President's 'ironclad' promise to defend Israel is showing signs of rust

President Joe Biden’s decision to “pause” the delivery of smart bombs, artillery shells and other kinds of ammunition to Israel as a form of punishment for Israel’s sin of ignoring the president’s admonition not to invade Rafa fails to take into consideration a number of factors all of which are critical to U.S. national interests.

The president based his decision on humanitarian concerns for the displaced citizens of Gaza who have relocated to Rafa, the only remaining city in Gaza not under Israel’s military control; and that there have already been “too many” innocent civilian deaths.

The president’s concern is that an invasion of Rafa could lead to a large increase in dead and injured innocent civilians as well as an expansion of the Israeli-Hamas conflict into a wider regional war. This begs the question of what is meant by a “wider regional war”?

Could this “pause” in offensive arms delivery lead to avoiding a possible increase in aggression by Hizbollah on Israel’s northern border or rockets fired into Israel from Syria and Iraq?

Will the Houthis in Yemen stop disrupting international shipping in the Red and Arabian Seas and the Indian Ocean by not deploying suicide drones and no longer firing explosive missiles at cargo ships passing through those maritime areas?

Will Iran, after sending a potpourri of 300 suicide explosive drones, cruise and ballistic missiles targeting Israel, be satisfied and abandon its goal of destroying the Jewish State and annihilating its Jewish inhabitants?

While President Biden insists that there are other means of destroying Hamas, Israel’s internationally recognized legitimate goal, as a response to the Oct. 7, 2023, attacks, the Administration has apparently not shared such an alternate plan with the Israelis.

The president insists that American policy of ironclad defense and guaranty of Israel’s security has not changed. As proof he cites the uninterrupted flow of the Iron Dome and other defensive weapons to the Jewish state.

The president should look to history and consult with his generals at the Pentagon. I think he will soon learn that no nation in the history of warfare has ever achieved a military victory over its enemies by means of defensive weapons. If it was otherwise, then we should immediately reduce our own defense spending and reduce our own arsenal of offensive weapons.

The president’s policy of restricting the flow of offensive weapons and his ambiguous policies vis à vis Israel will have a detrimental effect on the U.S. desire to create a defensive alliance with Saudi Arabia, the UAE and the other Gulf States against Iran, as well as weaken his leadership in the Ukraine and Taiwan conflicts.

If the U.S. does not stand 100 percent behind Israel in its existential moment of need, where is the confidence that the U.S. will stand with these other nations against an aggressive, despotic and radical Shiite Islamic government whose ultimate goal is to create by any means, including violence, a hegemonic global Islamic Caliphate.

While the collateral loss of innocent civilians is always tragic in a war zone, the deliberate torture, raping, dismemberment, and killing of innocent Israeli men, woman and children on October 7, 2023 is inexcusable; and the undisputed evidence, as videos recorded by the perpetrators themselves of these acts show, gives the International Criminal Court enough probable cause to indict all the perpetrators along with the entire Hamas leadership in Gaza who planned the attack as war criminals. So far, no such indictments have been forthcoming.

The president of the United States has no jurisdiction, precedent or basis to declare the collateral loss of life in Gaza as “too many,” when he speaks from the Office of the U.S. Presidency, an office that authorized the carpet bombing of German cities and the dropping of the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in World War II.

Furthermore, no army in the world has been more proactive in minimizing the civilian casualties than the Israel Defense Forces. This is true in the current war in Gaza, and in the many earlier wars precipitated by unprovoked indiscriminate rocket attacks from Gaza by Hamas and Islamic Jihad on Israeli settlements over the last 17 years.

All blame for civilian casualties in this war is on Hamas, who systematically uses civilian facilities for military purposes, storing weapons in private homes, rockets and launch sites, command posts and tunnel access in or near apartment buildings, mosques, schools, hospitals and UN facilities.

President Biden should reconsider his retreat from his “ironclad” promise to Israel before it is further eroded by the rust he is creating by unwise policy decisions to the detriment of Israel and to his leadership of the free world.

If you wish to comment or respond you can reach me at melpearlman322@gmail.com. Please do so in a rational, thoughtful, respectful and civil manner.

Mel Pearlman holds B.S. & M.S. degrees in physics as well as a J.D. degree and initially came to Florida in 1966 to work on the Gemini and Apollo space programs. He has practiced law in Central Florida since 1972. He has served as president of the Jewish Federation of Greater Orlando; was a charter board member, first vice president and pro-bono legal counsel of the Holocaust Memorial Resource and Education Center of Central Florida, as well as holding many other community leadership positions.