Should the U.S. place conditions on its aid for Israel?

https://wsj.com/articles/israel-aid-conditions-democrats-chris-m…

Sen. Chris Murphy (D., Conn.), chairman of the Foreign Relations subcommittee on the Middle East, made positive noises about the idea Sunday. “We regularly condition our aid to allies based upon compliance with U.S. law and international law,” he said, adding, “I think that you can defeat Hamas without this level of civilian casualty,” which he calls “unacceptable.”

Asked on Friday, President Biden said conditioning aid is “a worthwhile thought,” but “I don’t think if I started off with that, we’d ever gotten to where we are today. We have to take this a piece at a time.”

Not for the first time, Democrats are following Sen. Bernie Sanders (I., Vt.), who called for the condition on Thursday. “We cannot be complicit in actions that violate international law,” he wrote. “That includes an end to indiscriminate bombing.” Mr. Sanders is responding to the increasingly loud street protests against Israel by the Democratic left.

This is an example of how the proposal to condition aid is linked to the libels against Israel that one hears whenever it defends itself. Israel’s counteroffensive has been the opposite of indiscriminate. Forced by Hamas to fight in a densely populated urban area, Israel has hit more than 15,000 targets. If those had been indiscriminate strikes, the death toll would be many times higher than even Hamas claims.