Two-thirds of Israelis reject Biden’s demand to end the war.
Behold the latest genius idea from the foreign policy establishment.
Last month, Richard Haass, the former longtime head of the Council on Foreign Relations, approached top officials in the Biden administration, including Vice President Kamala Harris, with an audacious plan for changing the politics around the Israel-Hamas war.
Haass believed that Joe Biden needed to separate himself from Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, whose military campaign was hurting U.S. credibility abroad and the president’s popularity at home. And he proposed that Biden do so by going to Israel to deliver a speech — possibly to the Knesset, the nation’s parliament — where he’d lay out his vision directly to the Israeli people.
But by January, Haas was taking his advocacy a step further. Though he did not speak directly to Biden, he did pitch a Knesset-like speech to, among others, Harris, Secretary of State Antony Blinken and National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan, according to two people familiar with the discussions but not authorized to speak publicly about private conversations.
The senior officials reacted coolly to his proposal, according to those two people. A White House official confirmed Thursday that there had been no discussion of scheduling a trip to Israel.
Biden officials know that Obama already tried that stunt, but a better question is what vision would be pitched here to the Israeli people?
Haas is pushing a zombie foreign policy recapitulating the usual responses to Islamic terrorism against Israel, which was to double down on the two-state solution and then offer the Israelis a speech about Rabin and the future of peace. Nobody has believed that stuff since the oughts and after Oct 7, it’s the equivalent of Chamberlain showing up to deliver a Peace in Our Time speech while the Nazis were bombing London.
This pernicious nonsense was bad enough in 2002 or 2012 or even 2022, but after Oct 7 it’s the product of a mind that is either unable or unwilling to come to grips with what happened.
What message does Haas want to pitch to the “Israeli people”? Israelis have already rejected that message.
About two-thirds (66%) of Israelis say they do not think Israel should agree to US demands to shift to a phase of the war with a reduced heavy bombing in populous areas. 75% of Jewish Israelis oppose meeting the demands, compared to only 21% of Arab Israelis.
That’s the reality in Israel.
Oct 7 was an Israeli 9/11. How would Americans have reacted to a speech a few months after 9/11 telling them to get over it and hug it out with Al Qaeda?
Even Biden’s people know that Haas is an idiot. And that’s saying something.
Mark says
Biden is struggling to get second term as a president and using Israel for that because in America there are more muslim voters than Jewish voters . Israel is an independent state !!
bill says
Why do they not call on Hamas to surrender? They started the war and they committed the war crimes. So like Nazis and Japanese they should be the ones to surrender. it defies logic to ask the ones who are winning to stop fighting.
OLD GUY says
HAMAD left out the part about killing all the Christians. He’s outsmarting Biden because Joe hasn’t figured out the ultimate plan of Islamic leaders, world domination.
Westman says
Multiculturalism is a failure because of the difference in belief about the purpose of life with race being a minor factor. Our children absorb our purpose of life from example and shared religious engagement though perhaps later weakened or destroyed by hypocrisy, hedonism, corrupt leaders, and cunning educators.
In our Western societies, these shared life platforms brought enough stability into society for a peaceful secular government and mutual respect. Todays Western Discord is a result of the diminishing commonality for the purpose and value of life.
Sadly, the Islamic purpose for life includes government and only allows Sharia government to be fully legitimate, resulting in many unstable, quasi-religious governments that anticipate a future Caliphate. It also undermines respect for non-Muslims or those who might stray from rigid adherence – they are viewed and declared by its god as unwashed or enemies.
Muslim assimilation cannot happen in the EU – it does not share a common life purpose or a common viiew of government. It will remain a parallel society and absorb the nation’s useful bits yet feel no fealty or obligation.
Consequently, even if Palestinians had their own state, isolated from the rest of the world, they would fight with each other as there would be subgroups who are not as conforming as desired by their religious persecutors. There there is little peace in Islam and much of it exists due to policing of the Ummah by the Ummah. The EU wonders why, when, free from Islamic oversight, some Muslim migrants join or operate criminal gangs. The UK wonders why grooming gangs arise.
Israel went the “extra mile” with the Palestinians, who, as is typical of Islam, spent a fortune preparing for war and the destruction of Jews instead of laying the foundation for the Palestinian State they could have already obtained through peaceful means since 2015. Islam just can’t tolerate Jews because the intolerance is baked into their “pupose for life” foundation of Islamic doctrine.
The entire world of Islam refers to the failure to destroy Israel as the Nakba. Draw your own conclusions about what that means. The two-state solution won’t work as Gaza has amply demonstrated after having its own Gaza and Islamic government since 2015. Palestinian leaders will continue to misuse funds and plot to destroy Israel.
Palestinians would be happier from, “The river to Ammon and Irbid”. They have proven that any two-state solution will just mean future war funded by the Ummah, the West’s useful Islam-illiterate governments and their NGOs.
Israel, itself, must determine what is best for its continuance. We’ve paid a few dollars, they paid in blood.
Heidi says
Hamas has been in control of Gaza since 2007. Israel left Gaza in 2005. Good points otherwise.