There is no justification for or no equivocation to, the violent atrocities Hamas has inflicted on innocent Israeli citizens in the latest round of the 70-plus-year-old Israel-Palestine conflict. President Joe Biden has appropriately given Israel an American guarantee of support and survival, but unfortunately, Biden’s age could be a problem for both America and Israel.
The Israel-Palestine conflict has existed for the entire 49 years of President Biden’s political career, his initial response to the worst attack on Jewish people since the Holocaust reflected both the advantage of his age and the possible limitations of his age. Our closest and best ally in the Middle East is, and always should be, Israel because it’s the only true democracy located there. There is no other country in the Middle East whose moral and philosophical values resemble America’s more than Israel’s, this fact alone makes it a cultural and national security necessity to continue America’s 73-year commitment to the preservation of Israeli society.
Biden’s age and political longevity give him the advantage of understanding the importance of America maintaining a democratic state, in a part of the world dominated by religious autocracies. In this respect Biden’s age reflects the past and current American Middle East policy that Israel has the right to defend itself, unfortunately, Biden’s age may prevent him from embracing what the future American Middle East policy must be to secure the peace and survival of Israel.
President Biden’s initial response to Hamas’s attack on Israel was to issue the same response he has repeated for his entire 49-year political career when Israeli violence erupts, “Israel has the right to defend itself,” appropriately demonstrating America’s iron-clad commitment to Israel’s survival, so the problem is not what Biden said but what he did not say. Biden’s same response in 2023 to a conflict that he has witnessed since 1972, raises the question of whether or not President Biden’s age will allow him to embrace what’s required now to resolve the Israel-Palestine conflict.
What’s required now is for President Biden and America to embrace a new element to the old American Middle East policy, “Israel has the right to defend itself”, the new Middle East policy must be “Israel has the right to defend itself and Palestinians have the equal right of self-determination”. Equating Israel’s right to security and self-defense with Palestinians’ right to self-determine a new independent nation, may be a difficult new concept for those steeped in the decades-old American Middle East policy of only prioritizing Israel’s security, but equally prioritizing both Israel’s right to peace and security with Palestine’s right to establish a free and independent state, guarantees the peace and security of both Israel and Palestine.
President Biden’s age perspective must not prevent him in the future from adding when he boldly declares that, “Israel has the right to defend itself”, in the same sentence and “Palestinians have the equal right of self-determination”. Biden’s age must not only prevent him from mouthing Palestinians’ equal right to self-determination, Biden’s age perspective must not prevent him from immediately implementing a new Palestinian equal right of self-determination American foreign policy, meaning the new private and public message to Israel is, America will supply Israel with all the money and weapons necessary to defend itself but America will not supply Israel with any money or weapons necessary for its proposed ground invasion of Gaza.
Israeli anger at and retaliation for the recent war crimes Hamas committed against them is justified, but what’s not justified is Israel retaliating by committing war crimes itself against anybody including Hamas terrorists. Israel’s justified retaliation on Hamas must follow the rule of human rights law, a siege that cuts off the water, electricity, fuel, medical supplies, and food to Gaza, and the Israeli military going house to house killing anyone found in Gaza, under the assumption that they are members of Hamas, would be Israel committing war crimes. As a sovereign independent nation, Israel is free to invade Gaza, as a sovereign independent nation America is free not to fund it or supply the weapons necessary to invade it, and a new American policy of equating Palestinians’ right to self-determination with Israel’s right of self-defense, would prohibit America supporting a Gaza invasion with weapons or treasure.
However, a new policy of equating Palestinians’ right to self-determination with Israel’s right to defend itself, would not prevent America from funding or supplying weapons that enable Israel to repeat how it has successfully and humanely retaliated against past terrorism. Whether it was hunting down and capturing Nazi Holocaust terrorist Adolf Eichmann to bring him to trial in Israel, or locating and killing the 8 terrorists who killed two Israelis and kidnapped eleven others at the 1972 Olympics, Israel has shown the world that it knows how to retaliate within the bounds of international law by letting its intelligence apparatus, the Mossad, take the long view, gather the necessary intelligence, and execute a plan to bring those directly responsible for committing acts of terror against Israelis to trial or execution.
