Israel Goes to War

Yesterday, Joe Biden’s Middle East policy went up in smoke. Or should we say, it went down in flames.

Donald Trump gave us the Abraham Accords. Joe Biden gave us a war between Israel and the Palestinians. 

With Trump’s Abraham Accords Muslim states recognized the legitimacy of Israel. The Accords promoted commercial, industrial and cultural exchanges. They were the most significant step forward toward Middle East peace that we had seen.

Trump did it by sanctioning Iran, but also by ignoring the Palestinian issue. One recalls that serious Democrats, like dopey John Kerry, announced at the time that nothing could be achieved in the Middle East without solving the Palestinian issue.

Evidently, the difficult negotiations that produced the Abraham accords required considerable positive diplomacy. With the Biden policy, diplomacy was unnecessary. You do not need to burn too many of your little gray cells to understand the principle animating the Biden policy.

It was, quite simply, to undo what Trump had done. Biden was not smart enough to formulate a policy, so he simply did the opposite of what Trump had done. He was the Anti-Trump. 

In more specific terms, Biden restored funds to the Palestinian Authority and ransomed six Americans with billions for the Iranian regime. It also turned a blind eye on Iran’s evasion of sanctions on petroleum sales. Thus, it helped save the Iranian economy.

Biden’s State Department put out this piece of nonsense:

U.S. foreign assistance for the Palestinian people serves important U.S. interests and values. It provides critical relief to those in great need, fosters economic development, and supports Israeli-Palestinian understanding, security coordination, and stability. It also aligns with the values and interests of our allies and partners. The United States is committed to advancing prosperity, security, and freedom for both Israelis and Palestinians in tangible ways in the immediate term, which is important in its own right, but also as a means to advance toward a negotiated two-state solution.

So, hundreds of millions of dollars for humanitarian aid. One wonders how stupid you need to be to fail to recognize that money is fungible and that the money you are giving to the inveterate anti-Semites of the Palestinian Authority, along with the money that you just handed over to the Iranian mullahs, can free up other money to finance the purchase of rockets and munitions that will be used to attack Israel.

In fairness, if  you believe such drivel, you are eminently qualified to work for the Biden administration. After all, when the news of the Hamas-led invasion of Israel was announced, Joe Biden’s Office of Palestinian Affairs was out front recommending that the Israelis desist from retaliation.

The tweet was taken down, but, just in case you missed it:

We unequivocally condemn the attack of Hamas terrorists and the loss of life that has incurred. We urge all sides to refrain from violence and retaliatory attacks. Terror and violence solve nothing.

Dare I say, in relation to the Biden administration policy, the only problem with the tweet was that it was too early. The Biden administration is out front supporting Israel and will do so until such time as it can denounce Israel for war crimes.

For now, we have the Democratic Socialists of America, led by luminaries like AOC and Rashida Tlaib and Ilhan Omar planning to protest in favor of the Palestinian cause.

As it happened, the prize for utter stupidity goes to a retired Harvard Law professor, a serious leftist, by the name of Lawrence Tribe. 

He blamed Benjamin Netanyahu:

Is Netanyahu wagging the dog of war to take attention form his own war on the independent judiciary?' 

As it happened, Tribe took down the offending post, but still, it shows us that serious thinkers on the Democratic left are at-the-ready to blame Israel.

As it happened, two commentators suggested that the current turmoil in Israel contributed to the considerable Israeli intelligence failure.

Brendan O’Neill wrote this in Spiked:

A lack of national unity, disarray in establishment ranks, may have caused Israel to take its eye off its enemies. Internal angst dragging attention from external threats. A hard question: is national resilience withering in Israel, and if it is, what sign will that send to its militant foes on its borders?

And, Victor Davis Hanson echoed a similar point:

Hamas may have reckoned that recent Israeli turmoil and mass leftist street protests over proposed reforms of the Israeli Supreme Court had led to permanent internal divisions and thus a climate of domestic distraction if not an erosion of deterrence.

Coupled with these protest demonstrations was the fact that President Biden evidently held Prime Minister Netanyahu in contempt. How much of the Israeli turmoil was merely a reflection of the Biden administration efforts to marginalize an Israeli leader it did not like?

Hanson continued, via Twitter:

But, more importantly, in a larger sense the Biden administration has contributed both to the notion that Hamas was a legitimate Middle East player, and to the perception that the U.S. was backing away from its traditional support for Israel—to the delight of Hamas—based on the following inexplicable policies:

Almost immediately, after his inauguration Biden mobilized to resume the bankrupt Iran deal. And in unhinged fashion he appointed the anti-Israeli bigot, pro-Iranian journalist Robert Malley as America’s chief negotiator. Note that Malley is now under FBI investigation for security breaches, involving disclosing classified U.S. documents and also for allegedly helping pro-Iranian activists and propagandists land influential billets inside the U.S. government.

As for the Biden administration promise to replenish Israeli arms, Hanson points out that many of the weapons we had stockpiled in Israel have already been sent to Ukraine:

Note as well that the Biden administration has siphoned off key weapons and munitions from stockpiles inside Israel to transfer them to Ukraine. The so-called “War Reserve Ammunition—Israel" is all but depleted of just the sorts of weapons needed in the present crisis.

Of course, the Biden administration is making the right noises about supporting Israel. Hanson says that it needs to change policy radically:

What should the U.S. instead do? It should quit talking to Iran and restore full sanctions against it. It should cut off all aid immediately to all the Palestinians. It should undertake a 1973-like massive arms lift of key munitions to Israel and warn Iran, Syria, Hezbollah and others in the Middle East not to intervene or else, given that Israel will need several weeks to deal with Hamas and Gaza. And if it shows any hesitation or weakness, other terrorist groups will opportunistically jump in.

In short, administration rhetoric is cheap. If you imagine that Biden is going to follow the Hanson approach, you have been smoking the wrong kind of cigarettes.

Please subscribe to my Substack.