The baseball fan in me believes politicians are a lot like professional, major league hitters.
Even the very best ones are successful only about a third of the time. But when a big, fat pitch comes at them, they salivate at the chance to hit it out of the ballpark.
That’s what happened this past week.
By blowing up the World Central Kitchen convoy and killing seven of the aid workers, Israel threw a gopher ball to President Joe Biden and the leftist Democrats, and they smacked it hard and deep into the seats.
Cynics will say Biden and Co. were sitting on that pitch, waiting for it, and maybe they’re right.
The signs have been there as I discussed last week. From his State of the Union address quoting the Hamas-tainted casualty figures, to his hot mic remark about a come to Jesus meeting with Bibi. From Kamala Harris studying the Gaza maps to warn Israel of consequences, to allowing an anti-Israel vote to be adopted at the UN.
You kinda knew a shift from performative criticism of Israel to an actual policy change, was on-deck. All it needed was a pitch right down the middle of the plate.
And it came on Monday when Israel committed that very costly error in Gaza with the WCK.
Biden was quick to call up Bibi to warn him that a change in US policy is up next. He made it clear the need for Israel to announce and implement a series of specific, concrete, and measurable steps to address civilian harm, humanitarian suffering, and the safety of aid workers.
If you are compelled to point out the hypocrisy of Biden’s outrage over the WCK tragedy, after the botched US drone attack in Afghanistan in 2021 that killed ten innocent people including seven children, that no one in his administration has even had the decency to apologize for, yeah, so what? Get over it. It’s not relevant. The US isn’t dependent on Israel for its jet fighters and precision bombs.
But here’s the bigger thing that came out of the WCK debacle. Biden told Bibi he wants an immediate cease-fire. He told Israel to get back to the negotiating table to strike a deal with Hamas.
That’s a crucial change in US policy. That’s what the Squad-niks and other Democrat progressives have been agitating for.
Cease-fire? Make a deal with Hamas? Well, what kind of deal? A deal that leaves Hamas and its remaining battalions in place? A deal that boosts Iran’s clout in the region? A deal that enables radical Islam to destabilize Jordan, or Saudi Arabia?
Shame on the politicians, just a mere six months from the worst slaughter of Jews since the Holocaust, with more than 100 hostages, men, women and children still being held by Hamas in hellish conditions, who have made a total victory over Hamas that much more difficult.
Shame on Israel, for ignoring all the warning signs coming from the US administration’s dugout and its congressional backstops.
And for those of you who want to cling to the fantasy that a Trump administration would be a better alternative for Israel, just listen to what he’s been saying in the past couple of weeks.
On Thursday, in an interview with radio host Hugh Hewitt, Trump unloaded on Israel and said, Israel is absolutely losing the PR war, they’re losing it big…You’ve got to get it over with…And I’m not sure that I’m loving the way they’re doing it because you’ve got to have victory. You have to have a victory and it’s taking a long time.
In an interview with an Israeli newspaper, Trump said Israel made a very big mistake bombing Gaza.
To Trump, the war in Gaza is a TV show he doesn’t like, because it’s not filled with pretty pictures. In his mind, it should have been wrapped up in 57 minutes. He says Israel is releasing too many videos of too many buildings falling down. Does that even make any sense?
But Trump is right about one thing.
Israel was winning the hot war but losing the PR war. To the naked eye, It had no coherent strategy for relief supplies to reach the population in need.
It enabled the narrative of the suffering Gazans to supplant the narrative of the suffering hostages,
I believe that after the barbaric Hamas assault on October 7th, Israel had a friend in Joe Biden, but that Netanyahu hasn’t done enough to nurture that friendship. When Biden’s support of Israel started to create a backlash in his own party and he needed some help covering his ass, Bibi didn’t even throw the president a washcloth.
So this past week, when Israel mistakenly attacked the World Central Kitchen trucks and killed the workers, it gave Biden the running room he needed. He could take the policy action his critics have been clamoring for, and with Israel so far in the wrong, it couldn’t bitch about it.
Yes, we can blame Biden for backtracking on Israel, but the Netanyahu government didn’t help. It ignored the inevitable changeover in world opinion from Israel the victim to Israel the villain and It didn’t have any credit left in its account with the White House. So when It served up a huge softball for its opponents to crush, it got clobbered.
Maybe it’s time for a new manager. No more whiffs like we had this week, or heaven forbid it will be lights out. This is a game we surely cannot afford to lose.