Expert: Biden-Harris Admin’s Weakness Has Compounded Israel-Hezbollah Crisis
As the growing conflict between Israel and the Lebanon-based Islamist terrorist group Hezbollah reached an uneasy calm Sunday morning following a ferocious exchange of missile fire, a military expert is warning that the threat of a broader war breaking out at Israel’s northern border is due to the pattern of weakness shown by the Biden-Harris administration and the United Nations.
The looming danger of a full-blown war breaking out between Israel and Hezbollah — with Iran continuing its war drum beat — has been hanging over the Jewish state for weeks since senior Hezbollah commander Fuad Shukr was killed in Beirut by an Israeli airstrike in July. On Sunday, around 100 Israeli warplanes struck targets in southern Lebanon in an attempt to minimize an impending Hezbollah attack. The terrorist group was reportedly still able to launch “hundreds of rockets and drones aimed at military bases and missile defense positions” in northern Israel. One Israeli soldier and three Hezbollah terrorists were killed in the exchange. An Israeli military spokesman stated that “very little damage” had occurred within Israel as a result of the Hezbollah attack.
It remains unclear if Sunday’s hostilities will lead to Israel being pulled into a full-scale war along its northern border in addition to its ongoing war in Gaza against Hamas. Since October 8 of last year, when Hezbollah began its campaign of rocket fire into Israel following Hamas’s October 7 surprise attack, 26 Israeli civilians and 23 soldiers have been killed in northern Israel, with responding Israeli airstrikes killing around 400 Hezbollah terrorists and approximately 100 civilians.
Rep. Keith Self (R-Texas), who served with the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) during his over 25 years in the U.S. Army before retiring as a lieutenant colonel, joined Monday’s “Washington Watch” to unpack the root causes of the ongoing conflict.
“What I see strategically happening [is that] Israel [is] deterring a major response both from Hezbollah and Iran,” he observed. “You’ll notice that Iran has not launched their response as well. So I believe that Israel has actually started their strategic surgical strike campaign against Hezbollah. They’re going after weapons systems. They’re going after the leaders. They’re going after the critical supplies. So I believe this is a long-term campaign that they are running with these surgical strikes — not all at once — timed against threats.”
Self, who deployed to Grenada, Bosnia, Afghanistan, and Qatar as part of Operation Iraqi Freedom, went on to contend that the weakness shown by the Biden-Harris administration, as well as the incompetence of the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL), has compounded the conflict.
“I blame a lot of this on the weakness of the Biden administration,” he underscored. “Why do we have a third of our Navy in the Middle East focused on Israel and Gaza and Hezbollah? It’s because the weakness of the Biden administration caused this. And so we’ve pulled naval assets out of the Pacific where our primary adversary is — China. So this is a disaster all the way around in the making. I hope that we can settle this fast. We can get Hezbollah to move north of the Litani River, which is where UNIFIL is supposed to keep them. Once again, we’re seeing the U.N. fail in their mission, just like they did in Gaza. UNIFIL is not keeping Hezbollah north of the Litani River to give that buffer zone to Israel. We need to establish that line at the Litani River. We need to use our assets to back up Israel and allow Israel to defend itself.”
Self concluded by arguing that a Harris-Walz administration would likely continue a hands-off approach to Iran, which launched an unprecedented missile and drone attack against the Jewish state in April and is the primary financial backer of the Hamas and Hezbollah terrorist groups.
“The Biden-Harris administration has shown that it leans toward Iran,” he insisted. “It has coddled them, just like the Obama administration has given them billions of dollars. We don’t enforce the sanctions on their oil. We coddle Iran under the current administration. I have no doubt that the Harris administration, should it happen … will do that in spades. They will double down on that, because we have two truly committed socialist communists on the Democratic ticket today. Make no mistake about it. I take Harris at her word. I take Waltz at his word. They for years have established their bona fides, their credentials in socialist communist policies.”
AUTHOR
Dan Hart
Dan Hart is senior editor at The Washington Stand.
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EDITORS NOTE: This Washington Stand column is republished with permission. All rights reserved. ©2024 Family Research Council.
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