“No one has a stronger record with Israel than I do,” thundered Joe Biden at his State of the Union address earlier this month. “I challenge any of you here. I’m the only American president to visit Israel in wartime.”

Well, now he’s the only American president to stab Israel in the back in wartime.

That was the effect of the sudden change in U.S. policy on Monday when the American delegation to the United Nations Security Council abstained from voting on a resolution demanding an “immediate cease-fire … leading to a lasting sustainable cease-fire” in Israel’s war in Gaza. Declining to veto left the other 14 council member nations to pass the resolution calling for the ceasefire to last at least through the Muslim holiday of Ramadan.

Hamas gave no such consideration to the Jewish holidays of Sukkot and Simchat Torah when raping, enslaving, and slaughtering more than 1,200 Israelis (and 32 Americans) on October 7.

“Our vote does not — and I repeat that, does not — represent a shift in our policy,” insisted White House national security spokesman John Kirby in a lengthy press conference full of dodging tough questions. “We’ve been clear and we’ve been consistent in our support for a ceasefire as part of a hostage deal.”

That’s a lie. Previous administration policy was that a ceasefire was contingent on the release of the remaining 130 hostages, including six Americans. Yet unlike previous resolutions, this one detaches “the immediate and unconditional release of all hostages” from the ceasefire itself, and Team Biden chose to abstain.

As Biden promised in his SOTU, “We will not rest until we bring their loved ones home.”

Well, he wants to rest through Ramadan, anyway.

Kirby claimed the refusal to add a condemnation of Hamas is why the administration “could not support” the resolution. We don’t buy it. A veto would have sent that message.

Clearly, the UN prefers to see Hamas retain power in Gaza and live to fight another day. The supposedly put-upon Palestinian civilian population certainly supports that. It seems that Team Biden prefers that option as well.

Israel responded by canceling a delegation bound for the White House to discuss the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) assault on Rafah to finish the job of eliminating Hamas. Biden and his sidekick Kamala Harris have put immense pressure on Israel to cancel that operation. Harris even warned that there would be “consequences” for conducting it.

“Let me tell you something,” Harris opined this weekend. “I have studied the maps. There’s nowhere for those folks to go.” She means the civilians Hamas uses as human shields, just without placing the blame on Hamas. The Hamas-run Gaza Health Ministry is telling American media outlets that 30,000 Palestinians have been killed in Israel’s invasion. They do not say that the IDF goes to extensive lengths to save civilian lives despite Hamas’s best efforts to ensure their deaths. Nor do they say that the vast majority of those killed have been Hamas fighters.

But by golly, Harris has “studied the maps.”

The administration’s betrayal comes on the heels of Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer’s deplorable speech condemning Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and calling for elections to oust him. Many other Democrats have been even less, shall we say, cordial. The entire reason for the Democrat Party’s shift away from our longtime ally is that younger Democrats are increasingly pro-Palestinian.

Will Israel abide by the resolution? Hamas rejected it, so why would Israel abide by it? Of course, UN Secretary-General António Guterres said not doing so would be “unforgivable.”

What is forgivable? Hamas slaughtering 1,200 Israelis. In fact, Guterres wants to reward Hamas’s murderous brutality with a “two-state solution” to end the conflict. He might as well have added, “Allahu akbar.”

As for American Jews, who have long been loyal to the Democrat Party, it seems that they’ve reached a time for choosing. We said so last November. Political analyst Matt Margolis says it now: “The real question I have is whether Jewish Democrats will finally realize that the Democratic Party will always side with the enemy of the Jewish people.”

Biden, Schumer, Kirby, and other Democrats still pay lip service to supporting Israel, but it’s clear that their domestic political calculations are having real consequences in foreign policy.

(Updated)