Unspeakable Horrors in Israel Mount While American Armaments Fall Short

Since October 7, 2023, Americans and Israelis have been outraged by seeing the body of an Israeli woman, “naked, legs broken, being transported around Gaza in the back of a pickup truck by terrorists. A male resident of Gaza is seen in the clip spitting on her body.” Evidence of barbarism mushrooms showing that Hamas militants murdered 40 babies and toddlers—some of whom were decapitated—in Kfar Aza. Reacting to the carnage, commentator Rod Dreher suggests that such atrocities confirm that Hamas has become the “Nazis of Our Time.” Simultaneously, the world barrels toward a general war sparked by a brutal idea: “the elimination of the state of Israel.”

Against this backdrop there is no middle ground as more and more Americans recognize that we wrestle against more than flesh and blood but against principalities and powers. At the same time, more and more Middle Eastern Muslims—along with their sympathizers in London, Sydney, Toronto, and New York City—allow themselves to be led by a hateful ideology that issues forth from Iran’s leaders. Meanwhile, Iranian leaders seem prepared to resolve—if only temporarily—their religious conflict with other Muslims in favor of an existential goal: the erasure of the nation State of Israel as part of a wider, even global war that seems poised to include ISIS-like savagery.

Commentator Phillip Blond contends that neither Iran nor Hamas cares about the Palestinian civilian population in Gaza. Reacting to the brutality in Israel, the United States has stepped up its efforts to surge support for Israel. But America faces a potentially fatal dilemma: Our stocks of weapons of war are woefully depleted. This is an important fact that could constrain the United States and its allies’ justifiable resistance to Hamas’ ambition to wipe Israel off the face of the earth. Resistance requires ammunition and other weapons of war, which are now in short supply.

Sweden-based commentator Malcom Kyeyune notes that a shortage of weaponry arose after the failure of the Ukrainian counteroffensive. As a consequence, the West is running out of ammunition since America took artillery shells from its stores in Israel to dispatch to the West’s unending war in Ukraine. This dire situation is compounded for two reasons. First, there isn’t much capacity to manufacture more ammo quickly in the United States. Second, as retired U.S. military officer Douglas Macgregor notes, it appears that based on America’s request, Mossad, the Israeli intelligence service, has sent some of its experts to help Ukraine rather than focusing on Israel’s security.

The West faces a vicious cycle, which will require difficult choices. Given the depletion of its military assets, the more the West assists Ukraine, the less support it can offer Israel. The more the West assists Israel, the fewer resources it has for Ukraine. At the same time, China is eying a war with Taiwan while Russia is at work attacking Western interests in Africa. In sum, future crises are on the horizon.

The failure to put American interests first years ago and the failure to ramp up military production sufficiently after the crisis in Ukraine commenced 20 months ago mean that the United States cannot defend itself or its allies simultaneously. Hard choices loom on the horizon. At the same time, despite the Biden Administration’s claim that the U.S. is “large enough, big enough . . . to support both” Israel and Ukraine, it is becoming clear that funding Ukraine hinders Western aid for Israel. As one German official observed: “We face a huge ammo shortage in Ukraine,” thus echoing U.S. Admiral Rob Bauer’s claim that ammunition warehouses are not full and the bottom of the barrel is visible. This shortage impacts America’s capacity to respond in the Middle East.

At this point in time, it seems clear that the shortage of weapons in the United States and the West means that the war in Gaza could become long and bloody, allowing Hamas and Iran to project Palestinian victimhood daily on TV and social media screens. This problem is worsened because America has already relaxed sanctions on Iran, allowing tens of billions of dollars to flow into Iran’s coffers, not to mention the recent decision by the Biden Administration to transfer $6 billion dollars to Iran’s mullahs. Indeed, the Biden Administration is still pursuing a nuclear deal with Iran that could give Iranian mullahs a further $100 billion to advance their destabilization efforts.

Because of all these moves, the Gaza war could spread to the West Bank and perhaps engulf the entire Middle East since Iranian proxies are already in place in the West Bank and in Lebanon to the north. Recently, the head of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard, Hossein Salami, said: “The outcome of the battle will be determined when the struggle is on the ground, and the brave and experienced people of Hezbollah and Palestine will move on the ground in a single military formation.”

While President Biden has rightly said the United States will stand with Israel in its conflict with what Rod Dreher calls the “Nazis of our time,” the question becomes, do America and the West possess the military resources and supplies necessary to assist Israel in prosecuting a war against Hamas? Increasingly, the evidence suggests that we lack the weapons and supplies to fight a two-front war, leaving the United States and the West with tough choices. Given America’s and the West’s long-standing commitment to Israel—our only real ally in the Middle East—now more than ever, the United States should strongly consider doing four things immediately: (1) get Congress to approve Israel’s request for more Iron Dome missile interceptors, ammunition, and small-diameter bombs; (2) reduce military supplies to Ukraine at least in the short run and transfer weapons to Israel; (3) lead an international effort to establish a stable truce in Ukraine; and (4) reimpose tough sanctions on Iran to reduce its capacity to finance both Hezbollah and Hamas.

Resources are scarce, and prior policy decisions have led to the point where the U.S. is no longer prepared to fight a war on two fronts. Now tough choices need to be made. Pretending otherwise will lead to unthinkable consequences for our allies and, in the end, the U.S. itself.