“My administration’s support for Israel’s security is rock solid and unwavering,” said Joe Biden on Oct. 7, 2023. More than six months later, that support is not only wavering, but Biden is steadfastly supporting the other side.

In its invasion of Gaza, Israel has done an incredible job of avoiding civilian casualties. Even taking Hamas’s absurdly inflated death figures at face value, around three civilians have died for every two Hamas terrorists Israel has killed. In Iraq, American-led forces killed nearly 3.5 civilians for every combatant killed, using figures from Conflict Casualties Monitor.

Israel’s low civilian casualty rate is unprecedented in the history of urban warfare. And all this comes against an enemy that targets civilians, currently has hundreds of civilian hostages (if they are still alive), and tries to get its own civilians killed to make Israel look evil in the propaganda war.

“… I’ve never known an army to take such measures to attend to the enemy’s civilian population, especially while simultaneously combating the enemy in the very same buildings,” wrote John Spencer, chair of urban warfare studies at the Modern War Institute at West Point. “In fact, by my analysis, Israel has implemented more precautions to prevent civilian harm than any military in history—above and beyond what international law requires and more than the [United States] did in its wars in Iraq and Afghanistan” (Newsweek, March 25).

Yet Biden said Israel “has not done enough” to protect civilians. He has suspended shipment of bombs and threatened to shut down all but Iron Dome missile interceptors if Israel goes into Rafah, Hamas’s last remaining stronghold.

And America is not the only country working against Israel.

Canada is selling arms to Qatar and Saudi Arabia. In early March, it resumed funding the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (unrwa), which most of the West stopped funding after it was caught helping Hamas murder and kidnap Israelis. But Canada did announce an arms embargo against one country: Israel.

Britain’s foreign minster, Lord David Cameron of Chipping Norton, has threatened to do the same. So has Australia, which has already been accused of deliberately moving slowly in supplying aid to the Israelis.

Many of the world’s English-speaking nations are turning against Israel. Why?

Push From the Left

A remarkable part of Washington’s push against Israel is that the overwhelming majority of Americans support the Jews. Eighty percent of Americans say they support Israel over Hamas, according to an April 24-25 poll of nearly 2,000 registered voters. Two thirds of Americans believe Israel is trying to avoid civilian casualties, and around the same number believe there should be no ceasefire until hostages are released. Seventy-two percent think Israel should send its army into Rafah.

Yet the radical left is trying to change the national view. Joe Biden is clearly out of step with the nation.

And so are his backers. America’s elite universities have hosted radically anti-Israel, even openly anti-Semitic protests for months. Many Democrats have condemned the protests, but they are backed by the same people as the radical left. The student campus protests “include some of the biggest names in Democratic circles: Soros, Rockefeller and Pritzker,” wrote Politico. They described the way “a small group of wealthy heavyweights are often playing an outsize role funding” the pro-Hamas movement.

Key supporters of the protests were Jewish Voice for Peace and IfNotNow. These are supported by the Tides Foundation, a group backed by big names like George Soros and, previously, Bill and Melinda Gates. Susan and Nick Pritzker, who gave Biden’s 2020 campaign $300,000, fund pro-Palestinian protests today.

Some Democratic politicians are confused about why money from their megadonors is going to protests they personally disagree with. It makes sense when you understand who is really behind these donations. The real head of the radical-left movement and the Biden administration, and the one directing these donations, is Barack Obama.

Obama and Israel

George Soros pushed Barack Obama to the fore in 2004, donating $60,000 to his Senate run, then $5 million to help him win the presidency in 2008. Obama and Susan Pritzker have been friends since the 1990s.

Obama has a long history of opposing the Jews. He attended church services under Pastor Jeremiah Wright for 20 years. Wright gave blatantly anti-Semitic sermons. Obama’s ex-girlfriend Sheila Miyoshi Jager said she left him shortly after a big argument that erupted when she challenged him over a black anti-Semitism scandal in 1980s New York.

One of Obama’s biggest foreign-policy “achievements” was to empower Iran. The 2016 nuclear deal ended the economic pressure that threatened to overturn the regime. He airlifted $400 million in cash to pay Iran to release four American hostages. It was the first payment in a $1.7 billion settlement. He allowed Russia to export 130 tons of uranium to Iran.

