So much for Joe Biden’s reported three-month time limit to destroy Hamas. A week ago, the Wall Street Journal reported from unnamed “US officials” that Biden and his team had demanded that Israel wrap up its war with Hamas based on Joe Biden’s election calendar. Antony Blinken reportedly lectured Israel’s war cabinet that they only had “weeks, not months” in which to fight Hamas after the atrocities of October 7 made clear that Israel could not be safe with their presence on their border.

Reportedly, the Biden administration gave Israel a deadline of January 7 to end its military operations in Gaza. Today, Israeli defense minister Yoav Gallant gave Biden’s national-security director a very polite answer, which amounts to pound sand. Israel will take whatever time it needs to ensure Hamas’ destruction, Gallant told a discomfited Jake Sullivan, and that means months rather than weeks regardless of what Blinken thinks:

Defense Minister Yoav Gallant tells visiting US National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan that the war against Hamas in Gaza will take “more than several months.” pic.twitter.com/JCmOmWO6F5

— Emanuel (Mannie) Fabian (@manniefabian) December 14, 2023

“Hamas is a terrorist organization that built itself over a decade to fight Israel, and they built infrastructure under the ground and above the ground and it is not easy to destroy them. It will require a period of time — it will last more than several months, but we will win and we will destroy them,” Gallant says. …

“Thank you for coming to Israel during this period of war — we appreciate it very much,” Gallant says in a statement. “We appreciate your personal commitment to the State of Israel – to releasing the hostages, and to the diplomatic effort [you are leading] and your support in the military channel.”

“The United States and Israel share common interests, common values and in this war, we [also] share common goals. This is important to the State of Israel and it is essential to the rest of the region, to the Middle East,” he adds.

Sullivan’s in Israel to do damage control, clearly. Biden’s false accusation that the IDF has conducted “indiscriminate” bombing angered Benjamin Netanyahu and foreign minister Eli Cohen and produced considerable backlash. The Israelis no doubt didn’t much appreciate getting lectured about military planning from Blinken and Lloyd Austin, two of the moral idiots behind Biden’s Kabul bug-out and abandonment of thousands of Americans to the Taliban.

The White House seems to be belatedly realizing that they’re losing their influence in Jerusalem with these tactics. John Kirby got sent out to the press to walk back Biden’s campaign-event lies about the IDF before Sullivan’s visit:

White House National Security Council spokesperson John Kirby suggested Wednesday that some of the steps the Israeli military has taken to prevent civilian casualties in Gaza might go further than what the US would have done if it were in Israel’s place.

His comments appeared to soften the blow of a critique by US President Joe Biden who said a day earlier that Israel was losing global support in the war against Hamas due to “indiscriminate bombing” in the Palestinian enclave.

Kirby highlighted the map the IDF published earlier this month alerting civilians as to which neighborhoods it is planning to attack so that they can evacuate ahead of time.

“That’s basically telegraphing your punches. There are very few modern militaries in the world that would do that. I don’t know that we would do that,” Kirby said during a press briefing.

We wouldn’t, and we didn’t — not in any of our own conflicts, not even in Raqqa a few years ago against ISIS. The Israelis have performed with far greater scrupulousness than any other military, made all the more remarkable in contrast to the horrific barbarities inflicted on them as the start of this war.

It’s clear that Biden is throwing the Israelis under his bus for domestic political purposes, and it’s just as clear that they have no intention of playing along. Two US experts told Newsmax last night that Biden’s comments and actions are destroying the relationship with Israel and looks particularly hypocritical when considering Biden’s rhetoric on behalf of Ukraine:

Retired Air Force Brig. Gen. Blaine Holt and former CIA ops officer Bryan Dean Wright told Newsmax Wednesday that the relationship between the United States and Israel is “getting worse, not better” as the Jewish state continues its ground offensive against Palestinian militant group Hamas in the Gaza Strip.

“I think it’s started out bad and it’s getting to worse,” Holt said during an appearance on Newsmax’s “American Agenda.” “In name, D.C., the [Biden] administration, starts every press conference with ‘We stand by Israel and its right to defend itself,’ and then everything that flows after that is some sort of lambasting critique of what they’re doing and accusing them of things they haven’t done. And it’s getting worse, not better. The Israelis have been very clear about this: They’re going to do what they have to do.

“If you look at these conditions and critique, now transpose that over the Ukrainian equation and words like ‘whatever it takes,’ ‘you’ll get whatever you need,’ and ‘we stand with you,’ it’s remarkable because Israel is our No. 1 ally in the region and undermining them verbally hurts,” he continued.

It’s cowardly, craven, and perfectly fits Joe Biden’s track record.