In recent weeks, there has been a lot of tension between the United States and Israel. The Biden administration claims that they were disturbed that they were not notified when Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh was eliminated in Tehran, nor were they notified about the pager attacks targeting Hezbollah and the elimination of Hezbollah terror leader Hassan Nasrallah. The US government for this reason wants to be in the loop about how Israel plans to respond to the Iranian missile attacks, yet they fear that their Israeli counterparts won’t keep them in the loop. This has led to the US government expressing a lack of confidence in the Israeli government.
In a recent 60-minute interview, US Presidential Candidate Kamala Harris, who presently serves as Vice President of the United States, declined to say whether the US has a “close ally in Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.” She added: “The work that we do diplomatically with the leadership of Israel is an ongoing pursuit around making clear our principles, which include the need for humanitarian aid, the need for this war to end, the need for a deal to be done which would release the hostages and create a ceasefire. And we are not going to stop in terms of putting pressure on Israel.”
In other words, the US government does not respect Israel’s right to get a decisive military victory against Hamas, the Islamic Jihad, Hezbollah, the Houthis, and most importantly, the mullahs in Tehran. As we speak, terrorists continue to strike across the Jewish state, from Hadera to Jaffa to Beersheba. Even Netanya has not been spared rocket fire, with three bomb sirens yesterday alone. Rockets continue to be fired at Israel, both killing and maiming Israelis, including recently around 70 young soldiers eating dinner in Binyamina. And yet, the United States wants Israel to release thousands of Palestinian terrorists and to halt our strategic edge in the war against Iran and its proxies, just so that this war can end and there can be a hostage deal.
Of course, everyone wants the 101 remaining hostages to be released as soon as possible. These people are getting tortured and raped every day they are in captivity. However, releasing thousands of terrorists with Israeli blood on their hands and giving them green cards to the United States is not the best way to end the conflict. The only way that the conflict can end is when Iran and its allies are defeated on the battlefield, thus offering Israel a strategic advantage that will enable the residents of Northern Israel and Southern Israel who are presently living as internally displaced persons to return to their homes, and for the hostages to be released in exchange for an end to the conflict, not in return for the release of Palestinian terrorists with Israeli blood on their hands. A true ally of the State of Israel needs to understand and respect this and unconditionally help Israel to defeat Iran and its proxies. Putting pressure on Israel to cave into terrorists and having certain congressmen threaten to cut how much America contributes to Israel’s defense is not something that the US should do to an ally.
This is not the first time that America has betrayed one of its allies. Representative Adam Schiff recently introduced the Artsakh Recovery Act, which is designed to seize Azerbaijani assets and utilize them to pay Armenians who were recently displaced in the Second Karabakh War and the subsequent Azerbaijani military operation. The problem with this initiative is it does not propose a similar compensation package for the close to one million Azerbaijanis who were made refugees by Armenia’s thirty-year occupation of Karabakh and the seven Azerbaijani districts in violation of four UN Security Council resolutions.
Given that Azerbaijan has been a staunch ally of the West against a nuclear Iran, this legislation indiscriminately targeting Azerbaijan should be considered surprising. However, the United States has demonstrated that they like to throw US allies under the bus to the benefit of their enemies. Just as America abandoned Mohammed Karzai to the Taliban, so now they abandoned the US ally that helped American troops to refuel en route to Kabul and to safely evacuate from the war-torn country. Just as America abandoned Mubarak to the Muslim Brotherhood and the Shah to Ayatollah Khomeini, so now America wants to abandon both Israel and Azerbaijan, two US allies that are in a strategic alliance with each other, to Iran and its allies, whether they be Hamas, Islamic Jihad, Hezbollah, Houthis, Armenia or the mullahs themselves. This is morally reprehensible and world Jewry must stand against this.
Rachel Avraham is the CEO of the Dona Gracia Center for Diplomacy and an Israel-based journalist.
