Biden chooses shame and risks a war between Israel and Hezbollah

President Biden has a choice: no peace between the United States and Israel or a war between Israel and Hezbollah, which no one wants at the moment.

For months, his government has chosen daylight – and risked war. It must change course.

Following Hamas’s barbaric attack on Israel on October 7, the Biden administration supported Israel both rhetorically and with weapons, sending two aircraft carriers to the region to signal to Hezbollah and its Iranian sponsor that a full-scale attack on northern Israel would provoke a fierce American response.

Instead, Hezbollah began a war of attrition that quickly forced more than 60,000 Israelis living near the Lebanese border to flee their homes. The sustained barrage of fire has so far killed ten Israeli civilians and 16 soldiers.

On Sunday, Hezbollah fired 20 rockets at Lower Galilee, its heaviest rocket attack to date.

Israel, in turn, attacked Hezbollah from the air and with artillery, killing more than 360 fighters, including high-ranking commanders, and destroying infrastructure in southern Lebanon.

The Israeli military wants to create a buffer zone to put the Israeli population out of range of Hezbollah’s anti-tank missiles, allowing the displaced to return to their homes and limiting Hezbollah’s ability to carry out a ground invasion like the one on October 7.

So far, Israel has not deployed ground troops to clear a buffer zone – a move that could trigger a full-scale war and potentially embroil Iran across the region.

But the Israeli army could soon be more capable of taking action if its large-scale operations in the Gaza Strip gradually decrease or a formal ceasefire agreement is reached with Hamas.

Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah does not seem to fear an Israeli ground attack, and his Iranian sponsor recently threatened Israel with a “devastating war” if it invades Lebanon.

But the Biden administration, which opposes any conflict with Iran, believes it can avoid a war between Israel and Hezbollah by distancing itself from its Israeli ally – in line with its belief that doing so will help the president’s re-election.

Thus, the government is denying Israel the weapons it needs to fight Hezbollah, including 2,000-pound bombs and precision weapons such as Joint Direct Attack Munitions.

On June 23, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General CQ Brown publicly expressed the administration’s caution: “Given the location of our troops and the short distance between Lebanon and Israel, it is more difficult for us to support (Israel) in the same way that we did in April.”

In other words, Israel does not have to worry about a repeat of the grandiose, US-coordinated multilateral military action of April 14, which Israel used to defend itself against a massive Iranian missile and drone attack.

Brown’s comments have shaken Israel up and shocked the senior military officials I spoke to.

After the highly successful April 14 defense, Biden urged Israel not to retaliate and signaled to Iran and Hezbollah that Washington would not support significant Israeli military action against either party.

Senior Israeli military and civilian officials believe that Hezbollah and Iran are mistakenly convinced that Israel will not risk a major war without US support – and may therefore continue their attacks and escalate the situation even further.

Nevertheless, Israelis say they cannot tolerate the situation in the north much longer.

Even if Hezbollah were to stop its attack due to a ceasefire in the Gaza Strip, Israel still considers a buffer zone in the north to be essential.

How the US position is perceived is crucial: the more the US is willing to support Israel in a war against Hezbollah, the more likely Hezbollah is to agree to a buffer zone and the less likely a war will be.

To prevent another war, the government should communicate clearly that there is no difference between it and Israel.

Biden should welcome Benjamin Netanyahu to the White House when he visits Washington this month to address a joint session of Congress.

Netanyahu has not yet been invited to the government villa since taking office as prime minister in late 2022, although Biden has hosted the heads of state of Kenya, Colombia, Brazil and the Philippines.

Finally, the government must openly supply Israel with all the ammunition it needs to wage war against Hezbollah.

This would not only prevent a current war, but also strengthen the US position in the region and globally by supporting a beleaguered ally against the nefarious Iran axis that is attacking Americans and threatening their strategic interests.

In 1938, just before Britain abandoned its Czech ally in the Munich Agreement, triggering World War II, Winston Churchill wrote: “We seem to be standing on the brink of a grim choice between war and disgrace. I have a feeling that we shall choose disgrace and then have war.”

The Biden administration now faces the same decision.

Michael Makovsky, a former Pentagon official and author of Churchill’s Promised Land, is CEO of the Jewish Institute for National Security of America (JINSA).