The President and the Vice President bizarrely agree with Hamas that the murder of six hostages including an American is Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s fault, rather than the savages that held them for almost a year and killed them in the first place.
As most Americans were celebrating Labor Day, grim news emerged from the Gaza Strip when Israel discovered the bodies of six hostages taken during the October 7 massacre last year, all apparently murdered at gunpoint by members of Hamas. Five of the six had been captured at a music festival while one was from a nearby farming community in southern Israel, one of the areas hardest hit by the unprovoked attack. According to Israel Defense Forces, they were all “brutally murdered,” likely while those remaining alive watched the others die, a “short while” before troops could reach and potentially save them given the location was barely half a mile from where a hostage was rescued a few days earlier. Among the dead were Hersh Goldberg-Polin, a 23-year old Israeli American originally born in Oakland, CA taken at the Nova music festival. He and his friends had tried to hide in a small bomb shelter nearby during the horrific attack, but the terrorists pursued them and tossed grenades into the shelter, hoping to either kill them outright or force them out. Mr. Goldberg-Polin’s arm was blown off while he was trying to save his friends. Alexander Lobanov, a 32-year old father of two, was also taken at the festival, after having tried to save other attendees’ lives by evacuating them into the Be’eri forest where he was captured. Adding to the tragedy, his second child was born while he was held hostage, before he was slaughtered by these savages. Almog Sarusi, 27-years old, tried to escape the festival in a car, but his girlfriend was shot by Hamas gunmen and seriously injured. He remained with her as his friends sped away, hoping to save her life. Eden Yerushalmi was working the bar at the festival, a 24-year old from Tel Aviv. During the attack, she phoned the police and sent video to her family. The last words anyone heard from her outside of captivity were to her sister, like something straight out of Taken, “Shani, they’ve caught me.” Carmel Gat, 40-years old, was captured at her parent’s house, after terrorists broke in and dragged her away. No one knew if she’d even survived for fifty full days, but captives who were released in a previous exchange described the occupational therapist as their guardian angel while they were held, giving them hope and some measure of peace by teaching them meditation and yoga. None of these poor souls will comfort anyone any longer, alas, not so much as to say goodbye to their loved ones, leaving all of us to only imagine the pain and agony they endured at the hands of such coldblooded killers up until their deaths.
Rather incredibly, President Biden appeared to blame the Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu for the deaths rather than Hamas itself. While he has yet to issue an in-depth statement on the matter, much less hold a press conference or bother to explain in any detail what our strategy actually is at this point beyond the barest of platitudes, he was described simply as “outraged.” He did manage to bark a one word an answer to a reporter while on his way to the Situation Room, presumably to be briefed on the lack of a meaningful output from our completely failed approach. “Do you think it’s time for Prime Minister Netanyahu to do more on this issue, do you think he’s doing enough?” “No,” President Biden replied, “emphatically” according to ABC News as if that makes a difference. Another reporter asked if he was ready to propose some kind of “final” deal to exchange hostages and obtain a ceasefire, as if his months’ long attempt to achieve the same didn’t just end in abject failure after Hamas slaughtered the hostages in question. He did offer a couple of more words this time to bizarrely claim, “We’re very close to that.” A few hours later, he was even more bizarre on this front when he insisted we’re “still negotiating” with Egypt and Qatar, but not either Israel or Hamas, the two players directly involved in the conflict and the only players who can bring an end to the fighting. The White House also issued a short, less than illuminating statement on the matter and the discussion in the Situation Room, claiming “President Biden expressed his devastation and outrage at the murder, and reaffirmed the importance of holding Hamas’s leaders accountable…During the meeting, President Biden and Vice President Harris received an update from the U.S. negotiation team on the status of the bridging proposal outlined by the United States, Qatar, and Egypt. They discussed next steps in the ongoing effort to secure the release of hostages [can we assume these are the live ones, at least?], including continuing consultations with co-mediators Qatar and Egypt.” How they plan to accomplish anything without either Hamas or Israel at the table is left unsaid, but that didn’t prevent the Vice President from issuing a statement of her own, “Hamas is an evil terrorist organization. With these murders, Hamas has even more American blood on its hands.” She also took to X, using the mass murder of defenseless hostages as an opportunity to bemoan the plight of the Palestinians, “The murder of Hersh Goldberg-Polin and five other hostages was a brutal, barbaric act by Hamas terrorists,” she wrote . “As [President Biden] said, Hamas leaders will pay for these crimes. It is long past time for a ceasefire and hostage deal. We need to bring the hostages home and end the suffering in Gaza.” Believe it or not, this was actually much stronger than her running mate, Governor Tim Walz, who simply refused to answer any questions about it at an event over the weekend, not even responding with a single syllable.
