Why Israel’s Allies Are Pretending To Be Impatient

 To be sure, this awkward dance can’t go on forever. But Israel doesn’t intend for it to. In the meantime, a sharp Western turn against Israel’s war on Hamas has yet to materialize.

When Tlaib opens her mouth to shout
her face disappears

Seth Mandel, Commentary Magazine   "Foreign policy is still subject to domestic politics, no matter how far away the theater of battle is.

"That is a pretty reliable rule, and it explains much of what people are finding inexplicable: the insistence that the Biden administration is giving Israel “tough love” in private conversations while publicly supporting the IDF’s mission in Gaza. “Netanyahu’s war bluster exposes growing rift with Biden,” reports The Hill, putting a slightly more dramatic gloss on a version of the same story you can read today in the New York Times, Washington Post, and elsewhere.

"Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin’s trip to Israel yesterday, reports the Times, “was part of a full-court press by the Biden administration to urge Israeli officials to wrap up the ‘high-intensity’ phase of the war and begin carrying out more targeted, intelligence-driven missions to find and kill Hamas leaders, destroy the tunnels used by the militant group and rescue the people taken hostage on Oct. 7.”

"Not to put too much into the metaphor here, but in my glory days of yeshiva league high-school basketball I never faced a full-court press with so much breathing room. The only evidence that there is pressure behind closed doors is the insistence by top officials that there is pressure behind closed doors.

"How much time will Austin give the Israelis to get this done?" . . .