Israeli Secret Service Agent Mike Harari helped plot Mossad’s revenge attacks against Palestinian militants implicated in the 1972 Munich massacre of the country’s Olympics team
The world realizes that the ground invasion Israel is planning will deprive innocent Gaza Palestinians, who have not participated in any terrorist acts against Israelis, of water, food, electricity, medical supplies, and fuel while Israel’s military conducts house-to-house searches killing anyone found, not based on Mosaad intelligence that they are Hamas operatives but based on merely being in the wrong place at the wrong time. If America is to maintain international democracy creditability it must say to Israel and the world that it will not support, financially or militarily, an Israeli ground invasion of Gaza.
Going forward President Biden’s age perspective has to adapt to a new reality. He must always say at the same time he declares Israel’s right to defend itself, that Palestinians also have the equal right to self-determination. Failure to mention Palestinians’ equal right engenders Palestinians with the same sense of insensitivity as American Blacks feel when American Whites respond to the euphemism, “Black Lives Matter”, with “white lives matter too”. President Biden’s failure to mention Palestinians’ equal right also engenders most of the world with the sense of a double standard unfairly applied against Palestinians, since Israel’s occupation of Gaza and the West Bank denies Palestinians both the right to defend themselves and the right of self-determination.
The American veto last week of a United Nations Security Council resolution sponsored by Brazil that had wide support, would have condemned violence against all Israeli and Palestinian civilians, and included the condemnation words “the heinous terrorist attacks by Hamas against Israel”, simply because it did not contain the words, “Israel has a right to self-defense”, proves President Biden and America have an old-age out of touch with international reality Middle East policy. President Biden has done a very successful job of rallying the world to follow America in support of Ukraine.
King Abdullah II of Jordan (left) Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi (center) Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas all canceled a meeting with President Biden to discuss the Hamas/Israeli War because they feel he has a bias against Palestinians (Photo by Palestinian Presidency / Handout/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images)
But when the heads of state for Egypt and Jordan, two countries that receive a LARGE amount of financial aid from America, and the President of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), an entity eager for America to restore the financial funding that former President Donald Trump cut off as well as the internationally recognized representative of the Palestinian people, feel comfortable enough to back out of a planned meeting with President Biden in Jordan, instead the three fly to Egypt for a one-day meeting, dubbed the Cairo Summit for Peace attended by representatives from France, Germany, Russia, China, Japan, United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, the United Kingdom, the United States, Spain, Qatar, Kuwait, South Africa, Greece, Italy, Turkey, Iraq, Cypress, Norway, the United Nations Secretary-General, and European Union officials, where they all heard Egypt, Jordan, and the PLO declare Israel a war criminal and King Hussein of Jordan declare “all civilian lives matter”, implying that Jewish lives are more important to America than Islamic lives, is a strong indication that President Biden’s Middle East policy is out of touch with the international community, stymieing his ability to rally the world to support Israel and placing America’s creditability as a Middle East peace broker at an all-time low.
The ultimate American national security indication that President Biden’s age perspective must reflect the new concept that Palestinians have the equal right of self-determination to Israel’s right to defend itself, is the fact that both China, who just brokered a surprise peace deal between Saudi Arabia and Iran, and Russia cite America’s double standard for Israel as proof positive to the world that autocracies not democracies serve citizens best.
Instead of meeting with President Biden to discuss peace King Abdullah II of Jordan, Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, and Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas chose to hold their own peace summit with France, Germany, Russia, China, Japan, United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, the United Kingdom, Spain, Qatar, Kuwait, South Africa, Greece, Italy, Turkey, Iraq, Cypress, Norway, and the United Nations Secretary-General Oct. 21, 2023. (Egyptian Presidency Media Office via AP)
As a Senator first elected within five years of America coming to Israel’s rescue in the 1967 Six-Day War, and as the Democratic Party’s leader of foreign policy in the U.S. Senate from 1997-2008 President Biden, more than any other current American government official, is directly responsible for America’s current 20th century Middle East policy that “Israel has the right to defend itself”, a fact that he and America should be proud of, but now in the 21st century President Biden’s age perspective must not prevent him from amending and upgrading America’s Middle East policy to read, say, and mean Israel has the right to defend itself and Palestine has the equal right of self-determination. Only then will true peace reign in Israel and throughout the Middle East.