Why don’t they want Israel to win?

This isn’t the first time that the United States has tried to stop the success of the Israel Defense Forces. It happened in 1973, too.

Moshe Phillips | October 22, 2024

U.S. President Richard Nixon, Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir and National Security Advisor Henry Kissinger in the Oval Office of the White House in Washington, D.C., on March 1, 1973. Credit: Oliver F. Atkins Photo via Wikimedia Commons.

Right on cue, as soon as Israel began striking at Hezbollah terrorists in Lebanon, the Biden administration and the government of France rushed to demand a “ceasefire.”

And where did those demands for a ceasefire lead? Hezbollah became emboldened. This past Shabbat during the Sukkot holiday, Hezbollah succeeded in using a drone to attack the Caesarea private residence of the Netanyahu family. The attack cracked glass in a bedroom window.

Why didn’t the United States and France push for a ceasefire during the previous 11 months, when Hezbollah had been firing rockets at Israel on an almost daily basis?

The answer is that “ceasefire” actually means that only Israel should end its military actions. Apparently, when Arabs fire at Israelis, that’s to be expected; when Israel fires back, it’s “escalation” and must cease—immediately! Where are the calls for Hezbollah to stop firing at the Netanyahu home?

In the eyes of the Biden administration, there’s nothing worse than “escalation.” That’s what administration spokespeople say constantly. But in truth, there is something worse than escalation: allowing terrorist organizations to exist.

Hezbollah has murdered hundreds of Americans and Israelis. The Biden administration should be encouraging Israel and thanking its military for doing to Hezbollah what the United States itself should have done long ago. Instead, Biden is once again delaying or denying vital arms shipments that Israel desperately needs to defend itself. That’s outrageous.

The Biden administration has been doing the same thing in Gaza. For months, it has been demanding a “ceasefire,” meaning Israel should stop firing at Hamas. What’s so wrong about this is that Biden’s team knows full well that Hamas has never honored a ceasefire it agreed to.

Thousands of Hamas terrorists are still alive. So are some of Hamas’s top leaders. To cease firing at them now means allowing Hamas to regroup, rearm, and soon retake control of Gaza, so that it can start planning its next Oct. 7.

It’s obvious that the Biden administration does not want Israel to win. Instead, it wants whatever set of conditions will create temporary quiet and win votes in Michigan, regardless of what that will mean for Israel in a few weeks or months. An Israeli victory means that Arab-American voters will be angry at his party. Sadly, it appears to be that simple.

This isn’t the first time that the United States has tried to stop Israel from winning. It happened in 1973, too.

Henry Kissinger was secretary of state. Egypt and Syria were preparing to invade Israel. We know what occurred on the eve of the war, and the days to follow, from three reliable sources: Walter Isaacson’s definitive biography, Kissinger; the book The Secret Conversations of Henry Kissinger by Matti Golan, longtime chief diplomatic correspondent for Haaretz; and David Makovsky, formerly an Obama administration Middle East envoy.

On Yom Kippur morning, hours before the 1973 Arab invasion, Prime Minister Golda Meir was informed by her military intelligence officials that Egypt and Syria were massing their troops along Israel’s borders and would attack later that day. The Israelis immediately contacted Kissinger.

Matti Golan recounts what happened next: “Till the very outbreak of the fighting, Kissinger remained more concerned with the possibility of an Israeli preemptive strike than an Egyptian-Syrian attack.” Kissinger instructed the U.S. ambassador in Israel to present Meir with “a presidential entreaty”—that is, a warning, in the name of President Richard Nixon—“not to start a war” (p. 41).

Abba Eban, who was foreign minister at the time, confirmed in his autobiography that Israeli Army Chief of Staff David Elazar proposed a pre-emptive strike—but Prime Minister Meir and Defense Minister Moshe Dayan rejected it on the grounds that “the United States would regard this as provocative” (p. 509).

As soon as the Arabs attacked, the Israelis requested a U.S. airlift of military supplies. Kissinger stalled them—for an entire brutal week. Kissinger’s strategy was to orchestrate “a limited Egyptian victory,” Makovsky wrote in The Jerusalem Post in 1993. The secretary of state feared that an Israeli victory “would cause Israel to strengthen its resolve not to make any territorial concessions in Sinai.”

“Kissinger opposed giving [Israel] major support that could make its victory too one-sided,” Isaacson confirms. Kissinger told Defense Secretary James Schlesinger that “The best result would be if Israel came out a little ahead but got bloodied in the process” (p. 514).

A “little bloodied”? Try 2,656 dead Israeli soldiers.

Kissinger’s pressure on Israel in 1973 undermined and endangered America’s only real ally in the Mideast. Biden’s pressure on Israel today is equally objectionable. And it’s a recipe for disaster for both countries. Because unless Israel defeats Hamas and Hezbollah, the terrorists inevitably will rise up again and murder more Americans and Israelis.

Moshe Phillips is national chairman of Americans For A Safe Israel, a leading pro-Israel advocacy and education group.