Washington had never threatened Israel so rudely. “I have given instructions for a reassessment of United States policy in the region, including our relations with Israel,” wrote Gerald Ford to Yitzhak Rabin in the winter of 1975, an understated way of saying that Uncle Sam is halting all arms shipments to Israel.
At stake was the second disengagement agreement with Egypt, and the demand that Israel retreat from the strategic Mitla Pass. Israel wanted a full nonaggression commitment, and Rabin thought America was lying to him about delivering the Egyptian commitment.
In the end, the deal hatched, but right now that is not the point. The point is that, on the face of it, Ford’s threat then was much more serious than Joe Biden’s threat now.
Biden’s threat
Biden’s threat, that he will not supply bombs for a prospective Israeli operation in Rafah, is – on the face of it – about merely several hundred bombs, whereas Ford withheld supplies worth billions, including F-16 fighter jets.
Not to mention what Dwight Eisenhower did in 1956 when he colluded with Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev to force Israel to retreat from the Sinai Peninsula following the Suez War. That was not about several hundred bombs but about a landmass larger than what Israel was left with.
And that also goes for George H. Bush’s sanction against Yitzhak Shamir when he refused to negotiate a deal on the West Bank. That sanction was not about several hundred bombs but about $10 billion worth of loan guarantees that Israel sorely needed for the post-Soviet immigration’s absorption. Seen this way, Biden’s move is but a slap on the wrist in terms of its intention, and a poodle’s bark in terms of its effect.
If only it were. In fact, this sanction is for America’s enemies a shot in the arm, for America’s interests a shot in the foot, and for Biden’s leadership a shot in the head.
YES, IN the narrow military sense, this suspension’s consequences are negligible. The Gaza war is not about quantities of bombs or any other hardware. This is beside the fact that Israel has its own military industry that can produce bombs of almost any sort.
The strategic problem, therefore, is not about this rash move’s impact on Israel’s fighting but about the message it sends across the Middle East.
It’s one thing to maneuver an ally as part of a diplomatic situation, as Eisenhower, Ford, and Bush did. It’s an entirely different thing to twist an ally’s arm while the ally is fighting a war – and not just a war but a war on multiple fronts with suicidal enemies that deliberately push civilians into the battles they ignite.
Biden was there when Barack Obama betrayed the Syrian people by reneging on his promise to respond should Bashar Assad launch gas attacks on his citizens. Seen in all Arab capitals as an act of disloyalty, that conduct led Egypt and Saudi Arabia to sign weapons deals with Russia. The problem, as they saw it, was not that America demanded punishment. The problem was that America proved unreliable.
Biden’s move makes him seem not only unreliable but also weak. His obstruction of Israel’s war is being analyzed in Tehran, Baghdad, Sanaa, and every other place where jihadists are plotting the kinds of attacks they have waged in recent decades on six continents.
Yes, that is what’s at stake in Gaza, too, where the war is not about the Palestinian nationalism with which many Westerners confuse Hamas’s agenda, but about the Islamist jihadism its leaders openly preach. That is why America’s interest in Gaza is not only to stand by its Israeli ally but to confront the anti-Western Islamist scourge that Hamas serves, embodies, and fans.
Worse, the strategic shot in the foot is not only about Islamism but about America’s dealings with its two rival superpowers.
Moscow, like Tehran, also followed Biden’s misstep closely, and its conclusion must be: Tighten the screws on Ukraine. America’s leader, they must now be saying in the Kremlin, is weak, confused, and pliable. Beijing, too, followed this move, and its conclusion must be: Let’s bully our neighbors harder.
Then again, all this strategic damage pales compared with what Biden’s salvo of friendly fire means for him personally.
Qualities of a leader
LEADERSHIP DEMANDS three things: seeing the destination, hearing the people, and getting the people to follow the leader’s journey to the destination. Seeing demands vision, hearing demands sensitivity, and the people’s following demands charisma.
Most leaders don’t have this package. The biblical Aaron, for instance, when he substituted for Moses who disappeared for 40 days, failed the leadership test when the people demanded he do what he didn’t want to do. Lacking his brother’s leadership, he couldn’t face up to the mob and gave them the golden calf they demanded.
Joe Biden arrived at this war with a clear vision: Hamas is barbaric, and it must be crushed. It was both the call of justice and the American interest. But then he heard the mob, and rather than shout his truth – that American-made bombs are killing Gazans not because of America and not because of Israel but because Hamas is fighting from behind its children, women, and elders – he surrendered to the mob.
Yes, a leader is supposed to listen to all voices rising from behind him, but he is not supposed to obey them. He is supposed to obey his conscience and overrule whoever it displeases; otherwise, people will abandon him, not because they will think they are right, and not because they will think he is wrong, but because they will think he is not a leader.
www.MiddleIsrael.net
The writer, a Hartman Institute fellow, is the author of the bestselling Mitzad Ha’ivelet Ha’yehudi (The Jewish March of Folly, Yediot Sefarim, 2019), a revisionist history of the Jewish people’s political leadership.
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