Before President Joe Biden warned Israel that his administration would refuse to send more weapons, including 2,000-pound bombs that have killed so many innocent people, an Israeli spokesman sat down with media personality Piers Morgan. It turned into maybe the most revealing exchange since the Oct. 7 Hamas terror attack on Israel that triggered the unfolding Gaza conflict.
“So how many civilians do you believe you’ve killed?” Morgan asked.
“We don’t have exact figures, as you know, it’s the fog of war,” Israeli government spokesperson Avi Hyman answered.
“You’ve got exact numbers for how many Hamas terrorists you’ve killed,” Morgan pressed. “Why wouldn’t you know how many civilians you’ve killed?”
“Because obviously our focus is to go after the Hamas terrorists,” Hyman returned.
“If you know exactly how many Hamas terrorists you’ve killed, you must know how many civilians you’ve killed,” Morgan kept pushing.
The exchange went on that way for five minutes. The Israeli spokesman did not answer the question, didn’t seem prepared for it. He resorted to the much-used line that Israel’s military is the best in the world at protecting civilians, a claim Morgan rightly called bunk given that they didn’t even know how many innocent Palestinians they had killed.
Estimates say Israel has killed northwards of 13,000 children and more than 34,000 civilians overall.
Not long after, Biden announced that the U.S. will stop sending American weapons, including those 2,000-pound bombs, if Israel launches an attack on Rafah, which would put even more civilians in harm’s way.
“If they go into Rafah, I’m not supplying the weapons that have been used historically to deal with Rafah, to deal with the cities – that deal with that problem,” Biden told CNN’s Erin Burnett.
That led to predictable hyperbolic claims the U.S. was abandoning Israel, that maybe Jews couldn’t trust “gentiles,” that it was a result of antisemitism.
“We stand by allies, we don’t second guess them,” Sen. Mitt Romney tweeted. “Biden’s dithering on Israel weapons is bad policy and a terrible message to Israel, our allies, and the world.”
An Israeli official angrily announced they’d use imprecise bombs if they couldn’t get precise ones from the U.S.
South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham told Fox News: “The only reason they are not dancing in Iran is because they don’t believe in dancing.”
Biden’s critics seemed to care as much about the killing of an ungodly number of people as the Israeli spokesman Morgan grilled. That’s been one of the most disturbing developments since Oct. 7. People of conscience grieved with Israel after that horrific Hamas attack. The slaughter of innocent babies and women and children and men was an indescribable evil no matter the events before Oct. 7. People of conscience understood why Israel had to go after Hamas, and hard. It not only had a right to self-defense, but a duty.
That was clear. It remains clear.
That’s why even as he announced a pause in shipping weapons and artillery shells to Israel, Biden remained steadfast to the country’s defense, making clear the U.S. would remain a strong ally.
“We’re going to continue to make sure Israel is secure in terms of Iron Dome and their ability to respond to attacks that came out of the Middle East recently,” he said.
But it has been frustrating, and horrifying, watching Israel become so committed to rooting out Hamas it seems to not care how many innocent bodies are being left in the wake of their wrath in Gaza. It has been even more frustrating knowing the U.S. has been underwriting and supporting that killing of innocents, which can’t possibly make Israel safer in the long term.
That’s a lesson the U.S. learned the hard way when we allowed vengeance to guide us after Al Qaeda knocked down the Twin Towers. That’s why I know Biden hasn’t abandoned Israel, as some of his critics are claiming.
He finally sent innocent, starving Palestinians a long overdue lifeline.
Issac Bailey is a McClatchy Opinion writer in North and South Carolina.
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