An Israeli policy that aims at decisively defeating Hamas in Gaza, forcing Hezbollah to stop firing on northern Israel, and, above all, making it clear to Iran that the price of their war to eliminate the Jewish state is one they cannot pay would seem to completely align with American interests. But not with those of Biden and Harris.

What they want from Netanyahu is peace and quiet. And an end to the war on Hamas on virtually any terms—and the ones that Harris sketched out last week that call for a complete Israeli retreat from Gaza would essentially hand a victory to the group that committed the mass murder of 1,200 people on Oct. 7—would largely stifle the complaints of the left-wing of the Democratic Party about their being insufficiently hostile to Israel. That, as well as the dubious claim that this would be a triumph for American diplomacy, would help her to defeat former President Donald Trump in November.

A power vacuum

When Biden spoke of Israel not being helpful, he wasn’t so much speaking about the claim that an Israeli surrender of its interests would free the more than 100 hostages still being held by Hamas. Rather, he was referring to the administration’s ongoing efforts to pose as a decisive actor on the global stage when, in fact, it is anything but that.

According to the new conventional wisdom of the day being peddled by the U.S. foreign-policy establishment, Netanyahu is playing the role of an American foe seeking to take advantage of the chaos at the White House. With Biden’s condition and status uncertain in the wake of the coup that was executed against him by his party’s leaders, including Obama—and now Harris seeking—with the eager assistance of a compliant liberal corporate mainstream media to transform her image from one of a colossal failure to that of a great leader, the talk of a power vacuum in Washington is not metaphorical.

That is why ardent Israel-bashers like Johns Hopkins professor Vali Nasr are being quoted in the Times claiming that Netanyahu is the moral equivalent of “Vladimir Putin or Xi Jinping or Kim Jong-un” for having the temerity to kill terrorists. In the same piece, J Street co-founder Daniel Levy argued that Israel was “humiliating” Iran in a manner that was “another crossing of multiple lines” and was, by extension, hurting Biden and Harris’s efforts to improve the relationship with Tehran.

The argument is that doing this is making it seem as if, in Nasr’s words, “America is not in control.” But that formulation has it backwards. The whole point of the Middle East policies pursued first by Obama—then Biden and now by U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken or Harris—is that it is Iran that is in control, not the United States.

It is true that there is widespread doubt about American leadership right now. But that has nothing to do with what Netanyahu does or doesn’t do. With a president so feeble that he was forced to end his re-election campaign weeks before his party was about to renominate him and an equally weak-willed replacement like Harris now standing in for him, it’s little wonder that the international community cannot trust or rely on the United States to play a coherent, let alone a decisive, role on the world stage.

That didn’t begin with Biden’s obvious decline in the last year. From the moment he took office in January 2021, his foreign policy was one that inspired contempt among America’s foes and concern on the part of its allies. His feckless pursuit of another round of appeasement of Iran, and then the disastrous retreat from Afghanistan, marked his presidency as one whose hallmark was defeat and disgrace—something that directly led to the Russian invasion of Ukraine, and ultimately, to Hamas’s Oct. 7 assault on Israel.

Since then, the American policy has been to slow-walk aid to Israel in such a manner as to force it to give up its justified quest to remove Hamas from control of Gaza. While the administration is willing to help defend Israel against attacks from Iran, the price it wants Israel to pay for that assistance is to do little or nothing to pre-empt future assaults. Were Netanyahu to comply—both by agreeing to the humiliating ceasefire terms outlined by Harris and by ending all efforts to substantially harm the terrorist groups by killing the criminals that lead them—it would make life easier for Washington and, no doubt, aid Harris’s election campaign. But it would also substantially damage its security while also enhancing Iran’s quest to gain regional hegemony. And that’s not even taking into account the fact that, to Jerusalem’s consternation, the administration has essentially conceded that it will not prevent Tehran from achieving its nuclear ambitions—something that is an existential threat to Israel as well as a terrible blow to U.S. and Western interests.

Doing America’s dirty work

There is genuine uncertainty about what will happen in the coming days, weeks and months until November, and then the inauguration of a new American president next January. Still, the assumption that an assertion of Israeli strength and a demonstration of Iran’s inability to protect its terrorist minions will make the world more dangerous is misguided. The more the Islamist foes of the West and Israel fear for their lives, the more likely it is that they will be deterred from further mayhem, allowing both Israelis and Americans to be safer. By killing Fukr, Deif and Haniyeh—and giving the mullahs in Tehran reason to worry about their own security—Israel was defending its people against Islamist murderers and doing a job that Americans needed done, whether or not it served the political and policy interests of Biden or Harris.

While Israeli leaders must always seek to stay as close as they can to their American counterparts, that is an impossible task for Netanyahu right now and one that could harm his own country’s security. As long as American policy is dedicated to appeasing the mullahs in Tehran and propping up their terrorist allies, coupled with a leadership vacuum in Washington, Israel cannot just sit back and watch as its enemies grow more powerful and bolder in their efforts to kill Jews.

It isn’t Netanyahu’s job to bolster an American administration that is determined to project weakness rather than strength. If America now appears weak or not in control, the blame rests on Biden, Harris and their Washington cheerleaders. Rather than attacking Netanyahu for doing his job, Americans who care about their country’s security should be cheering Israel for doing what a failed administration either won’t or cannot do.