To some observers, the support was baffling. “[W]hy Obama would choose the Islamic Republic as a partner and encourage tactics typically employed by Third World police states remain a mystery,” wrote Lee Smith (Tablet, May 20, 2020).

A clue came in the way Obama consistently opposed Israel. In 2009, he compared Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians to the Holocaust and launched a push against Jewish settlements. In 2010, he infamously ushered Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu into the White House through a side door, in a calculated snub. He began to change America’s traditional policy of defending Israel at the UN, and endorsed a resolution calling for Israel to withdraw from the nuclear non-proliferation treaty.

“Obama wants to hurt Israel,” veteran journalist Caroline Glick wrote in 2012. “He does not like Israel. He is appointing anti-Israel advisers and cabinet members not despite their anti-Israel positions, but because of them. … Obama wants to fundamentally transform the U.S. relationship with Israel” (FrontPage Magazine, Dec. 17, 2012).

A crucial Parthian shot came in the final days of Obama’s presidency, once he could no longer be punished by voters. After Democrats lost the 2016 election, but before Donald Trump took office, Obama allowed Resolution 2334 to pass the UN Security Council, which labeled any Israeli settlement in the land occupied by Jordan before 1967 illegal. This move branded Jews in the Jewish Quarter of the Old City as criminal squatters.

This ugly legacy quickly revived under the Biden administration. Once again, support for Iran was back. On Sept. 11, 2023, the U.S. announced it would unfreeze $6 billion of Iran’s money to pay for the release of hostages. Two months later, $10 billion more was unfrozen. The U.S. also gave the Palestinians $235 million in “humanitarian aid”—money President Trump had stopped over concern that it would fund terrorism.

Robert Malley, the key negotiator of Obama’s nuclear deal, was brought back as the U.S. special envoy to Iran. He was later forced out after it was revealed that he helped an Iranian agent infiltrate the State Department.

In February 2023, the U.S. allowed the UN Security Council to pass a resolution condemning Israel’s plan to expand settlement in disputed territories.

Typically, Israeli prime ministers are invited to Washington within months of taking office. Netanyahu still has not received an invite, and Biden has implied that no invite will come unless Netanyahu permanently scraps his plans for political reform in Israel.

Obama and his donors effectively had a policy of regime change in Israel, and it returned under Biden. But Netanyahu was weathering the storm.

Then came Oct. 7, 2023.

Israel Under Attack

After Hamas’s October 7 attack, Israel received an outpouring of sympathy. Barack Obama was one of the first to temper that sympathy: “You have to admit nobody’s hands are clean,” he said in a Nov. 4, 2023, interview, adding that “what’s happening to Palestinians is unbearable.”

This was part of a new push. No one outside of a handful of extreme pro-Hamas zealots could deny the barbarity of what happened on October 7. Instead they tried to “contextualize” it by arguing that Israel had also done terrible things and that its response was too hard on civilians. In any other circumstances, such “victim blaming” is condemned—but not when that victim is Israel.

Part of this narrative is to make Israel out to be the bad guy in the disputed territories in Judea and Samaria—commonly called the West Bank to mask its deep connections with Jewish history. The Biden administration stated in February that Israeli settlements in this area are illegal. His administration talks about “settler violence”—as if it is on the same scale and intensity as what Hamas is doing.

Tactics that were regarded as righteous when the Allies used them against the Nazis—like bombing campaigns or blockading food—were painted as evil, even though Israel is fighting an army at least as evil as the Nazis. The global apparatus of courts and international law, set up to prevent any repetition of Nazi history, was mobilized to outlaw the very techniques that had defeated the Nazis.

Instead of blockading Gaza, Israel was expected to allow in aid. It did so from the start, but the Biden administration insisted it was not enough. There was clear evidence Hamas was stealing this humanitarian aid, but Israel was blamed and required to send even more.

In fighting the Nazis, America demanded unconditional surrender. But for Israel, this was too severe: It should agree to a ceasefire with no preconditions and no release of hostages. Once again renouncing its role as Israel’s protector at the UN, the U.S. allowed a resolution to pass calling for an immediate ceasefire with no conditions. This is as absurd and unjust as a resolution demanding the Allies sign an immediate ceasefire with Hitler in 1944.

