In November 1979, the Organization of Iranian People's Fedai terrorists, referred to as “students,” stormed the U.S. Embassy in Tehran.  They subsequently held 52 U.S. diplomats as hostages for 444 days.  The following March, Jimmy Carter, the weakest U.S. president in the 20th century, wrote a confidential letter to the Ayatollah Khomeini, the Iranian supreme leader, promising to recognize the Islamic Revolution in a public speech.  Simultaneously, Carter complied with the ayatollah’s wishes to get the Shah of Iran to leave his medical refuge in the U.S. and find shelter in Sadat’s Egypt.  Despite Carter’s appeasement, the Iranians defied calls to release the hostages.

In April 1980, the Carter administration attempted a halfhearted military effort to rescue the hostages, which ended in total failure.  The Iranians mutilated the bodies of eight U.S. servicemen and dragged them through the streets.  The taking over of the U.S. Embassy in Tehran was an act of war, and when the U.S. appeared impotent to act decisively, Iranian contempt, defiance, and aggression grew. 

Only in January 1981, as President Ronald Reagan was being inaugurated, did the Iranians release the hostages, fearing Reagan’s military action against them.  They perceived Reagan, unlike Carter, as being uncompromisingly strong.

In the Islamic Middle East (whether Shiite Iran, Sunni Arabs, or Turks), the only thing that is respected is force, and only when it is duly exercised.  The American (and Western) mindset and ideals stress peace and prosperity, and the perception in the Western world is that everyone longs for these virtuous ideals.  Not so in the Islamist Middle East, where the ideals are founded not on individual prosperity or peace, but the advancement of Islam, the return to the Islamic glories of the 7th century, and peace only after the world has accepted the dominance of Islam.  Currently, this is less apparent among the elites of the rich Gulf states, but it is certainly the ideal of the masses.

President Joe Biden’s appeasement, much like that of Jimmy Carter and his former boss, Barack Hussein Obama, is seen, once again, as weakness in the eyes of America’s enemies.  Biden is appeasing his pro-Hamas staffers, the antisemitic pro-Hamas progressive wing of the Democrat party in the U.S. Congress, and the Muslim pro-Hamas public in Michigan, Minnesota, etc.  He is also appeasing the radical mullahs of the Islamic Republic of Iran and its Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad proxies in Gaza.  And as is obvious, he is afraid to stand with Israel, in recognition of its just cause, lest he lose Arab, Muslim, and leftist voters in the November 2024 elections.

The Biden administration has decided to place punitive sanctions on an Israeli religious battalion called Netzach Yehuda for alleged human rights violations.  Biden’s relentless pressure on Israel to increase humanitarian aid to the Palestinians in Gaza, forced the building of a floating pier in Gaza at U.S. expense.

What the Biden administration has not done is threaten military action against Hamas unless it releases, at the very least, the American hostages held in Gaza tunnels. 

Hamas watches gleefully as Israel is pressured regarding humanitarian aid, U.S. opposition to an Israeli incursion into Rafah, and calls for a ceasefire — all while Hamas enjoys American largess in the form of humanitarian aid, which it controls and distributes, thereby receiving support from the Gazan public.

Consequently, Hamas is in a better position to come out a winner in the current conflict.  And because it feels confident, it has stiffened its conditions for the release of the Israeli (and American) hostages.

On the domestic American scene, antisemitism on American campuses is spreading like a cancer and has the potential to infect the entire population just as it did in Germany in the 1930s.  The Biden administration is using words rather than taking aggressive action against the pro-Hamas inciters and instigators, many of whom are funded by the Qatari regime through various Islamic and other non-governmental organizations (NGOs), including American Muslims for Palestine (AMP), an advocacy group with ties to the Democrat Party.  AMP has led various legislative initiatives targeting Israel.

Jonathan Schanzer, a former Treasury Department official and vice president at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, stated in testimony before the US Congress last November, “Individuals who previously worked for Hamas charities are now a driving force behind the large pro-Hamas demonstrations taking place in major cities across America.”

Schanzer cited Hatem Bazian, a longtime lecturer at the University of California Berkeley, as an example.  Bazian founded the U.S. branch of Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP), and later launched the American Muslims for Palestine (AMP).  Both groups advocate for the end of U.S. government support for Israel — the former on campuses, and the latter within the Democrat party.

The vocal red and green alliance (Marxist and Islamists) has infested Western societies with a “wokeness” ideology seeking to replace Jewish and Christian values.  And, instead of creating racial and gender harmony, “wokeness” has sharpened division among racial and gender groups.  Jews, deemed “white,” are being defamed as “oppressors,” while the Palestinians are portrayed as the “oppressed.”

Obama appeased the Muslim world in his June 2009 Cairo speech, and his former vice president is now pandering to and appeasing both the Islamists and the hard left.  Obama and his successor Biden have engendered Islamic contempt for America and various forms of anti-American forms of aggression.

Image: Gage Skidmore via Flickr, CC BY-SA 2.0.