Biden’s Dangerous Misreading of ‘Never Again’

National Review Online

Wednesday, May 08, 2024

 

Speaking at a Holocaust remembrance ceremony, President Biden addressed the slaughter of 6 million Jews by Nazis during World War II, which he then linked to the Hamas attacks of October 7. The same day, it was confirmed that his administration had paused delivery of lethal aid to Israel over its intention to invade Rafah — a necessary move to destroy Hamas and prevent future attacks.

 

While this would seem contradictory on the surface, one line from the speech makes it clear where Biden is coming from. “Never again,” Biden told the audience, “simply translated for me, means ‘never forget.’”

 

Not forgetting the Holocaust as a historical event is easy. Nazi Germany no longer exists, and there isn’t much political risk to simply saying that the atrocities it committed were horrific. But “never again” requires taking actions today that may be politically difficult in real time.

 

In the wake of October 7, Biden seemed to understand that preventing further atrocities required supporting the efforts of Israelis to destroy those responsible. About a week after the massacres, Biden said that Hamas needed to be entirely eliminated. He said that the U.S. commitment to Israel’s security was “ironclad” and that he had Israel’s back.

 

But in the face of mounting political pressure from within his party to abandon his support for Israel, Biden buckled. For months, Biden has twisted Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s arm privately and lashed out publicly in an effort to prevent Israel from taking out Hamas’s remaining stronghold in Rafah, which is also believed to be the location of the hostages still being held. This week, as Israel took targeted action at the Rafah crossing along the border between Gaza and Egypt — the exact sort of limited engagement that the Biden team previously said they were okay with — administration officials disclosed that the U.S. had taken the dramatic step of pausing shipments of bombs that are ready to go to Israel.

 

While the initial move may be limited, on Wednesday night, Biden threatened Israel with a broader cutoff of ammunition. He told CNN, “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.”

 

Until recently, the administration’s rhetoric has focused on a “major attack.” But National Security Council spokesman John Kirby now says that “we don’t support ground operations in Rafah that would put the majority or even any of the — the civilians there at any greater risk.”

 

Saying that absolutely no civilians can be put at any sort of heightened risk during an urban warfare campaign against an enemy that hides behind civilians as part of its war strategy is effectively the same thing as saying that Israel cannot be allowed to fight Hamas. What this means is that, in effect, it is now the policy of the Biden administration to leave Hamas in power.

 

Just before the limited Israeli incursion into Rafah, media organizations breathlessly ran with the headline that Hamas had accepted a “cease-fire.” It soon became clear that the terrorist group had actually released a completely untenable new proposal that, along with other outrageous demands, said 33 hostages to be traded in exchange for a cease-fire might include hostages who are dead.

 

It’s no surprise that Hamas is so dug in, given that Biden’s response every time Hamas rejects an offer is to ratchet up the pressure on Israel to make more concessions. And given that Biden is protecting Hamas from an Israeli operation in Rafah, the terrorist group is feeling no military pressure.

 

By pausing the transfer of bombs to Israel — with a clear threat of halting further aid — Biden is not only letting Hamas off the hook, but also emboldening Iran and its other terror proxies.

 

During his Holocaust remembrance speech, Biden talked passionately about not allowing hate to fester. Yet hate, by itself, would not have caused the Holocaust. Plenty of groups have hated each other at many points in history without it leading to horrors on the scale of the Holocaust. What was different was not just that Nazis hated but that they had amassed incredible military power, and that by the time the world rose up to stop them, it was too late for millions of Jews. Jews, meanwhile, were helpless, with no means to defend themselves.

 

Under Biden’s formulation — in which “never again” means “never forget” — simply talking about the horrors of October 7 in the past tense is sufficient. But if “never again” actually means “never again,” then it requires supporting the world’s only Jewish state in its efforts to destroy the terrorist group that is responsible for that horrific attack so that it can never massacre Jews again.