Since October 7, the Biden-Harris administration has consistently failed to draw a distinction between random Hezbollah rocket fire across Lebanon’s internationally recognised border with Israel and Israel’s targeted responses.

This denial of cause and effect stems from the Democrats’ pro-Iran regional policy.

American appeals for “calm” from “both sides” and calls to avoid “escalation”, and especially “dangerous escalation”, are diplomatic denials of reality. These should not be confused with the diplomatic deferrals of reality pursued by successive Israeli governments in their Lebanon policy and by Benjamin Netanyahu after October 7.

Immediately after October 7, Yoav Gallant, still at the time of writing Israel’s defence minister, is said to have recommended striking Hezbollah first and only then turning to the smaller threat posed by Hamas in Gaza. This made military sense, but war is politics by other means. The Israeli public would not have tolerated it. Neither would the Americans.

No doubt Netanyahu, always more cautious than his belligerent image, also preferred to delay the reckoning with Hezbollah. Taking the fight to Hezbollah would have wrecked the Democrats’ hopes of reviving the Iranian nuclear deal. It would have collapsed the fiction that the mullahs were the West’s natural allies.

It would have proved, once and for all, that the Obama administration, in its commendable effort to end the War on Terror, had replaced the delusion of universal democracy with an even more destructive delusion: that Iran, to use Obama’s sinuously deceptive language, had “equities” in the region and that it was an American interest to indulge them.

Hezbollah was Iran’s most powerful regional lever against the United States, so humouring Hezbollah became central to the Democrats’ disastrous strategy. Successive Democratic administrations accepted Hezbollah as part of the Lebanese government, even as Hezbollah undermined the remains of the Lebanese state and fired rockets at Israel.

Obama and Biden-Harris did nothing to enforce the Bush-era UN Resolution 1701, which ended the 2006 Lebanon war by calling on Lebanon to demilitarise its south. They pressed Israel to make concessions to Lebanon, a state which refuses to admit Israel exists, on its maritime border. The Democrats continued to subsidise the Lebanese army after it became clear that Hezbollah was tapping the cash.

And when Hezbollah started attacking Israel after October 7, driving tens of thousands of Israelis from their homes in what would be called a war crime if the victims weren’t Israeli, the administration warned Israel against “escalation”.

It is rumoured that the Democrats’ effort to placate Hezbollah included Amos Hochstein, the administration’s Lebanon envoy, pressing Israel to make territorial concessions to Lebanon.

The Biden-Harris dubious policy still refuses to restore the Houthis of Yemen to the terrorist list, apparently because it doesn’t want to “alienate” the people of Yemen. Such is its imperial vanity that it cannot imagine that the Yemenis might already be alienated.

The Democrats’ delusions ran so deep and for so long that even Iran and Hezbollah came to believe in them. This encouraged Iran to overplay its hand in both Gaza and Lebanon. Hamas and Hezbollah are now paying the price. So are the civilians of Gaza and southern Lebanon. So, for nearly a year, are the people of Israel.

Don’t make a mistake made by so many Americans, whether politicians, commentators or voters. This is not an issue of Left versus Right or the blue team versus the red. It is a matter of reality versus fiction. That reality can no longer be denied.

The Democrats’ vanity has inflicted yet another tragedy on the people of the Middle East and jeopardised the survival of the Jewish state.