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Biden Is Making a Serious Mistake on Israel — and the World Is at Risk

US President Joe Biden speaks about student protests at US universities, amid the ongoing conflict between Israel and Hamas, during brief remarks in the Roosevelt Room at the White House in Washington, US, May 2, 2024. Photo: REUTERS/Nathan Howard

The Biden administration recently announced that it will withhold military aid from Israel if the IDF launches an operation in Rafah, the last Hamas stronghold in Gaza and the likely location of many Israeli hostages.

Israel — which sees defeating Hamas in Rafah as absolutely necessary for its safety and survival — subsequently began preliminary operations in Rafah’s outskirts. The White House responded by carrying out its threat with respect to certain weapons shipments. There are several possible reasons why President Biden may be taking such a path, but — paradoxically — none of them are likely to be served by this decision.

Israel has defied the United States before, despite threats to military aid. President Truman was strongly against David Ben-Gurion’s decision to declare independence in 1948. Though Truman was a strong ally — and though America recognized Israel’s statehood — the US also joined an international arms embargo against the new country. President Reagan, another strong ally, was enraged by Israel’s 1981 bombing of Iraq’s nuclear reactor and halted the sales of F-16 fighter jets, though he relented two months later.

The present threat from the White House is ostensibly based on a concern for civilian casualties in Rafah due to its large population concentration. This is a unique situation created by the structure of the Gaza war: since October, Israel has defeated Hamas’ battalions in stages, starting from northern Gaza and moving south. In contrast to most armies worldwide, the IDF sacrificed the element of surprise by moving civilians out of combat zones at each stage, with many eventually ending up in Rafah, Gaza’s southernmost city.

As a result, Rafah came to contain more than a million people, fully half of Gaza’s population.

However, the White House’s concern is fundamentally unfounded: in the past two weeks, Israel has already moved more than 600,000 people out of Rafah, largely to one of the many “humanitarian islands” established by the IDF throughout Gaza. These “islands” provide access to humanitarian aid and field hospitals, with many offering superior medical care compared to Gaza’s conventional hospitals.

No military in history has moved so many civilians out of a war zone, so quickly and safely, and the evacuation is still continuing. These and other strategies have helped to produce the lowest civilian to combatant casualty ratio in human history, nine times lower than the UN global average.

In addition to being disconnected from the present reality in Rafah, the White House’s threat is unlikely to inhibit Israel’s military activities. Military aid is typically ordered months in advance, for resupply rather than for immediate need, therefore, by the time current supplies run low, the Rafah activities will likely be long since over. Moreover, the specific weapons Washington is withholding are heavy ammunition of the sort that is less relevant in urban warfare. The White House has indicated it may extend this policy to other weapons, but it’s currently unclear whether Washington truly wants Israel to halt its operation, or merely wants to make a show of objecting to it.

Why would the White House pursue a nonsensical and ultimately ineffective strategy of publicly breaking with Israel?

One possibility relates to elections. Some far-left lawmakers and activists are vocally hostile to Israel, including calls to end military support and echoing the “river to the sea” chant (widely understood as a call for Israel’s destruction).

A recent survey by TIPP Insights, in coordination with my organization, RealityCheck, shows that 59% of Democrats believe (erroneously) that Israel is committing genocide, a sentiment reflected in the violent anti-Israel and anti-America protests on college campuses.

Yet by catering to the far left, candidate Biden may cost himself the middle, and perhaps lose more votes than he gains. Candidates who “capture the middle” are historically more likely to win by large margins, such as Bill Clinton, Ronald Reagan, and John F. Kennedy. Indeed 80% of Americans support Israel over Hamas, and mainstream lawmakers in both parties oppose Biden’s policy: Republican Senator Lindsey Graham (R-SC) called withholding weapons “obscene” given that Israel is “at a time of great peril,” and Democratic Congressman Ritchie Torres (NY) said, “America cannot claim that its commitment to Israel is “iron-clad” and then proceed to withhold aid from Israel.”

Shortly after October 7, I was interviewed on an Arab language television program. The interviewer was puzzled that the US would support Israel at all, given Washington’s criticisms throughout 2023 over Israel’s judicial reform controversy.

I answered, “Israel is a democracy, and that makes Israel part of a global family of democracies. Families don’t always agree, but that doesn’t make them enemies.” I realized an important truth in that moment: dissent is rare in dictatorships (which includes effectively all of the Arab world) and therefore not always understood. America’s enemies see dissent as a sign of weakness and an opportunity to attack, while America’s allies, who are watching events in Israel closely, worry whether they can trust America with their survival.

