Because I don’t think I was emphatic enough yesterday that Israel should respond to Iran’s indiscriminate salvo of 300 drones, ballistic and cruise missiles, I must say that obliging Biden’s caution not to escalate the conflict, and anything less than retaliation, would be about as perilous as Biden’s demand for a ceasefire in Gaza, which would amount to a surrender to Hamas, or else to withdraw from Gaza rather than invade Rafah to finish the terrorists off; to say nothing of entertaining a two-state solution.
Moreover it is an asshole move that Biden has publicly announced he would not militarily support Israeli retaliation. This is also precisely why Israel must retaliate. For, an Israel that is beholden to a pro-Iran Biden—more afraid of civilian casualties in Gaza, more afraid of an Israeli victory in Gaza, more afraid of Netanyahu, and most importantly for our purposes more afraid of voters in Dearborn Michigan than a revanchist Iran —is an Israel that already risks ceding regional hegemony to Iran in terms of horizontal escalation.
Now if it weren’t for a majority pro-Hamas Democratic party (judging by the over 50% of registered Democrats who think Israel has gone too far in Gaza) or a pro-Iran Joe Biden (which is more or less the same thing depending on how closely you align the interests of the saintly “Palestinians,” Hamas, and Iran) at this moment, despite the most vicious attack perpetrated against Jews since the Holocaust, it perhaps would not be quite as imperative for Israel to hit back at the Ayotollah. But Israel is left with no other choice, faced with an administration that might just as soon torch their partnership and withdraw its troop presence from Iraq, Syria and elsewhere as Biden ruthlessly abandoned Afghanistan from a desire to ingratiate himself with the fried nerves of middle America histrionically exhausted from “endless wars,” and more recently hobbled Ukraine’s counteroffensive over fears of an unconstrained nuclear-armed Russia.
Furthermore there is not one thing Joe Biden has done as president that was not a pander to the progressive base and the Marxist-Leninist woke ideology of oppressor and oppressed that informs its worldview, which makes jihadists virtuous just because they’re weak, and Western countries evil just because they’re strong. And it is as much a matter of strategic urgency as political necessity for Israel to flip the partisan script in ratcheting up tensions with Iran. Whatever Biden says, America would have to intervene in a war with Iran, and he would at the drop of a hat because political pressures, favoring even Netanyahu over Iran, would compel him.
However, there’s one downright maddening idea circulating among Resistance Never Trump types online, which claims that to the extent another war in the Middle East would destroy Biden’s reelection prospects, for the sake of democracy in America, it’s an existential priority to make Israel bite the bullet.
Here is Nick Catoggio, a smart guy with whom I often agree, on The Dispatch,
Even absent the nuclear scenario, an Israeli attack on Iran makes some strategic sense. So long as the Iranians have farmed their dirty work out to proxies like Hamas and Hezbollah, Israel has felt obliged to engage those proxies instead of targeting the head of “the octopus” in Tehran. Now the seal has been broken; Iran is attacking directly, from its own soil. Why shouldn’t Israel seize that opportunity to attack directly?
I would understand if they did. But as an American, my top priority in 2024 is doing what I can to make sure this country doesn’t elect a corrupt proto-fascist and his enablers this fall. And if a regional war explodes in the Middle East while the war in Ukraine slogs on, I fear that’s the end of Joe Biden’s chances at reelection. “Too much chaos,” voters will say. “We need a strong man in charge to put an end to it.”
That would be a very bad outcome for America. And—maybe—a bad one for Israel too.
This is an idea that if not for the sheer neurotic vulgarity of it alone, is the most shocking offense to decency and indeed all civilized life in the West I’ve read recently—that Israel should be forced to accommodate an Iran that attempts to savage its home soil, that makes no bones about annihilating Israel from the map when it acquires nuclear bombs; not to risk possibly bursting the grandiose delusion of Biden’s campaign that “democracy is on the line” if he’s not reelected?
Democracy is not on the line. But that is beside the point. Even if the precious exalted symbology of “democracy” or “the soul of America” as Biden sometimes puts it—whatever the hell that means—were on the line, what Jewish state in a struggle for its life would rank neurotic academic anxieties about American democracy above direct threats to the very survival of the Jewish people in Israel?
We have to assume Biden really thinks the Jews should bite the bullet for our democracy. In the dementia-induced fog of the cosmic scope of his self-importance, he must reckon he has to avert war to save American democracy that only he can save. If Biden does lose to Trump in November, and when a war does break out regardless of American politics, I wonder how many Democrats will be blaming Netanyahu and Israel for Trump’s victory.
I cannot imagine what could be less of a concern for Israel than Biden’s glib admonition “to take the W” with a Democratic party as deranged as his.
— Jay
I for one will be blaming Netanyahu and Israel in part for Trump's victory and I emphasize the "in part."
The state of American democracy is far more important to me personally than Israel so why shouldn't I vote my personal interests?