There was a time when the spilling of American blood was met with retribution. Today, the killing and capturing of Americans in Israel elicits no great response from our ostensible leaders.
On May 1, 1915, the HMS Lusitania was sunk by a German U-boat and 128 Americans lost their lives. The death of US citizens shocked the American people and is considered one of the factors that brought the US into World War I against Germany.
On Monday, the Biden administration nonchalantly announced that at least 11 US citizens were murdered in Hamas’ barbaric rampage, with some unknown number of additional citizens being held as prisoners in Gaza.
In making the announcement, the US did not state that it would hold responsible those who either murdered the Americans or sent the murderers on their way. The US also did not warn Hamas that any injury to captive Americans will be met by unimaginable retribution. And the lack of such statements is no surprise. We are represented by a government whose leaders simply do not like their country or around half of their fellow citizens.
When my son and I were wounded in 2002 in a suicide bombing, I was disheartened to see that the US made no serious effort to hold accountable those who had harmed us or several hundred other Americans who had been injured in other attacks during the second intifada. The Anti-Terrorism Act of 1990 (ATA) includes both criminal and civil remedies, and the US has not refrained from using the former to catch pirates or terrorists away from the Palestinian territories. The US has not prosecuted any Palestinians though the laws on the book are there for that purpose. There has been one indictment of which I know—that of Ahlam Tamimi, the mastermind of the Sbarro pizzeria bombing in 2001. She sits in Amman and the US makes no effort to extradite her. She has no fear of the US putting her into an orange jumpsuit and prosecuting her. US law enforcement is not interested in her prosecution.
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The cold-blooded murder of 11 American citizens should have sparked outrage in Washington—how can we give aid to the Palestinian Authority or transfer billions to Iran, when their proxy in Gaza has murdered American citizens? But the leaders of the US government could not care less for those killed and captured, or their families. One could argue that in leaving the US, those harmed took upon themselves responsibility for their own well-being. That would be true if not for precedents such as the rescue of 600 US medical students in Grenada. The military action in Grenada was appropriately called Operation Urgent Fury. With the passage of the ATA, the US put the world on notice that harming Americans anywhere on the globe would get America’s attention. That’s what the law implies. In fact, neither the State Department nor the Department of Justice is interested in prosecuting the bad guys when those bad guys are Palestinians or in supporting the Americans they harmed.
When we were injured in the bombing and the US did nothing to prosecute those behind the attack, I attributed it to the mild antisemitism that has always infested the State Department and to a lesser extent, DOJ. At the time, I felt sorry for non-Jewish American terror victims, as they were treated no better and were simply lumped with the Jews. But in seeing the lack of concern in the announcement made Monday, I realized that the problem is much deeper. The US simply is nonplussed by the coldblooded murder of its own nationals. Instead of warning Hamas in no uncertain terms that any American held captive who is harmed will lead to American F-18’s on the USS Gerald Ford attacking Hamas targets in the Gaza Strip, no such threat was issued. Where is the concern for those still alive? Where is the demand for responsibility for their well-being? It definitely has not been on display from Team Blinken.
This lack of care for our fellow Americans can be seen in the destructive flow of millions of illegal aliens into the United States. Communities are overrun with poor foreigners who make an enormous burden on local businesses and resources. But the government does not care. The US military carelessly left Kabul and allowed a suicide bomber to kill 13 Marines outside of the Kabul airport. Joe Biden could only look at his watch over and over again when the flag-draped coffins arrived at Dover AFB. The indifference is reflected in the 100,000 fentanyl deaths from chemicals produced in China and shuttled over the border from Mexico. The same is not true if you belong to a protected class. If Hamas had taken prisoner the US trans volleyball team, no doubt the State Department spokesman would be warning the Islamist group not to hurt a hair on their heads. Maybe the B-52 that landed yesterday at Ben Gurion Airport would be used to flatten all of the tall buildings in Gaza so that the terrorists could not throw them off of the same. We saw it when BLM looters cleaned out stores and burned them with little to no punishment while protesters parading in the Capitol have been left to rot in jail.
The US should invoke some of Roosevelt’s “righteous might” and threaten the total destruction of Hamas if American citizens are not released immediately. The US should also say that it will track down and kill anyone who was involved in the death of its citizens. The Israelis did it with the Munich terrorists, and there is no reason that the US cannot do the same—if the will is there to do it. But to do so, the US government would actually have to like its citizens. And unfortunately, that part of the equation is sadly missing.
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