A dark hour in American leadership

While critics of Israel in general and Prime Minister Netanyahu in particular, welcomed with glee excerpts from Bob Woodward’s book “War,” of President Biden cursing Mr. Netanyahu, the excerpts actually reveal the disturbing inability of Mr. Biden to concede that he and his team have been consistently wrong in their assessments and advice.

Since the tragic October 7, 2023 debacle, Israel has been constantly reassessing the situation and revising its planning and operations accordingly.

This while the Biden team remains stuck on the same messianic fantasy that creating a sovereign Palestinian state will magically put an end to the existential threat of those committed to a “no Jewish state” solution.

The New York Times report on the book relates that in April, for instance, the president questioned Mr. Netanyahu’s conduct in the war in a phone call, asking, according to the book, “What’s your strategy, man?”

When Mr. Netanyahu answered, insisting that the Israeli military needed to push deeper into southern Gaza and invade the southern city of Rafah, a key border crossing with Egypt, the president, using Mr. Netanyahu’s nickname, dismissed this response.

“Bibi, you’ve got no strategy,” Mr. Biden replied, according to Mr. Woodward.

In May, Mr. Biden halted a shipment of 3,500 bombs to Israel out of concern that they would be used in the Rafah operation and cause excessive civilian casualties. After Mr. Netanyahu proceeded with the invasion of Rafah anyway,Mr. Biden told advisers that Mr. Netanyahu was a liar, using an obscenity, and added that “18 out of 19 people who work for him” were also liars, the book says.

He questioned Mr. Netanyahu’s motivations, saying that “he doesn’t give” a damn about Hamas but gives a damn “only about himself,” although he used an earthier term than “damn.”

The outcome of the Rafah operation was completely at odds with the warnings of the Biden team.

It took a fraction of the projected time with a bare minimum of civilian losses.

But instead of adapting to this reality, Mr. Biden remains angry.

And his team remains doggedly driven to impose its two-state solution fantasy.

This while another self-serving fantasy regarding Iran drives American policy. It is that Iran, whose theology is committed to the destruction of the Jewish State, achieving world dominance and which sees an apocalypse that would also destroy Iran as a welcome path to Paradise, can also somehow be placated by the creation of a sovereign Palestinian state.

The Woodward book reveals a dark hour in American leadership as a desperate world seeks light.