of him saying these exact words with great passion.
The question is, what changed? Why does he not realize the negative consequences of his words now when he recognized the consequences of similar words back in 1992?
For the most part the sentiments once held dearly by centrist Democrats are now mostly in the domain of Conservative Republicans. I do not think this is arguable. Democrats have been increasingly influenced by their left flank - which is increasingly becoming more sympathetic to BDS (Boycott, Divest, and Sanction). The president has not gone that far. But he has moved somewhat in that direction by suddenly boycotting certain weapons from Israel.
I don’t think he is being intentionally cruel. People are dying and he wants it to stop. But his vision of who is responsible has been skewed by people with an agenda different than his. The president has been influenced to sanction only Israel in his attempt to stop the carnage without saying as much as a word about the role Hamas has played in all the carnage. And now Hamas feels no obligation to negotiate for the hostages. They will just wait it out. (Yay Biden!)
This is why I see conservative Republicans in a far more favorable light than I now see most Democrats. I only wish that the rest of the Jewish community that has been reliably voting Democrat since FDR would see that too. and stop being guided by blind loyalty to a party that no longer values Jewish interests. Times have changed and along with them the values of political parties. But for some very strong exceptions the Israeli ball is now in the Republican court.