In World War ii, the Allies killed noncombatants and even civilians. Yet any mistakes on Israel’s part are taken as proof of sinister intent.

The U.S. is not just shielding Hamas terrorists. In some cases, it is actively enabling them. The U.S. insisted that a pier be built to ship more supplies into Gaza. Then it handed over construction to Hamas’s patron, Qatar. “[T]he U.S. has flipped sides, from Israel to Qatar,” lamented Yigal Carmon, founder of the Middle East Media Research Institute on March 20. According to Israel’s Channel 14 News, Washington insisted the pier be built by a Hamas-controlled construction company.

In the early hours of April 14, Iran launched over 300 missiles at Israel. The missiles did little harm, thanks to Israel’s allies and defense system. But this was a bold move by Iran: attacking Israel directly, without hiding behind proxies. Unpunished, Iran could grow bolder still—or simply use what it learned about Israel’s defense system to try again.

Yet the U.S. stepped in to prevent Israel from making any substantial retaliation. Israel, Biden said, should “take the win” and not “escalate tensions.” The Israeli government shelved the forceful response it had planned and instead made a token strike. There were even reports that the U.S. not only green-lighted Iran’s attack but even helped it calibrate its bombardment so as not to trigger an Israeli response.

As the war in Gaza drags on, the Biden administration has focused on preventing Israel from entering Rafah—which, though home to hundreds of thousands of Palestinian civilians, is also Hamas’s last stronghold.

Axios reported on April 20 that, for the first time, the U.S. will impose sanctions on part of the Israeli Army. The Netzah Yehuda battalion operates in the disputed territories of Judea and Samaria. The U.S. has accused its members of human rights violations.

A Royal Warning

“I remain deeply concerned about the terrible human cost of the conflict in the Middle East since the Hamas terrorist attack on 7 October. Too many have been killed. I, like so many others, want to see an end to the fighting as soon as possible.” The statement is similar to many others from celebrities and activists. But this came from Prince William, heir to Britain’s throne, on February 20, the day before the ceasefire debate.

Britain’s monarchs never get involved in politics. The throne is supposed to be something everyone can get behind, regardless of political views. Politicizing it risks the survival of the monarchy itself, or so the theory goes.

Prince William is probably not intimidated by increasingly violent mobs and is articulating deep personal convictions. Many clearly share his view. Most mean well—they read stories about starving children, see bombed-out families, and want the war to end. But the fact that a much larger number of dying children in Ukraine or Syria fail to elicit a similar reaction shows a clear anti-Israel bias. If a thousand British people had been killed and 130 were still, right now, being held hostage, it’s hard to imagine the United Kingdom agreeing to a ceasefire.

Mass migration plays a role in Britain’s reaction to Israel (sidebar, page 12), but it is clearly not the only factor.

British police regularly give pro-Hamas protesters space to destroy while restricting the movement of Jews. Police stopped one Jew for the crime of being “quite openly Jewish” in London while protesters demonstrated for Hamas. Two Israeli survivors of October 7 were grilled for two hours by border guards, “to make sure that you are not going to do what you are doing in Gaza over here,” as one officer put it. Hospital staff bullied a 9-year-old Jew who had a rare blood disorder.

The bbc accepts Hamas’s figures at face value while doubting Israel’s. It constantly refuses to call Hamas a terrorist group. Six hundred lawyers signed a letter to the prime minister accusing Israel of breaking international law and possibly committing genocide. The signatories—which include three former Supreme Court judges—misrepresented what the International Court of Justice has said about Israel and distorted the truth about “famine” in Gaza and Israel’s treatment of civilians.

Britain’s foreign secretary, Lord Cameron, has outspokenly criticized Israel, writing that the UK expects Israel “to abide by international humanitarian law, even when challenged in this way”—implying that Israel doesn’t. Prime Minister Rishi Sunak has been quieter on the subject. But when Israel accidentally struck an aid convoy, he said that “far too many aid workers and ordinary civilians have lost their lives in Gaza, and the situation is increasingly intolerable.”

In February, Britain imposed sanctions on four Israeli residents living in the disputed territories of Judea and Samaria.

Others have responded similarly. French Foreign Minister Stéphane Séjourné suggested sanctions against Israel. Spain plans to recognize an independent Palestinian state.

