Thus far the only difference between the Obama strategy and the Biden strategy on Israel is appearances.
Obama made a point of picking public fights with Netanyahu in order to justify a breach with Israel, while Biden makes statements publicly supporting Israel while doing the dirty work behind the scenes. A lot of Biden administration policies come from staffers, but this one has the feel of coming from Biden. It was also the way that the Clinton administration handled things with Israel.
Biden comes more from the Clinton era than the Obama era. While Obama was looking for a series of public fights to change the party’s perception of Israel, Biden doesn’t have that kind of big picture radical agenda (that’s not to say that his staffers don’t). The victory lap that the Biden administration has been taking in the media has been all about how they pressured Israel in private while supporting it in public.
How nasty was that pressure? The Israelis don’t have much to say, but Biden’s people are happy to leak as much as they can.
The Biden administration’s pressure on Israel began on May 10. Well before the conflict.
The Biden administration had three immediate demands of Israel: stop the evictions in Sheikh Jarrah, lower tensions on the Temple Mount and cancel the annual Jerusalem Day flag parade, during which Israeli nationalists celebrate the unification of Jerusalem under Israeli control.
Telling a sovereign country to stop a court decision and cancel a parade is obscene. And Biden was doing this well before the fighting took off.
As I discussed in this weekend’s article, The Anti-Israel Left Supports Ethnic Cleansing in Jerusalem, the evictions were about reclaiming Jewish property seized by Jordan and the UN after the invasion of Jerusalem.
The Jordanians desecrated the synagogues of East Jerusalem, used Jewish tombstones to pave roads, and seized Jewish property through their Custodian of Enemy Property.
In 1956, UNRWA worked with the Jordanian occupiers to settle “Palestinian refugees” in this Jewish neighborhood. The UN agency had been entirely dedicated to caring for the Arab Muslim settlers who had failed in their invasion of Israel and was settling them in violation of international law in the homes of the Jewish residents who had fled the illegal occupation.
Once the UNRWA had “resettled” its “refugees” in homes stolen from their Jewish owners through ethnic cleansing, it deemed them to no longer be refugees. The actual refugees however were the Jewish residents who had their homes stolen by the UNRWA.
The issue had gone through the courts for generations. Biden was ordering Israel to shut down a court decision.
While Israeli officials briefed reporters at the time that Ben-Shabbat had rejected Sullivan’s requests, viewing them as rewards for terrorists, Netanyahu in fact complied on May 10. He asked the Supreme Court to postpone its verdict on the evictions, banned visits by Jews to the Temple Mount and rerouted the flag parade so it wouldn’t pass through the Muslim quarter of Jerusalem’s Old City.
I’m not at all surprised. As usual, appeasing terrorists and Democrats didn’t do much good. The fighting went on and Israel got blamed.
Biden followed a dual strategy: backing Israel in public and while urging Netanyahu in private to end the operation as soon as possible and minimize civilian casualties.
The duality here refers to the two sides of Biden’s mouth.
But there’s really nothing unusual about this. It’s how these things went under Democrat administrations and most Republican administrations. Republican administrations were somewhat more sympathetic, but ultimately went back to the same pattern. The Trump administration broke that pattern and actually let Israel defend itself. But now we’re right back to the same familiar territory in which Israel is prevented from fighting back and blamed for everything no matter what steps it takes to appease the administration or the terrorists, and to limit civilian casualties and the scope of the conflict.
Emilie Green says
When being unreasonable is a way of life,
from today’s American Thinker, https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2021/05/what_is_more_sad_than_the_occupation_the_need_for_it.html
So, what can be done in the face of Palestinian self-deceit? There can be no reasoning with the people for whom being reasonable means defeat and who see their only chance in mendacity, lies, and intransigence. The only way to deal with unreasonable people, with people who are not swayed by an argument, is coercion: At work, through demotion and firing; in civic life, by police action; in international relations, by occupation.
