President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris used exactly the same language in a portion of their statements marking the first anniversary of the October 7 terror attacks as they called for an end to war in Lebanon.
Hamas terrorists attacked Israel on October 7, 2023, killing roughly 1200 people, including dozens of Americans. The Iran-backed terror group also took over 250 hostages; four Americans remain among the living hostages in Gaza.
Both Biden and Harris’s statements expressed horror at the attacks, solidarity with the victims, and hopes for the return of the hostages. Both supported Israel’s right to defend itself; both also backed Palestinian rights, with Harris going further and promising that she would “always fight for the Palestinian people” to achieve “self-determination.”
But in a passage on the ongoing war in Lebanon, both used exactly the same wording.
Biden: “We also continue to believe that a diplomatic solution across the Israel-Lebanon border region is the only path to restore lasting calm and allow residents on both sides to return safely to their homes.”
Harris: “We also continue to believe that a diplomatic solution across the Israel-Lebanon border region is the only path to restore lasting calm and allow residents on both sides to return safely to their homes.”
Iran-backed Hezbollah terrorists began firing on Israel on October 8, 2023, despite a ceasefire ordered by United Nations Security Council Resolution 1701 (2006), plus a deal brokered by the Biden administration in 2022 under which Israel ceded an offshore gas field to Lebanon in return to assurances that Hezbollah would not attack.
Diplomatic efforts by the Biden-Harris administration to restore calm failed, and Israel decided it could no longer wait to defend itself and restore over 60,000 displaced Jews and Arabs to their homes. Israel eliminated much of Hezbollah’s leadership and, since launching a ground invasion last week, has discovered massive caches of weapons near the border, which the terrorists had evidently stockpiled in preparation for another October 7-style attack.
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.
