Biden’s Catastrophic Policy Failure Led to Massacre in Golan Heights

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The State of Israel has threatened retaliation, after Hezbollah committed a massacre in the village of Majdal Al Shams in the Golan Heights. All of the massacred children are between age 10 and 20. Mendi Safadi, a prominent Druze commentator, related that when the Arab world saw that Druze who spoke Arabic were the victims rather than Jewish Israelis, some in the Arab world began to spread the lie that Israel created a conspiracy in order to start an all-out war in Lebanon and that Hezbollah did not really attack Druze children.

According to MEMRI, this is exactly what Lebanon’s Foreign Minister Abdallah Bou Habib recently asserted on Al Arabiya TV:

“The [children] who died… who were killed in the Golan were Arab, not Israelis. In addition, the Golan Heights, is not Israeli. They took it, but the UN does not recognize the Golan Heights as Israeli. It is Syrian. Therefore, [Israel] does not have any justification for self-defense. Nobody attacked it. I do not know who carried out the attack. Hezbollah has denied doing it. Israel is claiming that Hezbollah did it. Maybe Israel did it by mistake. Maybe Hezbollah did it by mistake. Hezbollah does not attack civilians in Israel, so why would it attack civilians in Syria?”

When the interviewer asked him if it is possible that Israel invented the claim that Hezbollah did it in order to justify an attack on Lebanon, the Lebanese Foreign Minister replied:

“It is possible. I don’t know. If a war breaks out, we will undoubtedly be against Israel. If the war in Lebanon expands beyond its present scope, we will stand by Hezbollah. Hezbollah will stand by us and we will stand by Hezbollah. We will stand together against Israel.”

“The scene of the massacre is still bloody and body parts are still being collected, but these facts have not prevented the Arab media from denying that an Iranian-made Flak-1 missile, containing over 50 kilos of explosives, exploded over a group of children who were playing ball, killing 12 and injuring dozens more,” Safadi proclaimed. “These are facts for which there is forensic evidence that cannot be denied. But in a world of ignorance that relies upon hearing rather than reading and research, it is easy to spread a lie like a wildfire.”

“The Black Sabbath of October 7^th shocked us,” he added. “The Black Sabbath in Majdal Shams on July 27^th increased the blow. The nation cries out no more and demands action to stop the terrorism lurking on our borders.” Safadi proclaimed that Israel has to fight back despite the international pressure and that there are many people who will support us in this, including in the Muslim world:

“Netanyahu’s success in garnering enormous sympathy, especially in the popular Arab world after his speech in the US Congress, may relieve us of the Arab hostility we have become accustomed to in previous wars, and not only that, but I witness the willingness of many groups of Arabs from Lebanon, Syria and Iraq, who are willing to fight alongside us against Hezbollah and Iran as soon as a war breaks out on our northern border.”

Dr. Nancy Kobrin, an expert on radical Islam, claims that Hezbollah did this attack because they are envious of the fact that these Druze children were playing soccer and play is taboo growing up in a radical Islamist culture:

“Kids march with guns. That is their idea of play. Everything is about shame and honor. There is no sense of play. They lack a sense of creativity. They might have destructive creativity but they do not have a nuanced sense of being in the world and loving life.”

For this reason, Muslims who are opposed to radical Islamism will likely stand in solidarity with Israel. MEMRI reported that Kataeb Party head Samy Al-Gemayel in Lebanon urged “peace between Israel and the Palestinians, and the entire region, including Lebanon.” He stressed that this aspiration is nothing to be ashamed of and hoped that the Lebanese would stop paying the price of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

MEMRI added that Shi’ite Lebanese journalist Nadim Koteich, director of the Emirati Sky News channel, who is known as an opponent of Hezbollah, lamented the peace agreement signed by Lebanon and Israel on May 17, 1983, which lasted only ten months due to Syria’s objection to it. Koteich argued that, had the agreement been maintained, Lebanon’s fate would have been completely different today: it would have benefitted from cooperation with Israel in many domains, and from American aid and foreign investments. But instead, Lebanon paid and is still paying a steep price that is evident in every domain, he said.