But sadly, Britain, America and Canada lead the world in such betrayals. None of these other countries have the clout the U.S. has.

A Biblical Betrayal

This betrayal is especially tragic when you consider what the Bible says about Israel. It is, after all, a book all about Israel.

But Israel is more than simply the modern nation in the Middle East that goes by that name. The Jewish state descended from just one tribe of biblical Israel: that of Judah. After the reign of King Solomon, the kingdom of Israel split. The northern 10 tribes were carried into captivity by the Assyrian Empire from 721 b.c. to 718 b.c., and they disappeared from history. But God made fantastic and specific promises to these tribes. Genesis 49 outlines for each tribe prophecies for “the last days.” If the 10 tribes no longer exist, then your Bible is wrong.

Herbert W. Armstrong proved that Britain and America are descended from two of these 10 tribes: Ephraim and Manasseh. Though few realize it, the Jews are, in a very real sense, our brothers.

God promised myriad blessings to all the nations of Israel. Britain and America have received the bulk of those blessings. But other passages describe curses that will follow if we disobey, including division and betrayal.

Zechariah 11:14 states: “Then I cut asunder mine other staff, even Bands, that I might break the brotherhood between Judah and Israel.” We are seeing this curse before our eyes.

“The division developing between our nations is a deadly weakness,” wrote Trumpet editor in chief Gerald Flurry in 2021. “It’s a weakness the radical left and especially Barack Obama have spent years creating and exploiting. Now these former royals are joining in” (Trumpet, July 2021).

Back then it was division between Britain and America, stoked by Barack Obama and Prince Harry and his wife. Now Obama holdovers in the Biden administration and Prince William himself are dividing both powers from Israel in the Middle East.

“Threats in the world are increasing,” wrote Mr. Flurry. “Other nations are betraying and attacking America and Britain and Israel. Many Bible prophecies show these trends will intensify. In a world this hostile, Britain, America and the Jewish nation of Israel need to stick together and to turn toward God. But they are splitting from God and from each other. There will be no helper for Israel—not even from other modern Israelite nations” (ibid).

Isaiah 9:21 warns, “Manasseh shall devour Ephraim, and Ephraim Manasseh; Together they shall be against Judah” (New King James Version). This division plays a major role in further curses to come.

The next few verses in Isaiah 10 (chapter divisions in standard Bibles are not inspired by God) condemn those who “decree unrighteous decrees” and “turn aside the needy from judgment, and … take away the right from the poor of my people, that widows may be their prey, and that they may rob the fatherless!” This describes those who abuse the law to make the innocent suffer. But it could also apply to the way Britain and America are weaponizing international law to isolate and punish Israel.

Isaiah 10:5 warns that this division and other curses weaken all three nations to the point where they will be attacked and conquered by Assyria. Anciently, Judah invited the Assyrian Empire into the Middle East after being attacked by the kingdom of Israel. The Assyrian invasion culminated in the total destruction of the northern kingdom—and the near destruction of Judah. This verse in Isaiah is also an end-time prophecy. This time, these tribes will fall together (Hosea 5:5).

History is repeating itself. With the U.S. unreliable, the Jews are increasingly looking to Germany, modern Assyria, as their defender.

While discord is a curse, unity is a blessing, and one God promises to bring soon. The turmoil in this world is leading to the rise of a new world, where nations will be taught to obey God. Then “[t]he envy also of Ephraim shall depart, and the adversaries of Judah shall be cut off: Ephraim shall not envy Judah, and Judah shall not vex Ephraim” (Isaiah 11:13). Soon the rift between brothers will be healed.

Ephraim was the leading nation of the northern tribes. These tribes broke away from Judah under an Ephraimite king who established a capital in the Ephraimite town of Shechem. In Isaiah 11, “Ephraim” signifies the whole northern kingdom. But it also reflects a long-standing rivalry between the tribes of Ephraim and Judah. Britain and other Commonwealth countries turning against Israel follows this shameful historical pattern.

This division has deep roots, but God promises to end it permanently. In at least four biblical books, God promises to end the division between the tribes of Israel and Judah, and to reunite them (Isaiah 11:13; Jeremiah 3:18; Ezekiel 37:16-24; Hosea 1:11). From there, these long-divided people will teach the whole world how to unify (Jeremiah 3:17).