“She told me once that she dreamt about him every night and woke up to realize he was dead”

September 26, 2024 by Daniel Greenfield 2 Comments

When Hezbollah suffered a devastating attack around the 40th anniversary of the Islamic terror group’s bombing of the US embassy (the second time), I was hoping we had something to do with it, but I should have known better.

Then Israel took out Hezbollah’s Ibrahim Aqil whom we have a standing $7 million reward on for his role in the Marine Barracks bombing that killed over two hundred Americans and the Biden-Harris admin frantically disavowed the move and is promising that it is not providing Israel with any intel support.

Pentagon spokeswoman Sabrina Singh said that the US is not providing Israel with support in its current conflict with the Hezbollah terrorist organization, including intelligence,

Singh replied “no” when asked by a reporter if the US is providing any form of support to Israel in the Lebanon conflict.

The US military is not providing intelligence support to Israel for its operations in Lebanon, the Pentagon says, adding the United States is making “a full-court press” for a diplomatic solution to the crisis.

Instead, the Biden-Harris regime signed on to a call for a 21-day truce during which Hezbollah will have the time to rearm, regroup and launch more focused attacks on Israel.

Actual Americans have a somewhat different perspective.

Steve Aiken, a retired Marine Corps sergeant major, reflected wistfully on Oct. 23, 1983, the date when truck bombs targeted two buildings housing American and French troops, killing 241 U.S. service members and 58 French troops. Then a young lance corporal, Aiken was off the coast aboard the USS Inchon as wounded service members were transferred to a fleet of American vessels that provided medical treatment.

Aiken, who had been off the coast when the barracks was attacked, said the killing of Aqil more than 40 years later was “God’s judgment” and would send a message to Iran and other countries sponsoring terrorism.

“You might get away, but you’re not going to get by,” he said. “Our memory is long. Israel’s is even longer.”

Among those killed in the embassy attack was Albert Votaw, a housing officer with the U.S. Agency for International Development who had arrived in Beirut just 11 days earlier. His daughter Catherine said that it was years before she could say her father’s name without crying. She eventually named her second-born son after him.

Votaw said in an interview Friday night that she was shocked that Aqil had been alive for so long.

“I’m not a person who believes in capital punishment,” she said. “I don’t wish death on anybody, even my very worst enemies. It’s hard not to find some justice in him being dead. My only question is, you know: Why 41 years? How did he get to live 41 years longer than my dad?”

Votaw said sorrowfully that her father was robbed of the opportunity to meet his eight grandchildren. When the bombing occurred, her mother was still in Thailand, where her father recently had been posted, and it took days for the immediate family to be reunited. Her mother, Estera, a Holocaust survivor, died at 83 in 2012 and struggled with the grief of his loss for the rest of her life after settling as a widow in Washington’s Dupont Circle neighborhood.

“She told me once that she dreamt about him every night and woke up to realize he was dead,” Votaw said, choking up.

The Biden-Harris administration really wants everyone to know that it has nothing to do with the campaign against Hezbollah.

Barak Ravid, the White House’s media man for Israel spin, quotes Amos Hochstein, Biden’s Hezbollah liaison, blasting Israel for doing what we should have done a long time ago.

Biden’s senior adviser Amos Hochstein made progress toward a deal to calm the border conflict, but it was contingent on reaching an agreement to release hostages held by Hamas and establish a ceasefire in Gaza.

A day after Hochstein traveled to Israel last week and warned Netanyahu of the negative consequences of a war in Lebanon, Israel conducted the first in a series of deadly attacks, remotely detonating pagers carried by Hezbollah members.

Hochstein was livid — not only because the Israelis kept him in the dark about the attack, but because they completely ignored everything he told them, U.S. officials said.

I can’t imagine why they would do that. The last time Israel listened to Hochstein, Hezbollah ended up with a whole lot of gas fields and cash. This time it ended up on fire.