Congressman Torres articulated this concern when he said, “The mixed messaging makes a mockery of our credibility as an ally. No one will take our word seriously.”

The White House strategy is disconnected from events in Gaza, unlikely to be effective as leverage against Israel, and not even likely to achieve the more cynical goal of winning votes. So one has to ask, why is President Biden endangering Israel’s security, America’s precious credibility, and the safety of the entire free world — by playing into the hands of Iran, Hamas, and other malicious actors?

Daniel Pomerantz is the CEO of RealityCheck Research.

The post Biden Is Making a Serious Mistake on Israel — and the World Is at Risk first appeared on Algemeiner.com.

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Charlie Kirk Sought to Encourage Debate — His Murder Must Not Stop It

Charlie Kirk speaking at the inauguration of Donald Trump in January 2025. Photo: Brian Snyder via Reuters Connect

I first became familiar with Charlie Kirk after October 7, 2023, when my TikTok algorithm began showing me videos of him fiercely, and quite effectively, debating students on college campuses, often those in keffiyehs and with purple hair.

Thus began my fascination with what I soon learned was a man who was dedicating his life to debating and promoting what he believed in.

Charlie Kirk was the face of the young Republican movement, respected even by some Democrats. He had a promising future ahead of him. As Ben Shapiro wrote: “That kid is going to be the head of the Republican National Convention one day.”

Kirk dedicated his life to debate. To disagreement. To hearing the other side and persuading with facts and truth. And this, tragically, cost him his life. His assassination represents the meager and devastating state of the West, a state we have slowly, almost willingly, been accepting for years now.

There is a deep intolerance for differences. People do not want to be persuaded. They do not want to consider another perspective. Instead, they condemn what they believe is wrong, clinging to black-and-white narratives, even when an entire gray area holds the broader picture. They turn their heads away from nuance. Kirk aimed to change that. He devoted his life to it, fully aware of the risks.

As Adam Rubenstein wisely wrote for The Free Press: “Kirk was not naïve. In the video after he is shot, you can see a security team of at least half a dozen bodyguards surround him and spirit him away. Like anyone speaking their mind in public these days, he knew there was a risk.”

Kirk’s assassination signifies a low point for this country — and another attack on free speech. It was an assassination of dialogue, of diplomacy, of the ability to disagree without destruction. And perhaps the most bitter irony is that it all happened on a college campus, an environment that should foster growth mindsets and open-mindedness.

This attack was not only an attack on Charlie Kirk. It was an attack on freedom of thought and expression. And while it succeeded in killing the bright and young 31-year-old so many of us admired, I hope that is a rallying call to protect the broader freedom of speech we still enjoy — at least in part — in this country.

Alma Bengio is Chief Growth Officer at The Algemeiner Journal and founder and writer for @lets.talk.conflict

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Jews Are Indigenous to the Land of Israel — and Everyone Should Know It

The Western Wall and Temple Mount in Jerusalem. Photo: Wikimedia Commons.

Few words in modern political discourse carry as much distortion as “Palestine.” Today, the term is wielded not as history but as a weapon — designed to delegitimize the Jewish State and recast Jews as foreign colonizers in their own homeland.

Take away the propaganda, however, and one unshakable truth remains: the Jewish people are the indigenous nation of the Land of Israel. The Arab claim to “Palestinian indigeneity” simply does not line up with history.

The Jewish people trace their roots back over 3,000 years to the patriarchs Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, who lived in the land of Canaan — later Israel. By the time of King David, Jerusalem was the capital of a united monarchy, and Solomon’s Temple stood as the spiritual and political center of Jewish life. Even after the Babylonian exile, Jews returned, rebuilt, and re-established their national life in Judea.

Despite invasions, destruction, and exile, Jews never abandoned their homeland. They remained in Jerusalem, Galilee, Hebron, Safed, and along the coast. Their prayers, rituals, and festivals kept the bond to Zion alive. This is not the story of outsiders — it is the story of the land’s first and most enduring nation.

Rome tried to sever that bond by force. After the Bar Kokhba revolt in the second century, Emperor Hadrian renamed Judea as Syria Palaestina , borrowing the name of the long-vanished Philistines, and turned Jerusalem into Aelia Capitolina. It was an act of erasure, meant to punish the Jews by striking even their name from the map.

But the attempt failed. Jews continued to live, pray, and return to their ancestral soil. A new label could not undo thousands of years of rootedness.

