Benjamin Netanyahu has learned to take Hamas at its word. The United States, and specifically Antony Blinken and Joe Biden, still have not. As Blinken met with the unity government in Jerusalem to push Israel to ‘pause’ operations for aid to flow into northern Gaza, Netanyahu delivered a rather humiliating public rebuke.

If the US wants a pause, then Hamas needs to unconditionally release all the hostages first. Failing that, game on:

In a brief televised statement before the start of Shabbat, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu says he has told visiting US Secretary of State Antony Blinken that he rejects any temporary halt to the fight against Hamas that does not include “the release of our hostages. He also says Israel “will not enable the entry of fuel to Gaza.”

Netanyahu begins by promising that victory will be “sharp and clear” and will “resonate for generations.”

He says Israel’s enemies aim to destroy the country and will fail. “We won’t stop until victory,” he says, specifying that this means “to destroy Hamas, [and attain the] return of the hostages and the restoration of security for our citizens and children.”

Netanyahu didn’t even bother to wait until Blinken left to make his public statement opposing the demand. In fact, Netanyahu didn’t wait for Jack Lew to settle into office as Biden’s newly confirmed ambassador to Israel first. In diplomatic terms, that equates to a STFU.

Hamas won’t take that offer, obviously, especially after its demand on NBC that Israel withdraw from Gaza before they will even talk about hostages. However, Netanyahu has the formula correct. If Hamas and Gazans want humanitarian aid, they should trade in the humanitarian context by releasing the civilians and soldiers Hamas kidnapped as part of its massacre on October 7.

For that matter, the US should be demanding the same thing. After all, Hamas murdered over 30 Americans on October 7 and took a still-unclear number of Americans hostage. Why are we fronting for Hamas while our own citizens remain as hostages? Why should we send humanitarian aid in this situation before those hostages get released, and before the 400-1,000 Americans in Gaza are allowed to leave?

Meanwhile, Blinken sounds like he just flew into Israel from 2005. He called for a “two state solution” as the solution to the violence:

A two-state solution with who as a partner? Clearly not Hamas, and clearly not the current Gazan culture. They had a chance in 2005 with the end of the occupation to form themselves into a responsible state. They elected Hamas to run their government and chose to pursue their own idea of a one-state solution — the annihilation of Israel. That has proven incredibly popular with Gazans over the last 17 years, so much so that the October 7 massacre had them dancing in the streets.

Blinken should know better now, especially after emerging “visibly shaken” from watching the videos captured by the Israelis from the massacre:

“I saw, for example, a family on a kibbutz, a father (of) two young boys — maybe 10, 11 years old — grabbing them, pulling them out of their living room, going through their very small backyard and into a shelter, followed seconds later by a terrorist who throws a grenade into that small shelter. And then as the father come staggering out, shoots him down. And then the boys come out, and they run into their house, and the camera in the house is filming everything. And they’re crying. ‘Where’s daddy?’ one says. The other says, ‘They killed daddy. Where’s my mommy?’ And then the terrorists comes in, and casually opens the refrigerator and starts to eat from it,” Blinken said he saw in the video.

The top US diplomat expressed sympathy for the plight of Palestinians civilians as well, saying he sees his own children when he sees images of “Palestinian children, young boys and girls, pulled from the wreckage and buildings.”

“Hamas doesn’t care one second or one iota for the welfare, for the well-being of the Palestinian people,” said Blinken. “It cynically and monstrously uses them as human shields, putting his commanders in command posts, its weapons and ammunition, within or beneath residential buildings, schools, mosques, hospitals.”

No kidding. So why are Biden and Blinken insisting on pauses and negotiations with the monsters of October 7 rather than supporting their effort to eradicate them? Why are we publicly playing into Hamas’ hostaging strategy when our own citizens are at risk rather than ending the incentives of such strategies forcefully and decisively? Incoherent hardly covers it; moral idiocy comes a lot closer to explaining the Biden administration’s pressure.