The Biden administration’s decision to spend $230 million worth of hardworking Americans’ tax dollars on a “humanitarian pier” off the coast of Gaza seemed ill-advised from the start. Predictably, the pier was a target of Iran-backed terrorists in the region and rough weather repeatedly damaged the pier or made it necessary to move the pier to protected waters off Israel’s coast.
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While it was always described as a “temporary” piece of infrastructure that was supposed to facilitate the delivery of humanitarian aid to residents of the enclave, the pier is now slated to be dismantled months earlier than initially anticipated as it has utterly failed to do what Biden said it would and only continues to endanger American service members.
According to a New York Times report on the latest Biden blunder, the administration “initially predicted that it would be September before surging seas would make the pier inoperable…But military officials are now warning aid organizations that the project could be dismantled as early as next month.”
What’s more, the pier “has been in service only about 10 days” since it entered use on May 17 and the “rest of the time, it was being repaired after rough seas broke it apart, detached to avoid further damage or paused because of security concerns.” One such instance of weather-induced damage came with a $22 million repair bill, also footed by American taxpayers.
As Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD) Senior Advisor Richard Goldberg noted in an FDD release this week, Biden’s pier “was political, not practical” and “never made a lot of sense to do it this way.”
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“We should be helping the people of Gaza by supporting Israel in defeating Hamas and pushing allies to send aid through non-UNRWA channels — not with virtue signaling intended to amplify Hamas disinformation and undermine Israel,” Goldberg emphasized.
As Townhall reported previously, terrorist targeting of the pier necessitated heavier U.S. defenses to be installed nearby in an attempt to save the structure from being completely blown to bits. We also reported in late May that the Pentagon “did not believe” any of the 569 metric tons worth of aid delivered to Gaza across the pier in its early days had made it into the hands of the enclave’s residents for whom it was intended.
Most recently, U.S. forces had to detach the pier from Gaza’s shore and tow it to calmer waters off the coast of Israel due to anticipated high seas in its intended location, as Katie reported last week.
The Biden administration’s decision to construct the boondoggle also, as the Times noted in its coverage, served to throw “a spotlight on the urgent need to provide more humanitarian assistance overall to Gaza,” even as Hamas continues to carry out rocket attacks against border crossings where aid enters Gaza and then steal any aid that enters the enclave for its terrorists.
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“There is a genuine humanitarian crisis in Gaza, caused both by the war Hamas started and the systematic strategy the terror group employs to maximize Palestinian suffering for the purposes of demonizing Israel and depriving it of American security assistance,” reminded Bradley Bowman, the senior director of FDD’s Center on Military and Political Power.