The Arab story is very different; their origins lie in the Arabian Peninsula. The earliest records available to us describe nomadic tribes in Arabia and the Syrian desert. Their cultural centers were Mecca, Medina, Yemen, and Petra. It was only in the 7th century, with the rise of Islam, that Arab armies exploded out of Arabia and conquered the region. By 636 CE, they had invaded Byzantine Judea; within a century they ruled from Spain to Persia. Their presence in Judea was the result of conquest, not continuity.

For over a thousand years, under successive empires — Umayyad, Abbasid, Crusader, Mamluk, Ottoman, and finally British — the local Arab population never called itself “Palestinian.” They identified as Arabs, Muslims, Christians, or by their city and clan. In fact, during the British Mandate, the word Palestinian referred almost exclusively to Jews: the Palestine Post was a Jewish newspaper, the Palestine Symphony Orchestra was Jewish, and the Palestine Brigade that fought in World War II was Jewish.

Many Arabs in the region rejected the label, insisting instead that they were part of greater Syria or the wider Arab nation.

Only in the mid-20th century, particularly under Yasser Arafat and the PLO, did a separate “Palestinian” identity emerge. It was born not from centuries of shared history but from a political need: to create a narrative that could challenge Jewish nationhood and delegitimize Israel. It was, and remains, a tool of war by other means.

This is the historical bottom line: Jews are the only people with an unbroken, 3,000 year bond to the Land of Israel. The name Palestine was a Roman punishment, not an Arab heritage. Arabs arrived in the 7th century as conquerors from Arabia. The idea of a Palestinian people is a modern invention, forged in the 20th century as part of a political campaign against the Jewish State.

Israel is not a colonial project. It is the restoration of an ancient nation to its ancestral homeland. Jews are not foreigners in Judea; they are Judea’s people. By every measure — historical, cultural, and even genetic — the Jewish nation’s claim is authentic, continuous, and undeniable.

Sabine Sterk is the CEO of Time To Stand Up For Israel.

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Israel Attacked Terrorists in Qatar — and the Media Attacked Israel

Vehicles stop at a red traffic light, a day after an Israeli attack on Hamas leaders, in Doha, Qatar, Sept. 10, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Ibraheem Abu Mustafa

On Tuesday, September 9, Israel targeted those who sought its destruction and planned the barbaric October 7, 2023 massacre.

Israel launched the daring attack on the Hamas leadership in their Qatari safe haven, after their ongoing refusal to agree to a Gaza ceasefire deal and in the aftermath of a deadly terror attack in Jerusalem, which Hamas claimed responsibility for.

But the media still shilled for Hamas by making Israel look like a rogue state attacking a key diplomatic player and destroying any chance for peace.

News outlets used three methods to achieve this goal:

  • Direct accusations
  • Subtle differentiation between a “legitimate” Hamas political wing and its military one
  • The glorification of Qatar as a business hub rather than a terrorist hub

The Independent and The Washington Post shamelessly employed headlines that portrayed Israel as the regional bully and an aggressor randomly attacking other Middle East countries in a bid for regional domination.

Sky News even blamed Israel for a previous attack on Qatar, although the Iranian regime carried it out:

After we publicly highlighted it, Sky quietly rectified its faux pas with no acknowledgment of the correction.

Meanwhile, the Economist was worried that attacking the very terrorists who ordered the mass murder of Jews on Oct. 7 was “a bridge too far” and that Israel had “crossed a line:”

And the BBC’s security correspondent called Israel’s surprising act of self defense “a campaign of score settling:”

NPR and The Wall Street Journal took the subtle approach of creating a false dichotomy between Hamas’ military and political wings — although the entire group is internationally designated as a terror organization.

This naive approach depicted the targeted Hamas leaders as legitimate officials simply because they carried pens and wore suits instead of AK-47s and green headbands.

They may not have got their hands dirty but this does not absolve them from orchestrating numerous bloody terror attacks, including the slaughter and kidnapping of thousands of people in Israel on October 7, 2023.

Finally, many outlets decried the violation of Qatar’s sovereignty, painting it as a peace-seeking state focused on business and regional cooperation, rather than a patron of terrorists.

The New York Times went as far as calling Qatar “a safe haven for business and tourism in a volatile region,” while it was, in fact, a safe haven for the region’s top jihadists.

How can this media distortion be explained? Why is a facade of legitimacy conferred upon terrorists in suits?

There are only two possible answers: Either the media believe the facade the terrorists want to sell, or they are carrying out an anti-Israel agenda.

Both options are detrimental to professional journalism, as well as to basic human ethics.

The author is a contributor to HonestReporting, a Jerusalem-based media watchdog with a focus on antisemitism and anti-Israel bias — where a version of this article first appeared.

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