Marco Rubio Replaces Antony Blinken at State – Phew

Photo Credit: Gage Skidmore / Flickr

Senator Marco Rubio (R-Fl), February 23, 2016.

On Monday night, the Republican Jewish Coalition sent out an email saying it was “excited to congratulate Senator Marco Rubio on his nomination for Secretary of State.”

The RJC added, “We know that with Senator Rubio leading the State Department, America will stand shoulder-to-shoulder with our allies and confront our enemies. Importantly, in these extraordinarily dangerous times, Senator Rubio is an outspoken defender of Israel who has always had the Jewish state’s back.”

On October 9, 2023, two days after the Hamas massacre, The Hill ran a story under the headline, “Rubio: Israel should completely eradicate Hamas in Gaza.” The Senator tweeted: “Israel has no choice but to seek the complete eradication of Hamas in Gaza. There simply is no diplomatic solution or ‘measured response’ available.”

This man @marcorubio is going to be our next Secretary of State. G-D Bless America!pic.twitter.com/LrOnHCf8ZY

— Dovi Safier (@safier) November 12, 2024

This is fantastic news to the readers of this newspaper, who have been watching Joe Biden’s Secretary of State Antony Blinken conducting a vicious anti-Israel campaign, threatening military embargos left and right, and doing everything in his power to make sure Hamas is never defeated.

Asked about the Israeli air attacks on Gaza, which had only begun on October 9, Rubio argued they were necessary given the savagery of Hamas. The hill noted that “The Hamas attacks on Israel on Saturday included targeted attacks on civilians, such as people who had been attending a music festival.”

Rubio conceded that “This tragically necessary effort will come at a horrifying price, but the price of failing to permanently eliminate this group of sadistic savages is even more horrifying.”

What can we say but join the RJC in praising Trump’s choice. As they put it: “RJC looks forward to working with Senator Rubio to course correct from the failed policies of the Democrats and build upon the historic diplomatic successes of the first Trump Administration.”

POLICY CHANGES WE CAN EXPECT FROM SEC. RUBIO

On May 13 this year, Secretary of State Antony Blinken issued some of the Biden administration’s most pointed public criticism of Israel’s handling of the Gaza conflict, stating that Israeli tactics have resulted in “a horrible loss of life of innocent civilians.”

In TV interviews, Blinken underscored that the United States believed the IDF should “get out of Gaza,” and was also waiting to see credible plans from Israel for security and governance in the territory after the war.

He said he had been working for weeks with Arab countries and others on developing “credible plans for security, for governance, for rebuilding’’ in Gaza, but “we haven’t seen that come from Israel… We need to see that, too.”

For the first time publicly, Blinken also echoed findings from a new Biden administration report to Congress indicating that Israel’s use of US-supplied weapons in Gaza likely breached international humanitarian law.

“When it comes to the use of weapons, concerns about incidents where given the totality of the damage that’s been done to children, women, men, it was reasonable to assess that, in certain instances, Israel acted in ways that are not consistent with international humanitarian law,” Blinken said, and cited “the horrible loss of life of innocent civilians.”

So, what we’d like to see is a new secretary of state who does not abuse his country’s greatest ally in the Middle East, forcing it to present plans for the future of Gaza before it had a chance to draw plans for the recovery of its own towns and villages destroyed by the people of Gaza.

And, of course, we’d expect Secretary Rubio to allow Israel to capture enemy strongholds such as Rafah in southern Gaza, where relentless IDF pressure eventually exposed and killed the massacre’s mastermind Yahya Sinwar.

Here’s to you, Secretary of State Marco Rubio – Lechayim!