It's Obama's Middle East mess
by Sean Durns
November 17, 2023 06:15 AM“If Iran has a nuclear weapon, it’s my name on this,” then-President Barack Obama vowed in 2015. Whether or not Iran gets the bomb remains to be seen, but the largest slaughter of Jewish civilians since the Holocaust is very much part of Obama’s legacy. That massacre and the war that has followed are inescapably linked to policies pursued by both Obama and his Democratic successor.
For Israel, the war against Hamas and other Iranian-backed terrorist groups is a war of necessity. On Oct. 7, Hamas and its allies invaded the Jewish state, murdering more than 1,200 Israelis. The details that have emerged bear comparison with the most savage events in all of human history.
Hamas burned children alive, shot babies in car seats and cribs, tied up parents and tortured them in front of their children, gouged out their eyes, cut off their feet, fingers, and hands. Women were raped on the corpses of their dead friends before being executed. The elderly were set on fire in their own homes.
The terrorists were proud of their butchery. Many livestreamed their murders. Some used their victims’ phones to upload their barbarism, sending footage of murdered loved ones to their family members. One 94-year-old grandmother watched her granddaughter being raped and murdered. “I want it to stop replaying in my head,” she cried.
One terrorist, using the phone of a dead Israeli woman whom he had just murdered, called his parents: “Dad, I killed 10 Jews with my own hands! Please be proud of me, Dad.” He promised to send footage to his parents over WhatsApp.
Israel’s casualties were multitudes greater, proportionally, than what the United States experienced on 9/11. To ensure that it never happens again, Israel, which spent the last decade-plus waging limited campaigns against Hamas, is now compelled to destroy the terrorist group. For the Jewish state, Oct. 7 changed everything.
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https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/policy/defense-national-security/obamas-middle-east-instability
