Speaking in Fulton, Missouri after World War II, Winston Churchill called on the United States to invest in its “special relationship” with the United Kingdom and other allies towards the common aim of peace. Failure to do so, in his words, would mean that the “Stone Age may return on the gleaming wings of science, and what might now shower immeasurable material blessings upon mankind may even bring about its total destruction.”
Vice President Kamala Harris’s statements and actions during Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s visit to Washington, D.C.—which coincided with her first acts as the Democratic party’s presumptive nominee—were a preview of what America’s Stone Age could look like.
Rather than show solidarity with an ally whose efforts include the release of 120 hostages, including eight Americans, in its fight for survival, Harris opted for partisan pageantry.
Neither Harris nor anyone from the cabinet welcomed Netanyahu when he landed. She abdicated her responsibilities as president of the Senate to preside over Netanyahu’s address to Congress, skipping the speech in protest. Following her private meeting with Netanyahu, she chose to speak alone rather than alongside him and focused her remarks on the civilian cost of the Israel-Hamas war.
If a picture speaks a thousand words, then the image of the burning of the American flag in front of Washington’s Union Station rather than that of two world leaders together speaks volumes about the U.S.-Israel relationship under the Biden-Harris administration.
The administration and its allies in Congress, many of whom skipped Netanyahu’s speech, laid the groundwork for months for Netanyahu’s icy reception.
In March, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer—who did attend the speech but refused to shake the prime minister’s hand—delivered a speech in which he called for elections in Israel to oust Netanyahu. He called the prime minister an obstacle to peace for creating a “coalition with far-right extremists” and drew an equivalence between Netanyahu and Hamas.
Moreover, the administration has repeatedly rebuked IDF units, withheld weapons and sanctioned Israelis.
Civilians are indeed suffering in Gaza, but the reason for that is obviously Hamas, an organization that steals humanitarian aid and fires on civilians. Shortly after the Oct. 7 attack, a Hamas official explained that the terror group’s tunnels are meant as shelter for Hamas terrorists, not civilians and that providing shelter for civilians was not Hamas’s responsibility.
Ignoring this context and failing to frame this message to the American public had ramifications on America’s streets and college campuses, as evidenced by record surges in antisemitic incidents and the Iran-influenced demonstrations on college campuses.
Harris used her powerful bully pulpit to provide a platform for our adversaries, describing the demonstrators’ support for Hamas as “exactly what the human emotion should be.”
The Biden-Harris administration has made a lot of noise about taking steps to address antisemitism, but a closer look reveals that their sloganeering about “combatting antisemitism” is nothing more than a Trojan horse for pushing their divisive progressive agenda.
Their National Strategy to Counter Antisemitism, for example, was drafted in consultation with a Hamas apologist: The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), whose leader praised Hamas’s Oct. 7 attack. The strategy featured the word “equity” more times than the word “Judaism.”
Netanyahu’s reception last week is a sign of darker times to come, imperiling the world’s only Jewish state and the Middle East’s only democracy.
It is no surprise that just days after Harris’s remarks, Hezbollah—Iran’s preeminent proxy and the group responsible for the largest terrorist attack on Americans before 9/11—launched a cruel attack in northern Israel that killed a dozen children. Instead of sending a stern warning to Iran during Israel’s response—which included killing a top Hezbollah commander and Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh—U.S. Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin offered platitudes about “opportunities for diplomacy” and the need to “take the temperature down.”
Warning about a return to the Stone Age, Churchill cautioned that “time may be short” and we should not allow “events to drift along until it is too late.”
This is a lesson that Israel understands well, given the history of the Jewish people, and Israel is taking the necessary steps to restore security to its people and the region.
It is, unfortunately, a lesson our adversaries understand, too.
