Our Response to Hamas’ Murder of Hersh Goldberg-Polin

On October 7, 2023 Hamas terrorists killed 1,200 Israelis and 32 Americans. They also took some 240 hostages, among them at least eight Americans.

Four of the American hostages (and about 100 Israelis) were still believed to be alive last week before Hamas murdered six hostages when Israeli forces attempted a rescue. One of the six murdered was an American, Hersh Goldberg-Polin, a man of dual American and Israeli citizenship.

The fact that the six were murdered was clear from the condition of their subsequently recovered bodies. Each had been shot a number of times. Afterward, Hamas said that any Israeli hostage rescue attempts would result in the murder of more hostages. (READ MORE from Jed Babbin: Questions for Kamala Harris)

In response to this latest murder, the Biden administration announced that it has indicted six leaders of Hamas, three of whom are, according to the Israelis, already dead. Indictments against all six, including the three who are alive — Yayah Sinwar, Khaled Meshaal (who lives in a Qatari luxury hotel) and Ali Baraka — a popular guest on Lebanese television — were unsealed on Tuesday. They are accused of “planning, supporting the terrorist atrocities Hamas committed.”

The weakness of that response would be shocking were it not from the Biden-Harris gang. It’s a billion-to-one shot that the three would ever be in U.S. custody because they’re not likely to escape Israel’s determination to kill them. If they were in U.S. hands, we should immediately turn them over to the Israelis.

(Yayah Sinwar is reportedly trying to escape — taking some of the hostages with him — through Egypt to Iran.)

Indicting these murderers is a U.S. confession of weakness, which is consistent with the Biden-Harris’s diplomacy throughout its time in office. It’s a purely diplomatic and legal response when America’s response should have taken another form entirely.

It’s redundant evidence of why our allies no longer respect us and our enemies no longer fear us.

There were times when America actually made efforts to protect its citizens and took what we call these days “kinetic action” in response to Americans being kidnapped or murdered.

Teddy Roosevelt must be spinning in his grave. We should remember that in 1904, he sent a fleet to Morocco vowing that the taker of an American hostage and his son — Ion Perdicaris — would be sent home alive or the hostage-taker, Raisuli, would be killed. “Perdicaris alive, or Raisuli dead” was Teddy’s motto in the 1904 election.

Perdicaris and his son were released.

After the 9-11 attacks killed almost 3,000 Americans, we went to war with the Taliban in Afghanistan. President George W. Bush gave them the choice between turning over bin Laden to us and war, and the Taliban chose war.

We posted a multi-million-dollar reward for bin Laden alive or, preferably, dead.

It took a decade for the CIA and NSA to find bin Laden and one dark night for SEAL Team Six to kill him.

We should remember that when Obama and his team met in the White House situation room to decide on the bin Laden mission, Joe Biden was the only dissenting voice.

As I’ve written elsewhere, the Democratic platform Kamala Harris is running on complains that we spend 13 times more on defense than on diplomacy. It promises to “balance” defense spending — i.e., cut the defense budget significantly — to provide more money for diplomacy and other “urgent” domestic spending priorities.

That means slashing the defense budget at a time when we are unprepared for new wars.

Only indicting three terrorists in response to Goldberg-Polin’s murder is simply ridiculous. We had to do more, much more, in response to his murder.

We should, at least, have condemned Hamas and posted rewards for the three Hamas leaders, dead or alive. Preferably dead. The Israelis aim to kill all three and we should not stand in their way.

From the Biden-Harris administration, Hamas has never heard a discouraging word. Nor has Iran, of which Hamas is a proxy force. As the late Donald Rumsfeld was fond of saying, weakness is provocative. The murder of Goldberg-Polin should have been expected, as are the murders of the 100 other hostages Hamas still holds.

Recusing hostages is an enormously dangerous and risky task for both the rescuers and hostages. In Vietnam, soldiers who crawled into the narrow tunnels the Vietcong had dug — armed with only a flashlight and a pistol — were called “tunnel rats.” These days, Israeli soldiers searching for Hamas’s hostages go through tunnels wide and tall enough to drive a truck through.

Those tunnels have a variety of booby-traps, meant to kill the Israeli soldiers, as well as motion sensors, remote tv cameras and other devices meant to warn the terrorists of their approach. Hostage rescue is a slow and dangerous process for both the would-be rescuers and the hostages. We should applaud their efforts and support Israel, not Hamas, as Biden and Harris have done.

Nowhere to be seen are our special forces troops such as the Navy’s SEALs or the Army’s Delta Force both of which are expert in hostage rescues. It may be that the Israelis don’t want our help, but it probably was never offered.

We should make it a priority for our intelligence community to help the Israelis find the three terrorists and do everything else we can to help them do so. (READ MORE: Biden’s Phantom Truce)

If Mr. Trump wins in November we should expect him to do that and more to help the Israelis.

It’s entirely natural to be angry with Biden and Harris for their failure to even demand the release of American and Israeli hostages.  Their failure made possible the murder of the six hostages including Goldberg-Polin.

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