Leader of veteran group heading to Israel blames Biden admin for not helping Americans

The leader of a private squad of US military veterans heading to Israel to rescue trapped Americans angrily says that they only have to help because the Biden administration refuses to protect its own people even when they’re “being held at the barrel of a gun.”

“We used to be feared, now we’re laughed at,” Bryan Stern told The Post of US failings that have forced him to maintain Project DYNAMO, the rescue force he first assembled after Biden’s disastrous withdrawal from Afghanistan.

“There’s never been anything like DYNAMO before — because there’s never been a need for anything like DYNAMO before,” he said.

“The net result is Americans keep getting put in danger, and America keeps embarrassing itself on the world stage,” he said of what he sees as a weakened foreign response.

While he refused to single out any leaders for blame, Stern said he felt once again forced to “Americans are being held at the barrel of a gun” while terrorists continue to kidnap and kill citizens.

“Hamas thinks we’re idiots,” he said of the terrorists who’ve already killed at least nine Americans, with many more unaccounted for after the weekend atrocity in Israel. “They’re laughing at us.”

Stern said he founded his Tampa-based nonprofit in 2021 after Biden left “blue passport-holding Americans” behind in Afghanistan, with follow-up missions in Ukraine, Sudan and wildfire-ravaged Maui.

As with each of those, the military is not stepping in because the government is failing to stick by the basic principle he upholds: “We don’t leave our people behind, ever, ever.”

“We don’t have a capability problem, we don’t have a capacity problem,” Stern said of the military, a community he has been a part of “for 25 years.”

“The US government is watching on TV — there’s no logical way to explain,” he said of the failure to help.

He stressed that his squad would happily step aside and leave rescues to the government if the military was called to take charge.

Instead, his group has already received hundreds of requests from Americans, their families and other allies who need assistance in Israel as Hamas continues to kidnap individuals, he said.

“We have dozens and dozens of people who have registered with us,” he claimed.

In Israel, the group  — comprising a team of special operations and intelligence community veterans, as well as civilian volunteers — hopes to rescue American hostages “making their way through Gaza and making their way to Lebanon,” free those stuck in Palestinian territories, and those stuck between the West Bank and Gaza “where it’s a shooting match.”

He would not specify how Project DYNAMO will work with the Israeli government under its Operation: PROMISED LAND, but said “we’re a professional rescue organization” known by the government.

“Our motto is ‘Don’t be a spectator,’” he said.

“I think the moral of the story is we actually have to be American,” he said.