OPINION:
As Israel’s war against Hamas in the Gaza Strip continues, with controversy sprouting up about the Israeli government’s threats to invade Rafah in pursuit of Hamas, the Biden administration has taken the unconstitutional decision to delay the shipment of vital lethal aid to Israel. This is lethal aid that was appropriated by Congress.
Hence, the decision by President Biden and his top advisers to withhold the shipments of military aid unless Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government abandons its strategy for defeating Hamas by invading Rafah is inherently unconstitutional.
Therefore, Mr. Biden’s decision to gum up the aid for Israel after it was appropriated by Congress as a form of diplomatic blackmail is an impeachable offense. At least that’s what the Democratic Party claimed in 2019 when then-President Donald Trump was wrongly accused of holding up congressionally approved aid for Ukraine until the Zelenskyy government in Kyiv allegedly helped the 2020 Trump campaign for reelection dig up dirt on the Biden family. When Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy refused, Democrats swooped in and impeached Mr. Trump for violating the Constitution.
If we were to apply the same standard to Mr. Trump’s successor, Mr. Biden, then the Republicans who control the House of Representatives should have filed articles of impeachment by now.
So, why haven’t the House Republicans done that? After all, reciprocity is a key tenet of electoral politics and ensures that the ship of state remains righted. What’s good for the goose is good for the gander.
Or are the Republicans truly content to live in a two-tiered political and justice system? They must be on some level, because former President Barack Obama was allowed to withhold lethal aid allocated for Ukraine by Congress in his second term without so much as a question from congressional Republicans about it. But Mr. Trump delayed congressionally appropriated lethal aid for Ukraine — a nation that is not even a U.S. ally or member of NATO — by a few days, and he was impeached.
Still, Mr. Biden is encouraged and allowed to hold an actual U.S. ally like Israel hostage until it abandons a course of action that its democratically elected leaders have concluded is in the best national security interest of the Israeli people.
Where’s the outcry from all those who feigned injury over Mr. Trump’s alleged slow-walking of lethal aid to Ukraine in 2019? Those people, if they were serious about their opposition to Mr. Trump’s purported violation of the Constitution’s separation of powers, should be equally appalled by Mr. Biden’s identical actions when it comes to Israel.
And why is Mr. Biden withholding the lethal aid?
Well, we are told it is out of some misplaced sense of moral indignation over Israel’s military actions in Gaza that are risking the lives of innocent civilians. Interestingly, there seems to be barely any acknowledgment by the Biden administration that Israel’s military action against Hamas in Gaza was precipitated by the deadliest terrorist attack perpetrated by Hamas in Israel’s history.
It’s not as if Mr. Netanyahu woke up one day and declared that Israel’s military would pulverize Gaza just because he felt like it.
Anyway, the real reason that Mr. Biden is going after Israel by depriving its military of critical U.S. military supplies is for domestic political concerns. Mr. Biden is down in the polls. Mr. Biden and the Democratic Party are trying to galvanize left-wing voters to come through for them in November. The Biden administration is doing this by showing solidarity with the Palestinians.
In so doing, Mr. Biden and his supporters believe that they cannot only win the small — but critical — Muslim American vote in the key swing state of Michigan but that they can generate more interest from left-wing voters who may dislike Mr. Biden by standing opposed to the so-called imperialism of Israel.
All of this is a form of political blackmail of the sort that Mr. Trump was accused of in 2019.
It is problematic that not one House Republican has called to impeach Mr. Biden for doing the same thing that Mr. Trump was accused of doing with Ukraine. Some people reading this may be rolling their eyes, thinking that such a move by House Republicans would be futile.
So what?
The Democrats did what they did to Mr. Trump in 2019, knowing full well that the likelihood they’d get a conviction and see Mr. Trump removed from office was almost zero. Yet the Democrats pressed ahead with the case anyway.
The Democrats were able to galvanize their base of supporters with the sham impeachment of Mr. Trump and ride strong into the 2020 presidential election when they might not otherwise have been able to.
Thus, the Republicans should return the favor. Plus, unlike the Democrats’ scurrilous accusations against Mr. Trump in 2019, the case against Mr. Biden is much stronger. The current president is gleefully harming the national security of an ally, Israel, for domestic political considerations in the midst of a contentious presidential election cycle that he is slated to lose. Mr. Biden is defying Congress and violating the constitutional separation of powers.
Therefore, President Biden must be impeached. The Republicans must use impeachment to rally their voters and remind Americans of how truly abysmal Biden’s reign of idiocy has been.
• Brandon J. Weichert is a national security analyst at The National Interest and an author of several books, including the forthcoming book “A Disaster of Our Own Making: How the West Lost Ukraine” (Encounter Books), which will be released on Oct. 22. He can be followed on X @WeTheBrandon.
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