Sunday, February 14, 2021

Biden Turns his Back on Israel (and Saudi Arabia)

If this surprises you, you are oblivious to reality. If you did not know that the Biden administration, like its first incarnation as the Obama administration, was viscerally opposed to Israel, you have been living under a rock. 

The Washington Free Beacon has the story. The story is that Joe Biden has still not put in a courtesy call to the Israeli prime minister. And Biden’s press secretary, Jen Psaki, refuses to say that Israel ( and Saudi Arabia) is an important American ally.


President Joe Biden is the first American leader in 40 years not to contact Israel’s leaders as one of his first actions in the White House, setting up what could be four years of chilly relations between America and its top Middle East ally.


Biden has already phoned multiple world leaders, including Russian president Vladimir Putin and Chinese president Xi Jinping, but during his 23 days in office has yet to speak with Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu—making Biden the first president in modern history to punt on bolstering U.S.-Israel relations during his initial days in office. Every president going back to at least Ronald Reagan in 1981 made contact with their Israeli counterpart within a week of assuming office, according to a review of news reports….


Psaki also said on Friday the White House would not list Israel as a U.S. ally when asked about the relationship during her daily press briefing.


As noted on this blog, among senior Biden administration officials are people with a record of anti-Israeli, and pro-Palestinian activism:


Biden’s diplomatic slight comes as Israel faces encroaching terrorist threats and the danger of a nuclear-armed Iran. He also has hired several individuals with a background in anti-Israel activism, including Maher Bitar, a top White House National Security Council official who spent his youth organizing boycotts of the Jewish state. The State Department’s Iran envoy, Robert Malley, also has been a vocal critic of Israel.


Of course, this will not in any way diminish the mindless support that liberal American Jews have thrown behind the Biden administration. After all, through the foggy lenses of their minds, Trump is Hitler.


3 comments:

whitney said...

Yeah it's super weird considering most of his high-level cabinet appointments are Jewish. I mean it's like 70% Jewish or something which is pretty impressive considering Jews are only 2% of the population

DocVinny said...

True, but most modern secular Jews don't feel any particular connection to Israel, so really it's not super weird at all. Among the religious, there is, but how many observant Jews are in the cabinet?

Sam L. said...

And nobody, NOBODY, is surprised.