Following this horrific massacre, one must ponder, what role did US policy under Biden play that led Hezbollah to be bold enough to wage a massacre of this magnitude within territory controlled by the State of Israel? The fact that the US in recent times has been trying to restrain Israel from responding and even prevented Israel from responding to an Iranian missile attack no doubt helped Hezbollah to reach the conclusion that Hezbollah would face no real consequences for massacring children. This Biden administration policy really eroded Israel’s sense of deterrence.

Nitzana Darshan-Leitner, head of the Shurat HaDin Law Firm, stated recently in a lecture at the Netanya AACI:

“It looks like the Biden administration policy is what restrained us from going into Rafah. By blocking Israel from receiving its needed ammunition and even now, there is a block of ammunition that the United States did not provide us, there is no question that there was bad timing when Hamas decided to invade us on October 7. It was an election year in the United States.”

Darshan-Leitner claimed that when Hamas attacked Israel on October 7, Biden’s heart was really with us and he came to visit us in the middle of a war, sending two aircraft carriers, but he was restrained from showing too much support by advisors that formerly worked for the Obama administration:

“When the pictures came out of Gaza of the death of young children, there was a lot of pressure put on Biden to pressure Israel to stop the war. Israel thank God did not stop the war.  Now, I hope that now Biden is free from this election, that he will go back to where he was at the beginning of the war and let Israel finish the war.”

It is critical to note that Israel is not the only place where the Biden administration appeased aggressors. In October 1992, the US adopted Amendment 907 of the Freedom Support Act, which banned any direct US aid to Azerbaijan. Azerbaijan was the only former Soviet country not to receive direct aid from the United States following the disintegration of the Soviet Union.  Although it was Armenia who ethnically cleansed one million Azerbaijanis from their homes and occupied one fifth of Azerbaijan in violation of four UN Security Council resolutions, it was Azerbaijan, not Armenia, who faced the wrath of the United States.

While it is true that in October 2001, the US Senate amended this resolution to allow the president to wave Amendment 907, this did not stop the US Senate from adopting a bill in 2023 under President Biden, calling upon the United States to suspend military aid to Azerbaijan. And now, Congressman Michael Lawler is introducing a bill to the US House of Representatives with the backing of ANCA that is aimed at stopping military aid to Azerbaijan. If this bill passes the US House of Representatives, a presidential veto will be the only thing keeping military aid flowing to Azerbaijan and that too can be overrode by the US Congress given the system of checks and balances in place in the United States.

Such a biased position towards Azerbaijan is surprising, given that Azerbaijan assisted America’s war against the Taliban in Afghanistan following the September 11 terror attacks and today is a staunch ally of the west against a nuclear armed Iran. Azerbaijan has also greatly assisted Europe, another important ally of the US, by providing it with energy security in the wake of the war in Ukraine, which hindered their ability to continue relying upon Russian oil and gas.  Additionally, Azerbaijan supplies Israel with forty percent of its oil supply during a time when the war-torn country is fighting against Hamas, the Palestinian Islamic Jihad, Hezbollah, the Houthis and Iran, all sworn enemies of the United States.

Anastasia Lavrina, a prominent Christian Azerbaijani journalist, recently said in an interview:

“The United States should have a more balanced approach in the region. Azerbaijan is a country emerging from three decades of Armenian occupation. The conflict has been resolved. There is no conflict anymore. Azerbaijan implemented UN Security Council resolutions and restored its territorial integrity. For this reason, the US should understand what happened in the region and that only thanks to Azerbaijan’s President there is a chance for a secure stable South Caucuses.”

Therefore, she called upon the United States to stop propping up the aggressor in this conflict, as this impedes the prospects for peace between Azerbaijan and Armenia.

If the U.S. wants peace in the Middle East and South Caucuses, it has to stop propping up aggressors in conflicts while simultaneously tying the hands of US allies – since appeasement to terror never works. As the late British Prime Minister Winston Churchill once stated, “An appeaser is one who feeds a crocodile, hoping it will eat him last.” However, a hungry crocodile in the end will never spare its victim, even if it feeds him. President Biden should remember this.

Rachel Avraham is the CEO of the Dona Gracia Center for Diplomacy and an Israel-based journalist.  She is the author of “Women and Jihad: Debating Palestinian Female Suicide Bombings in the American, Israeli and Arab Media.”