Whatever unfolds in Israel over the days ahead in the wake of Saturday’s invasion of the country by Hamas terrorists, one thing is almost certain.
American lives will be among those lost, and Americans could well be among those taken hostage.
And that’s going to make a bad situation even worse for the American public — and the bunglers of President Joe Biden’s administration.
In an interview on CNN’s “State of the Union,” according to Breitbart, Israel’s Minister for Strategic Affairs Ron Dermer told host Dana Bash that there were “scores” of hostages — including Americans — but details were scant.
“I could tell you there is also American hostages as part of the number as well. I don’t want to get into a specific number.
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“But these are women and children,” he said. “They are elderly. They are Holocaust survivors. This is sick. It is a savage attack.”
When Bash pressed for more information, Dermer, a former Israeli ambassador to the United States who was born in Florida, suggested the nature of the close U.S.-Israeli relationship, with many citizens of Israel having American citizenship as well, makes it likely American citizens were directly victimized by the violence.
“We have a lot of dual citizens in Israel. I suspect there are several, but we’re still trying to sort through all of all this information after this horrific surprise attack and we’ll make sure to put that information out so that the loved ones of these people who were killed and who are held hostage, they know as quickly as possible,” he said.
And on NBC’s “Meet the Press,” Secretary of State Antony Blinkin said the State Department has had reports that Americans could be “among the dead.”
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He said there have been similar reports that Americans are among the scores of Israeli service personnel and civilians who have been captured by Hamas.
“Any American anywhere who’s being detained or held hostage — that’s going to be a priority for the scope of this administration,” he said.
Well, Americans can be forgiven for skepticism when it comes to a “priority for the scope” of the Biden White House. (Just as an aside, “priority for the scope” is pretty much a meaningless phrase in normal English. Maybe it means something pointed in government-ese. But we get the point. It’s going to be important.)
After all, this is a president who traded with Russian President Vladimir Putin to release a known Russian arms dealer — the kind of guy who’s known as the “merchant of death” in international circles — to get back to the United States as a celebrity sports star who checked the right Democratic demographic boxes of being a woman, black and gay. Meanwhile, he left behind a Marine veteran accused of espionage to rot in Russian prison cells.
This isn’t meant to be churlishly political at a time when Israel, one of the United States’ closest allies, is in yet another battle for its existence, but any Americans being held hostage by Hamas better hope they or their supporters can drum up enough victimization bona fides to rate the Biden administration’s attention.
That’s especially true considering the murderous raiders behind this invasion are Palestinian terrorists — killers in the kind of cause causes Democrats love to celebrate at the expense of human decency.
Just look at the way the fabled “squad” members managed to condemn the attack but at almost the same time call for “de-escalation,” as though the Israeli government — already expected to tolerate pinpoint acts of terrorism on a regular basis — is supposed to let its citizens be subject to an outright act of war by a terrorist group posing as a quasi-government and do nothing about it.
On the Israeli side, the death toll is at least 600 and rising. No Israeli government would deserve to hold power if it didn’t protect its people from an attack like that.
Big-name Democrats haven’t exactly covered themselves in glory in recent years when it comes to their treatment of the dead. When Americans, including a United States ambassador, were murdered in Benghazi, Libya, on Sept. 11, 2012, the Barack Obama administration and its secretary of state, Hillary Clinton, manufactured a lie about an internet video no one had seen to explain their deaths.
When Hillary Clinton herself was grilled on the cause of their deaths months later, she infamously asked, “What difference, at this point, does it make?”
More recently Biden infuriated Gold Star families when he was seen looking at his watch while at a ceremony for the return of the bodies of the service personnel who had died during his disastrous withdrawal from Afghanistan in September 2021.
None of that bodes well for Americans who have been unfortunate enough to have fallen into Hamas’ hands. None of it bodes well for the families of Americans who might have died thanks to that same murderous crew.
The American public deserves better than an administration that can’t be trusted to honor its dead. It deserves better than a president who can’t be trusted to get American citizens home if they’ve been taken unjustly into custody by a foreign power — especially if that foreign power isn’t even a legitimate government.
But the Biden administration is what the American public has at the moment.
Any war in the Middle East is going to be bad. With Biden in the White House and Americans directly involved, as casualties or hostages, it’s going to be worse — for the United States and the world.