Rejecting reason invariably produces sad results — like “occupation.” It would have been infinitely better for all concerned if Palestinians were amenable to reason and accepted one of the multiple offers to reasonably settle and end the conflict, and the “occupation” — offers that were fair for the simple reason that they were based in the reality of double-occupation. Had they done so and proceeded with building their state rather than trying to destroy the Jewish one, we would not have had to read sad stories from the Middle East of bombings, death, and destruction — and more importantly, there would have been no need for such stories.
somehistory says
“appeasing terrorists and Democrats ” A little rewrite: appeasing terrorists,
When a person, group, government or entity of any kind uses threats, intimidation, actual violence, to achieve a political goal, this is terrorism.
Different “administrations” have used the “threats” of “we won’t help you with loans, technology, weapons, etc.” to force the government of Israel to comply with whatever the “administration” wants from that country.
“You want a loan to buy your means of self-defense? Well, then, agree to give up something…like land, or claims to land, or stop building homes for your citizens, declare a cease fire. agree to meet with the mozlums and give in to their demands, give them money to restock weapons, or …all of the above.”
“Snakes in Suits.” A book by Dr. Robert Hare explains just how these psychopaths do their dirty work and get what they want. Wearing a suit and tie does not change the inner person from the one who wears old worn out slacks and dirty t shirt.
Calling themselves “democrats”…supposedly in favor of freedom, doesn’t change them from the terrorists they really are.
Walter Sieruk says
The arrogant gall of Joe Biden to even attempt to tell the Government officials of the State of Israel what to do.
The fact is Biden is totally incompetent to even handle Issues of importance in the USA , so how much less right does he have to meddle and interfere with the polices of another nation.
Phil Copson says
“…The arrogant gall of Joe Biden to even attempt to tell the Government officials of the State of Israel what to do…”
and
“Biden was ordering Israel to shut down a court decision.”
—————————————————————————————————————-
Little different from his boasting that he ordered the Ukrainian Govt to fire a public prosecutor who was investigating the corrupt Burisma energy company, which – like so many foreign companies and governments – “employed”/”did business with” his son Hunter, ie – channelled back-handers to Joe in return for Joe doing little favours for them, such as shutting down US energy production and giving the gas and oil orders to Russia, China etc.
Infidel says
Maybe he could have tried to persuade them to
packappoint a special commission to look into expanding the size of their courts to reflect their great diversity of their country and project it to their courts. Since he wouldn’t respect US courts, he can be even less expected to respect foreign ones, except maybe the ICC and the ICJowensgate says
Sounds like a very normal thing for biden; after all, he’s so used to Xi Jinping giving him orders, the idea of telling Bibi what to do must be no problem. Would love to have seen Netanyahu’s facial expressions listening to idiot biden telling him what to do.
R. Thomasson says
@owensgate. With few words you give the essence of the problem. American Jews (but not only they) had in the last election bet on the wrong horse, and they failed.
gravenimage says
Biden Demanded Israel Cancel Jerusalem Day Parade and End Evictions of Illegal Muslim Occupiers
……………….
Appalling–but no surprise.
David M says
Whatever he does against Israel it won’t be enough for the far left commies of the Democrat party, like AOC. A split between the far left & the centre of the Democrat party is inevitable.
gravenimage says
True–there are plenty on the far Left of the Democratic party who don’t think that Biden is doing *enough* to undermine democratic Israel.
ROBERT CARRILLO says
I have no words..
David M says
Do you disagree there will be a split between the socialist left & the centre of the Democrat party Robert?
OLD GUY says
Biden is a total sell out of American principles. He claims this great Catholic moral heritage and working class background when he is nothing but a life time political HACK. It appears that he has never held a real job in his life, and has lived high on the hog off of politics and his supporters. Israel should be asking for his cancellation.
gregbeetham says
Democrats, or a good percentage of them, appear to be much the same as much of the left here, despicable treasonous weasels with no principals or honour who will sell their country down the toilet to try save their own skin, in this case they are trying to sell someone else’s country down the toilet.
Poor Israel they must feel betrayed while surrounded by treacherous enemies, who, like the Democrats have no honour.
Based on such poor support maybe Israel should look more to China, they also have no honour and no principals but at least they know how to fix a Muslim problem.