Letter to the editor: Biden betrays Israel

OPINION:

As a U.S. Navy veteran, I find it utterly disgusting and contemptible that the Biden administration is taking Israel to the woodshed over a mistaken and tragic drone strike that resulted in the deaths of food aid workers. Especially contemptible among President Biden’s rogues’ gallery of propagandists is John Kirby, former Navy admiral and current White House national security spokesman.

Mr. Kirby chastised the Israel Defense Forces for the aid deaths while hypocritically downplaying similar accidental deaths by U.S. forces of innocent Afghans during President Biden’s disastrous withdrawal from Kabul in August 2021. Yet the simple truth remains: Israel has gone to tremendous lengths to limit civilian casualties.

Meanwhile, the Palestinians’ Hamas continues its desperate reign of terror, all the while garnering crocodile-tear sympathy from twisted international supporters and holding both innocent Israelis and Americans as hostages. Adding insult to injury, Mr. Biden delights in slandering fellow Americans — Republicans — as ”semi-fascists” while he and his administration pander to the true heirs of Nazism, Hamas.

I find it incredible that Mr. Kirby and I served in the same Navy. His prevarications and propaganda are unbecoming for a man who wore the uniform of his country. Even the late Sen. John McCain rightfully called Mr. Kirby an “idiot” some 10 years ago.

Neither Mr. Biden nor Mr. Kirby should be throwing stones from their glass houses. The U.S. ought to be doing everything possible to support Israel in ending the terrorist reign of the radical Islamist Hamas and freeing all of the innocent hostages. Any surviving members of Hamas ought to be charged with crimes against humanity. Those convicted should be hanged, just like the Nazi war criminals at the Nuremberg trials. 

Expect the Biden administration to continue to sell Israel — the only free democracy in the Middle East — down the river, while Mr. Biden desperately panders for votes among small and noxious groups of Palestinian supporters and campus radicals. Mr. Biden and his administration exemplify the Talmudic dictum that essentially states those who are merciful to the cruel will be cruel to the merciful.

The U.S. desperately needs new leadership. 

RICK REISS

Temecula, California