One of the most persistent narratives about the Biden administration’s Middle East policy is that it is domestic political concerns – winning re-election – that is dictating its policy.
The president is deathly focused on the “two-state solution” of the imperative to win Michigan and Minnesota, pundits say.
And that requires betraying Israel to cater to pro-Palestinian Muslim voters who might otherwise sit on their hands or vote third party, while not completely alienating an America still overwhelmingly supportive of the Jewish state.
You’ll get no argument from me that crude political calculations impact the administration’s words and actions in the Middle East.
Six years ago I was writing that politics helped to explain in part the divergence between the Democrat and Republican stances on Israel – with Democrats growing historically hostile, and the GOP standing as the pro-Israel Party.
Democrats, I predicted, would trade a declining Jewish vote for a growing Muslim vote.
But the politics argument is incomplete.
As I wrote then, and as is the case now, it’s not just politics, but genuine policy preferences, rooted in part in ideology, that explain the Biden administration’s position – a position that is perverse, totally upside down. d
It casts a nation suffering from a Holocaust-in-a-day, inflicted by genocidal, Jew-hating barbarians with American and Israeli blood on their hands, as borderline genocidal and comprised of war criminals, despite executing arguably one of the most careful operations in world history –to a fault – under impossibly difficult circumstances.
Israel has fought shackled by suffocating U.S. constraints that imperil its troops’ lives to defend a Palestinian Arab population overwhelmingly supportive of the October 7th attack and that participated in it. Israel has been forced to flood humanitarian aid to Gaza that resupplies Hamas, while fighting in an urban setting using weapons and tactics that extend the duration of the war at America’s behest, an urban setting jihadists have burrowed under, while the Biden administration has swelled the number of human shields, thereby maximizing the chances civilians are massacred – to Hamas’ delight – confining them to Gaza during the war by expressly prohibiting that they be resettled during the war.
The Biden administration and Democrats have sought to topple the democratically-elected Israeli government in the middle of perhaps the greatest existential crisis since its modern founding in 1948; pressured it not to win the war by invading Rafah and eliminating Hamas there, and threatened to withhold weapons; refused to defend Israel at hostile world forums; sanctioned Israelis in Judea and Samaria and threatened to impose them on government officials; waged rhetorical war against Israel in ways undermining the legitimacy of the war effort; prevented Israel from decisively striking Hezbollah to the north, making that threat all the more acute; and thereby won plaudits from Hamas, Hezbollah, and Iran while hardening Hamas’ position at the same time the U.S. demands a ceasefire and disastrous hostage for jihadist trade – cynically exploiting Israelis’ desire to see those hostages returned to pressure Israeli leadership to make a disastrous deal – all in the hopes of ending the war.
And that end to the war would result in a strategic loss. It would leave Hamas to survive and be incorporated into a Hamas-lite, Fatah-led Palestinian Authority government in a Palestinian Arab state the U.S. would perhaps unilaterally recognize, rewarding the jihadists for the October 7th slaughter.
Why do I say this is about more than domestic politics?
Because from the effort to de-link Iran from Hamas’ attack, despite the fact Iran is Hamas’ chief sponsor, to the effort to prevent Israel from eliminating Hezbollah to the north, to the years of appeasement of Iran and the Palestinian Arab population while cudgeling the Netanyahu-led government in Israel that created the conditions for and fueled October 7th, the Biden administration’s policy has been to elevate Iran and isolate and undermine its foes, led by Israel, the chief stumbling block to Iranian hegemony.
The U.S. is and has been on Iran’s side – again only tempered by political constraints.
The Biden-Harris administration, like the Obama-Biden administration, really believes in the imperative to make Iran and like-minded jihadists the collective Middle East strong horse.
You could say this is global equity in action; you could say this is because of a belief that appeasing evil somehow works, or that it’s somehow America’s fault that Islamic supremacists hate the Little Satan Israel and Great Satan U.S., so this is our just comeuppance; you could say it’s because of greed – a belief that kowtowing to Iran will ultimately lead it to open up to the West and line the pockets of those who get in while the getting’s good to do business with a mullocracy that somehow will turn into a capitalist or at least cronyist bastion.
But as I’ve also chronicled, you have true believers in pivotal positions in the national security and foreign policy apparatus in this administration who loathe Israel and favor if not love its enemies – and America’s enemies.
It’s hard for Americans to wrap our heads around the fact that our government could side with an Iranian regime that has the blood of hundreds of our people on its hands starting with the 1979 hostage crisis, extending to attacks in Lebanon in the 80s, Saudi Arabia in the 90s, and in Iraq and Afghanistan on our troops in the 2000s.
But this is the disturbing truth.
The message to our enemies is that terrorism, savagery and barbarism work as a tactic.
The message to our allies is, perhaps it’s better to be an enemy, or at least neutral, rather than indebted to or reliant upon America, at least with Democrats in power.