Needless to say, both President Biden and Vice President Harris, along with their enablers in the mainstream media, have steadfastly ignored the reality that they’ve promised a peace deal for months at this point, even announcing a nonsensical framework that was supposed to transform a temporary ceasefire into a permanent one, complete with a rebuilding of the entire Gaza Strip. On May 31, before his disastrous first debate performance and embarrassing exit from the race, President Biden spoke at the White House from the State Dining Room, announcing the supposed deal. “I — I want to give an update on my efforts to end the crisis in Gaza,” he began. “For the past several months, my negotiators of foreign policy, intelligence community, and the like have been relentlessly focused not just on a ceasefire that would eve- — that would inevitably be fragile and temporary but on a durable end to the war. That’s been the focus: a durable end to this war. One that brings all the hostages home, ensures Israel’s security, creates a better ‘day after’ in Gaza without Hamas in power, and sets the stage for a political settlement that provides a better future for Israelis and Palestinians alike. Now, after intensive diplomacy carried out by my team and my many conversations with leaders of Israel, Qatar, and Egypt and other Middle Eastern countries, Israel has now offered — Israel has offered a comprehensive new proposal. It’s a roadmap to an enduring ceasefire and the release of all hostages. This proposal has been transmitted by Qatar to Hamas. ” He continued to describe the three phases of the failed proposal including a temporary ceasefire to exchange hostages that magically becomes a permanent ceasefire, and the rebuilding of Gaza itself. He concluded, “That’s the offer that’s now on the table and what we’ve been asking for. It’s what we need.” Vice President Harris personally endorsed this supposed deal during remarks in late July, claiming “it is time to get this deal done.” Periodically ever since, there have been claims that a deal was imminent, but by their own standards, they have failed to achieve their goals and the hostages are now dead, leading to yet another reset of negotiations.
This is certainly horrific and tragic, but it shouldn’t be surprising in the least. While Israel has expressed some concerns about the supposed plan, concerns President Biden himself noted in May, Hamas has never entertained an actual deal or anything close. For more than three months, we’ve been negotiating primarily with ourselves, unable to start direct discussions with the combatants, and yet we’re still insisting that they have a “sense of urgency and believe this negotiation needs to come to a close.” How can you possibly close a negotiation when one of the main parties isn’t even participating and indeed is actively thwarting any plans by killing hostages that are at the center of the negotiations, requiring everyone to start over once again? From this perspective, the Administration’s myopic focus on Prime Minister Netenyanhu is either a miscalculation at best or a political strategy to appease progressive Palestinian supporters at worst, likely some combination of the two that reveals a fundamental misunderstanding about both how to achieve any kind of lasting peace and what kind of peace we want to achieve in the first place. In July, Vice President Harris insisted that resolving the conflict in Gaza wasn’t a “binary” choice. “We cannot allow ourselves to become numb to the suffering. And I will not be silent,” she said. “It is time for this war to end and end in a way where Israel is secure, all the hostages are released, the suffering of Palestinians in Gaza ends, and the Palestinian people can exercise their right to freedom, dignity and self-determination.” At the time, astute observers noted that Hamas’ continued existence and therefore the threat of another October 7 was implicit in this approach. As I put it, the plan “wouldn’t require the destruction of Hamas or even its expulsion from Gaza. Hamas would instead remain in control of the strip under the very terms they are proposing, despite a long track record of violating every previous agreement and launching the most savage and deadly attack on the Jewish people since the Holocaust. In fact, they would be allowed to continue to operate without any changes at all, merely promises they would not unleash such atrocities in the future.” The Vice President concluded her remarks by clearly stating the underlying disconnect, “It is important for the American people to remember, the war in Gaza is not a binary issue. However, too often the conversation is binary when the reality is anything but. So I ask my fellow Americans to help encourage efforts to acknowledge the complexity, the nuance, and the history of the region. Let us all condemn terrorism and violence. Let us all do what we can to prevent the suffering of innocent civilians. And let us condemn antisemitism, Islamophobia and hate of any kind. And let us work to unite our country.”
Sadly, it appears I was wrong at the time: The situation is even worse than that. Somehow, they have convinced themselves that the negotiation itself isn’t even a binary choice and they can browbeat or shame Israel alone into accepting the terms, as though they were mediating a divorce when half of the couple wasn’t even in the room. If Prime Minister Netanyahu didn’t do enough, what did Hamas do at all to make this happen, anything other than reject, reject, reject, and continue to commit atrocities? As the Prime Minister himself put it, “I don’t believe President Biden or anyone serious about achieving peace and achieving the release can seriously ask Israel, Israel to make these concessions. We’ve already made them. Hamas has to make concessions.” Hamas, however, appears to have realized that the lack of leadership in the White House, if not a strange, weak willingness to be a classic useful idiot on behalf of a terrorist organization, offers them an opportunity to force Israel to make even further concessions that threaten its own existence by leveraging the “outrage” in Washington and around the world. That this outrage is directed at the country attacked in the first place is a rather complete upending of the reality of the situation, a moral outrage if ever there was one considering Hamas hasn’t so much as apologized or disavowed its barbaric tactics, if anything they’ve only promised to do more, but the knowledge that most of the outrage of whatever kind is directed at Israel is undoubtedly why Hamas itself seems to be in agreement with President Biden and Vice President Harris. They too claimed that Israel was “evading reaching a ceasefire agreement” as if slaughtering hostages wasn’t the far worse crime, echoing our own leaders. Before President Biden resigned from the race, I opined that he must resign from the Presidency as well. America and the world simply cannot survive without a Chief Executive in the modern era, but that’s exactly what we have, and people are paying for it with their lives.
Confessions of a Conservative Atheist 