Thanks to Netanyahu, Hamas has been significantly debilitated and Sinwar has been eliminated, making the Middle East a safer place.
By Bassam Tawil, Gatestone Institute
Earlier this year, the Biden-Harris administration spent weeks warning Israel not to enter the city of Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip, where many of the leaders of the Iran-backed Palestinian terrorist group Hamas were believed to be hiding.
The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) had prepared to enter the city as part of a counterterrorism offensive to destroy Hamas’s military capabilities and rescue some of the Israeli hostages kidnapped by the terrorist group on October 7, 2023.
The October 17 killing of Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar in the Rafah area proved that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu did the right thing in ignoring the warnings of the Biden-Harris administration.
The IDF eventually entered Rafah, where it succeeded in killing hundreds of Hamas terrorists and recovering the bodies of some of the hostages. In addition, the IDF managed to rescue one of the hostages held in a Hamas tunnel in the Rafah area.
Had Netanyahu caved in to the warnings and threats by President Joe Biden and other senior US administration officials, Sinwar would still be alive today and Hamas terrorists would still be controlling Rafah and the nearby Philadelphi Corridor on the border between the Gaza Strip and Egypt.
Biden’s pressure on Israel to refrain from sending its troops to Rafah reached its peak in May, when the president said he would halt some shipments of American weapons to Israel if Netanyahu ordered a major invasion of the city, saying:
“I made it clear that if they go into Rafah – they haven’t gone in Rafah yet – if they go into Rafah, I’m not supplying the weapons that have been used historically to deal with Rafah, to deal with the cities – that deal with that problem.”
Later, in a phone call with Netanyahu, Biden repeated his demand that Israel refrain from entering Rafah. “The President reiterated his clear position on Rafah,” according to a White House summary of the call.
US National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan was also quoted as opposing Israel’s plan to invade Rafah and destroy the remaining Hamas battalions in the city. According to the Financial Times:
“Sullivan has warned the Israeli government against ‘smashing into Rafah’ as the Biden administration underlines its opposition to the planned assault on one of Gaza’s biggest cities.
“The US was continuing to urge the Israeli government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to protect civilians and find a path for a long-term peace, Sullivan said. But an assault on the southern Gaza city was not necessary in the effort to ‘crush Hamas’, he added.”
Sullivan was also quoted as saying: “We still believe it would be a mistake to launch a major military operation into the heart of Rafah.”
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken also joined the anti-Rafah invasion chorus. Blinken said in May:
“We cannot, will not support a major military operation in Rafah absent an effective plan to make sure that civilians are not harmed and no, we’ve not seen such a plan. There are other ways, and in our judgment better ways, of dealing with the… ongoing challenge of Hamas that does not require a major military operation in Rafah.”
In March, Vice President and presidential candidate Kamala Harris said:
“[A]ny major military operation in Rafah would be a huge mistake. Let me tell you something, I have studied the maps… And so, we’ve been very clear that, um, it would be a mistake to move into Rafah with any type of military operation.”
Since the IDF entered Rafah on May 6, however, it discovered and destroyed countless Hamas tunnels and eliminated several senior commanders of the terrorist group.
In September, the IDF announced that it had defeated Hamas’s Rafah brigade and killed more than 2,000 Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad terrorists.
IDF troops also destroyed some 80% of the smuggling tunnels located near and beneath the Philadelphi Corridor.
A few weeks earlier, the bodies of Israeli hostages Hersh Goldberg-Polin, Eden Yerushalmi, Almog Sarusi, Alexander Lobanov, Carmel Gat, and Ori Danino were found in a Hamas tunnel in Rafah. The hostages had been murdered by Hamas terrorists.
The IDF revealed on October 17 that slain Hamas arch-terrorist Yahya Sinwar had used the six hostages as human shields to avoid being killed or captured by Israel’s military.
The Israeli military operation in Rafah has proven to be a huge achievement in the war against Hamas, whose members carried out the October 7, 2023 massacre that resulted in the murder of 1,200 Israelis, many of whom were raped, tortures, beheaded and burned alive, and the abduction of more than 250 others.
The IDF’s biggest achievement was not only killing Sinwar, but also eliminating Hamas’s military infrastructure in the area.
The dispatch of Sinwar is a severe military and moral blow to the terrorist group, which will undoubtedly find it hard to replace him with a leader of equal standing and popularity.
“Again and again we see that Israel absolutely made the right call in not heeding the Biden administration and the rest of the world’s insistence that the IDF not invade Rafah,” remarked Israeli journalist Lahav Harkov after the elimination of Sinwar.
US Rep. Mike Waltz commented on X:
“Pretty rich after a year of undermining Netanyahu, saying he MUST go to a ceasefire, MUST deescalate, trying to stop Israel from going into Rafah WHERE SINWAR WAS KILLED, and Kamala boycotting his joint address to Congress – now Biden & Harris have the nerve to congratulate him for setting the path to peace.
“I’m sure the phone call sounds something like ‘You were right Bibi [Netanyahu], we apologize.’”
Israel’s killing Sinwar and destroying Hamas’s military infrastructure in Rafah sadly show how steadfastly the Biden-Harris administration was trying to prevent Israel from achieving victory over the Iran-backed Islamist murderers and rapists responsible for the deadliest attack against Jews since the Holocaust.
Netanyahu deserves credit for ignoring the warnings and threats by Biden and his senior officials.
Thanks to Netanyahu, Hamas has been significantly debilitated and Sinwar has been eliminated, making the Middle East a safer place.
It now remains to be seen whether the Biden-Harris administration will reconsider its failed foreign policies and apologize to the Israeli prime minister for attempting to undermine his efforts to combat terrorism and bring more security and stability not only to Israel, but the entire Middle East as well.
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