Putting it kindly, Biden is no originalist. He doesn’t have one uniquely Biden policy. He is merely the front man, the mouthpiece for the background bureaucrats that set America’s course and craft its direction.
It is clear from watching him in action, both in his domestic and foreign failures, that something is badly wrong. One of those things is his claim to support Israel.
When it comes to foreign policy, Biden is the puppet of his handlers.
We saw that played out in Afghanistan where his military, intelligence, and his State Department set him on a course that was doomed to fail.
If there is a common theme that connects Biden’s domestic and foreign failures it that his decisions stand on an overriding Cancel Trump policy.
Whatever Trump succeeded in doing, cancel it.
One his first day in the Oval Office, Biden cancelled the Keystone Pipeline, blocked domestic oil production, yet lifted sanctions off Russia’s Nordstrom pipeline to Europe. How is that working out after Putin’s invasion of Ukraine?
Trying to do things better - should I say differently – than Trump has resulted in one badly bungled incident after another.
Attempts to cancel Trump in the Iran nuclear headache have resulted in America dangling by a thread, a thread that is being pulled by Iran and Russia who are having fun embarrassing Biden in Vienna. At least four members of Robert Malley’s negotiating team have walked off the job with one reporting, “What is going on in Vienna is an absolute disaster.”
If that is what an American negotiator is feeling, how do you expect Israel to feel? After all, Iran’s almost inevitable nuclear weapon will be aimed first at Israel.
So, what happened to the United States that once looked on Israel as its staunchest ally?
Under Biden, those days are over. How did that happen?
It began before Biden became President.
Biden likes saying how fond he was of Golda Meir. But he wasn’t so fond of Menachem Begin, or of Benjamin Netanyahu. He hauled them both over the coals. In 1982, when he was a Delaware senator, he threatened to cut off United States aid to Israel.
He was firmly rebuked by Begin,
“Don’t threaten us with cutting off your aid. It will not work. I am not a Jew with trembling knees. I am a proud Jew with 3,700 years of civilized history. Nobody came to our aid when we were dying in the gas chambers and ovens. Nobody came to our aid when we were striving to create our country. We paid for it. We fought for it. We died for it. We will stand by our principles. We will defend them. And, when necessary, we will die for them again, with or without your aid.”
Biden’s relationship with Netanyahu soured several times during Bibi’s premiership. In 2019, Biden accused Israel’s Prime Minister of being “counterproductive” and an “extreme right” leader.
But the harshest anti-Israel cut of all was when Obama recruited Biden, his Vice President, and his point man to Ukraine, to bring that country to vote for Obama’s United Nations Security Council Resolution 2334 initiative which condemned Jews living in Judea & Samaria and parts of Jerusalem to being called “illegal occupiers,” according to the Obama-Biden vindictive new international law.
This was their last spiteful act, stabbing Israel in the back, as they left the White House in December 2016.
It was payback time against Netanyahu’s vocal opposition to Obama’s infamous Iran nuclear deal.
Now Biden is back in the White House and attempting to cancel Trump’s sanctions against Iran, the rogue regime and state sponsor of terror that deceived the world about its covert uranium enrichment program. They are up to 60% and within reach of 90% making Iran a nuclear threshold state.
Biden’s new deal would remove the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps from the United States list of Foreign Terrorist Organizations despite their deplorable record of deadly attacks against Israel, the UAE, other Gulf States and Saudi Arabia as they try to usurp power in Yemen Iraq and Lebanon.
For no solid commitment from Iran to stop their nuclear development or expansion into the region, Biden is eager to reward the unrepentant Ayatollahs with billions of dollars in both sanction relief and the green light to export oil production that will enrich their intercontinental ballistic missile program, the vehicle that will deliver the Doomsday weapon to Israel, and potentially to the United States.
Biden may override yet another Trump policy, giving no comfort to Israel, smaller in size than New Jersey, faced with both a nuclear threat and future Iranian forces and proxies armed with 300,000 powerful precision missiles aimed at Israel over our northern, eastern, and southern borders.
Biden’s animosity toward Israel also expresses itself in a new Biden directive.
His Administration is offering a million-dollar bounty to any group reporting Israeli human rights violations against Palestinian Arabs.
This reward is not reciprocal. He is not demanding evidence of Palestinian Arab deadly human rights crimes, even war crimes, committed by their terrorist armies and individuals against Israeli citizens, nor their blatant anti-Semitic indoctrination that exhorts a world without Israel.
Biden is not offering money to human rights groups wanting to report Palestinian Arab human rights crimes committed by their own leaders in Ramallah or in Gaza in which their citizens are summarily arrested, taken to detention centers, tortured, and killed for protesting their cruel and corrupt rule.
It’s only Israel they are after, now with the help of Biden’s financial incentive.
The Biden Administration is determined to revoke Israel’s exclusive sovereignty over Jerusalem, our eternal capital, by forcing, against our will, the opening of a consulate in Jerusalem to cater to Palestinian Arabs. This ploy will reward malevolent Palestinian efforts to denude Israel’s legitimacy to Jerusalem as our eternal capital.
This is an affront to the dignity and sovereignty of the nation state of Israel and against all international principles. Anthony Blinken is determined to press ahead with this Palestinian mission in the heart of Jerusalem over strenuous Israeli objections.
Biden could open this consulate in either Ramallah or Gaza City where the competing and warring Palestinian Arableaderships administer their divided populations. But he won’t.
It is yet another example of Biden’s antagonism against Israel.
Mike Pompeo, former Secretary of State, and a genuine supporter of Israel, wrote in a report for the American Center for Law and Justice that Biden “is taking steps within the State Department to undermine Israel’s democratic legitimacy.”
It sure looks that way.
These are troubling times for Israel.
It is doubtful that Biden is the one inventing these provocative policies. I suspect it’s the radical anti-Israel, dare I say anti-Jewish, bureaucrats, lobbyists and activists who have inserted themselves into positions of power and decision-making in Congress, the White House, the State Department, and other government offices, and are now foisting their ideas onto a president attempted to appease the radical anti-Israel base within his Administration and his party.
Remember this the next time you hear Democrats say how much they stand with Israel.
They clearly do not.
Barry Shaw is the international Public Diplomacy Director, Israel Institute for Strategic Studies.