Hamas has proved itself to be unusually isolated in its current war on Israel. The powers-that-be in Egypt, for example, have not lifted a finger to come to the assistance of Hamas. This all by itself proves the superiority of the Sissi regime to that of Morsi, but if one has a clue about the nature of the Muslim Brotherhood, from which both Morsi and Hamas emerged, this not exactly a shock. Yet Saudi Arabia has left Hamas to its own devices, as has the UAE. Stepping forward to lend a hand to Hamas are Qatar and Turkey.
The isolation of Hamas is a striking development, but most striking are the emergence of Hamas’s good friends: Barack Obama and John Kerry.
Going back to his Cairo speech in the early days of the Obama administration, Obama has stood out as an old fan of the Muslim Brotherhood. See here (Marc Ambinder), here (FOX News), and here (American Thinker).
The Muslim Brotherhood is of course a progenitor of Islamic radicalism (see, e.g., Lawrence Wright, The Looming Tower) Hamas is an offshoot of the Muslim Brotherhood. In this sense (among others) it should come as no surprise that Obama is a sap for Hamas.
We have found Obama reliably to take the side of the enemies of the United States while stabbing our friends in the back. This is a phenomenon that took shape in the first days of the Obama administration.
Now Obama and Kerry are working to shut down Israel before its forces attain their goals in the current hostilities. Obama’s public consternation over civilian casualties is a pure reflection of Hamas tactics and propaganda. Putting to one side the difficulty of identifying true civilian casualties, Obama blames Israel for whatever civilian casualties result form Hamas’s placement of men, tunnels and materiel among civilians in homes, hospitals and mosques. Hamas also does its considerable best to keep the civilians in harm’s way.
Obama mentions none of this, and we now know (as a result of Kerry’s open mic incident on FOX News Sunday earlier this week) that John Kerry blames Israel for civilian deaths in Gaza as well. He attributes them to the Israelis’ lack of precision in their current operation.
The Israelis may get credit in heaven for their extraordinary efforts to avoid civilian casualties — the warning leaflets, the knocks on the roof, the cell phone calls and messages, and so one — but they get none from the Obama administration.
Kerry is now in the area seeking to engineer a ceasefire. His presence is obviously unwanted by Israel. On this point we can take the word of former Israel Ambassador to the United States Michael Oren. Kerry is undermining Israel and encouraging Hamas.
Yesterday the FAA prohibited commercial flights to Israel’s Ben Gurion Airport outside Tel Aviv, thus handing Hamas a great victory and upping the stakes for Israel. The AP notes, Kerry himself flew into Ben Gurion today after the FAA action. Some European airlines are following suit. El Al continues to fly into Ben Gurion. Last night, as Jeff Dunetz observes, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu appealed to Kerry to rescind the ban.
Noah Pollak points to the peculiar timing of the FAA action:
Long-range rocket fire from Gaza has been dramatically curtailed in recent days by the IDF’s ground operation, and was heaviest at the beginning of the war – some two weeks ago. Despite Hamas and Islamic Jihad barrages of M75 and M302 rockets fired at Tel Aviv and Jerusalem on July 8th, 9th, and 10th, no travel warning was issued.
Jeff also notes that Michael Bloomberg is flying into Ben Gurion in a show of support for Israel. Bloomberg has posted this statement:
This evening I will be flying on El Al to Tel Aviv to show solidarity with the Israeli people and to demonstrate that it is safe to fly in and out of Israel. Ben Gurion is the best protected airport in the world and El Al flights have been regularly flying in and out of it safely. The flight restrictions are a mistake that hands Hamas an undeserved victory and should be lifted immediately. I strongly urge the FAA to reverse course and permit US airlines to fly to Israel.
Bloomberg understands that the United States has handed Hamas a great victory in the current war. The Daily Mail includes Bloomberg’s tweets to this effect in its story on developments yesterday.
John Podhoretz weighs the consequences of Hamas’s success in his New York Post column this morning. Observing the Obama administration’s efforts to engineer a ceasefire while Israel has yet to attain its objectives in the conflict, Caroline Glick notes with considerable understatement:
[T]he fact that the US has chosen at this juncture in the operation – with Israel enjoying unprecedented support from the most important Sunni states in the region – to side with Hamas and its state sponsors in their demand for an immediate cease-fire speaks volumes about the transformation of US foreign policy under Obama’s leadership.
The efforts of Obama and Kerry on behalf of Hamas — their efforts to stop Israel short of its goals in the current conflict — come as no surprise, but they shouldn’t pass without comment either.
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