[guest post by JVW]

Nearly eight years ago I related how the outgoing Obama Administration was taking out its frustrations at their recent electoral defeat by backstabbing our only consistent ally in the entire forsaken Middle East:

One can make a honest argument that Israeli settlements on the West Bank are hindering any sort of peace process. I might not agree with that particular assessment, seeing as how it is hard to take the Palestinians seriously as a legitimate peace partner, but I grant that it is a legitimate argument. But to advance this proposition now, after the Administration’s cluelessness towards events in Egypt, wrong choices in Libya, and ugly dithering in Syria has made things in that region far worse than they should be — to pivot and blame Israel for ruining the peace process under those circumstances is a level of delusional make-believe that I wouldn’t have thought even these vacuous narcissists would stoop to. The foreign policy of Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, and John Kerry has been relentlessly awful for eight years, and good riddance to that horrid crew.

Now, two administrations later, the outgoing Biden Administration has chosen to take out their frustrations at not being able to reconcile their growing anti-Zionist, anti-Israel, anti-Jew caucus with supporters of the only worthwhile democracy in the region surrounding the Holy Land. Noah Rothman at NRO provides the story:

When it was initially announced, the cease-fire with Hezbollah via the Lebanese government, to which Israel acquiesced on Tuesday, didn’t make much sense to me.

Why would Jerusalem agree to put a halt to the war it was prosecuting so expertly with only some of its objectives secured and in response to security guarantees that look a lot like the failed architecture of the past? Now we know. Israel wasn’t persuaded to take a risk on peace. The Jewish state was blackmailed into it.

In a press release, Senator Ted Cruz alleged that the Biden administration muscled Israel into a cease-fire by threatening not just to choke off the aid and materiel flowing into Israel. He threatened to join the cast of Middle Eastern jackals set on throwing the Israeli people into the sea.

“Obama-Biden officials pressured our Israeli allies into accepting the ceasefire by withholding weapons they needed to defend themselves and counter Hezbollah, and by threatening to facilitate a further, broader, binding international arms embargo through the United Nations,” he wrote.

The Netanyahu government has largely confirmed the broad outlines of Sen. Cruz’s allegations, and though the Biden Administration denies engaging in this power play even the center-left anti-Netanyahu Israeli newspaper Haaretz acknowledges that the slowdown in U.S. aid to Israel and no-to-subtle threats by Biden Administration officials to allow anti-Israel resolutions to pass at the U.N. without a U.S. veto — exactly what the Obama Administration did to Israel some 95 months ago — are forcing Israel’s hand.

Joe Biden has always imagined himself as a wise and insightful foreign policy thinker when the truth is that he’s a pompous blowhard idiot who does nothing more than repeat whatever passes for conventional Washington thinking at any given moment. Now even with his increasingly failing mind he has to understand at least at some level that his Presidency will likely be considered an abject failure in so many key areas, a tough pill to swallow for a man who was being told just four years ago that he could be a “transformative” President in the FDR or LBJ mode. President Biden and the people with whom he surrounds himself have always been vindictive and vengeful. Now it seems that just like his former boss, Joe Biden seeks to shred Benjamin Netanyahu’s reputation as well. Jonathan Tobin doesn’t believe this initiative will be successful:

For all of his faults and his stubborn refusal to cede power after so many years in office, as well as the fact that he bears some of the responsibility for the Oct. 7 catastrophe that happened on his watch, what Netanyahu has done in the year since then is truly remarkable.

Only someone with his steely determination and savvy understanding of the tricky dynamics of the U.S.-Israel relationship could have navigated the long months of war so skillfully. No possible successor in his own Likud Party or among his opponents in the Knesset could have stuck to his goals—and do so much harm to Hamas and Hezbollah in the face of the desire of his country’s sole superpower ally to force Jerusalem to accept the continued rule of Hamas in Gaza and avoid direct conflict with Iran’s Lebanese auxiliaries.

Whatever comes next—whether it is a renewed war with Hezbollah caused by their refusal to keep the ceasefire or to abide by its terms that demand they withdraw their terrorist cadres and weapons north of the Litani River, or the bloody continuation of the mopping up of what’s left of Hamas’s terrorists in Gaza—Netanyahu’s leadership has been indispensable.

He may ultimately be judged by Israel’s voters as being too tainted by his association with the worst day in their country’s history to serve another term. But his service as prime minister during the last terrible year of intense battle will still deserve to be remembered with honor. It was a period during which it was only his insistence on sticking to a goal of eliminating Hamas and dealing deadly blows to Hezbollah and Iran—while cabinet colleagues, political foes and military advisers were willing to give in to the Americans and accept far more disastrous deals—that prevented a diplomatic and military defeat for Israel.

If, miraculously, Hamas and Hezbollah (i.e. Iran) both determine that their future is best served living in peace side-by-side with a Jewish state in the Levant then perhaps history will indeed see the Biden Administration has having been perspicacious and wise. Or perhaps history will conclude that even in their moral cowardice they lucked into a positive result. But reality suggests that it will not be long before Hezbollah and Iran resume their hostilities toward Israel, and the IDF will find itself back on the battlefield facing a rested and rearmed opponent. If that day should come, hopefully the United States will be led by a team who recognizes the threat that a collective of bad actors (including China and Russia) poses to the one functional political culture in the Middle East. For now, though, we can only hope that this questionable peace agreement somehow lasts.

Here’s wishing all Patterico’s Pontifications readers a truly happy Thanksgiving holiday.

– JVW