EDITORIAL: While Biden tanned, Hamas brutally murdered an American hostage

American weakness gets Americans killed. That’s a running theme of the Biden-Harris administration.

On Saturday, the civilized world mourned after learning that Hamas had brutally murdered six hostages it kidnapped during the Oct. 7 terror attack. The Israeli military found the bodies in a tunnel below Rafah. Among the deceased was Hersh Goldberg-Polin, an Israeli American. His parents, Jon Polin and Rachel Goldberg-Polin, worked tirelessly in calling for their son’s release. They even spoke at the Democratic National Convention.

Both President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris put out statements expressing their outrage.

“We will keep working around the clock for a deal to secure the release of the remaining hostages,” Mr. Biden said in his statement.

The pictures of Mr. Biden relaxing on the beach in Rehoboth, Delaware, late last month tell a different story. While a president is never off the clock, it’s fair to wonder how engaged Mr. Biden has been in world affairs. His public schedule has been meager. His infrequent appearances don’t inspire confidence in his mental acuity. His results have been terrible.

The biggest problem is that Mr. Biden and Ms. Harris have long taken the wrong approach to dealing with Hamas. When people or countries share values, compromise is possible, even preferable. You can look for common ground and find mutually beneficial solutions. You may even give in a bit to preserve the relationship.

That isn’t advisable or even practical when one party in the negotiations wants to annihilate the other side. And that’s the case here.

“Israel will exist and will continue to exist until Islam will obliterate it, just as it obliterated others before it,” Hamas’ 1988 charter states.

“We love death more than you love life,” Hamas leader Mohammed Deif said a decade ago.

Yet Mr. Biden keeps undercutting Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. On Monday, Mr. Biden said he didn’t think the Israeli leader was doing enough to bring the hostages home. Talk about creating a perverse incentive. Mr. Biden gave Hamas a propaganda victory after it murdered an American.

“The threat Hamas poses to the people of Israel — and American citizens in Israel — must be eliminated,” Ms. Harris said in her statement.

Agreed. So why hasn’t the Biden-Harris administration already done it?

Mr. Biden likes to portray himself as sympathizer-in-chief. Right now, the country — and the Americans still held hostage by Hamas — need him to be commander in chief. Use the world’s most powerful military to free the hostages or use it to end Hamas once and for all.