The likely killing of Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar on Thursday came days after President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris threatened Israel with an arms embargo if it did not improve conditions in Gaza and cut back its attacks.
As Breitbart News reported on Wednesday, Harris endorsed a threat made by the administration days before, warning that Israel had 30 days to “surge” aid into Gaza and to end the isolation of northern Gaza, effectively terminating an ongoing Israel Defense Forces (IDF) offensive there, or else it could lose access to U.S. weapons.
The following day, IDF soldiers fighting Hamas in southern Gaza discovered a body closely resembling that of the Hamas leader. He was likely killed in a fight with ordinary infantry and armored units, not by an airstrike.
Biden and Harris had long pushed for a ceasefire deal — with Harris insisting in March on a ceasefire even without a deal to release the Israeli hostages still held by Hamas.
Had such a deal taken place, Sinwar would certainly have been alive, instead of suspected dead.
The Biden-Harris administration even tried to entice Israel to accept a ceasefire in exchange for intelligence that, the administration said, would identify Sinwar’s location. CNN reports that U.S. intelligence was not involved in the operation that led to Sinwar’s apparent death — which, again, was unexpected and a result of routine IDF action.
According to social media, Sinwar’s body was not merely found in Gaza, but near the Philadelphi Corridor — the road near the Gaza-Egypt border, which the Biden-Harris administration wanted Israel to leave behind in a ceasefire deal. Reports have speculated that Sinwar, who was found with cash and passports, was trying to flee Gaza to Egypt.
The episode recalls that of the killing of Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah in late September, just days after the Biden-Harris administration called for a 21-day ceasefire in Lebanon.
In both cases, had Israel followed the Biden-Harris administration’s demands, the leaders of terror organizations would still be alive and the terror groups they led would have remained more formidable foes.
Former President Donald Trump’s position has been that Israel should finish the war “quickly” by defeating Hamas.
Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News and the host of Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot on Sunday evenings from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET (4 p.m. to 7 p.m. PT). He is the author of The Agenda: What Trump Should Do in His First 100 Days, available for pre-order on Amazon. He is also the author of The Trumpian Virtues: The Lessons and Legacy of Donald Trump’s Presidency, now available on Audible. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.
This post has been updated.
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