Neil Banerji
Despite continuing to profess solidarity with Israel, President Joe Biden and congressional Democrats – under immense pressure from their left-wing activist base – are now quietly backing off their support for the Jewish state.
According to an exclusive report from NBC News published on January 28, the Biden administration is now “discussing using weaponry sales to Israel as leverage to convince the government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to heed long-standing U.S. calls to scale back its military assault in the Gaza Strip.”
“After weeks of private administration requests produced fewer results than the White House wants,” the report reads, “the U.S. is considering slowing or pausing the deliveries in the hope that doing so will prod the Israelis to take action, such as opening humanitarian corridors to provide more aid to Palestinian civilians.”
Notably, this move by the Biden administration reportedly came amid pressure from some Democrats in Congress.
The news is just the latest sign that Biden and his Democrat allies are softening their support for Israel and increasing demands for the Israeli military to stop its assault, despite the fact that Israeli officials believe they have yet to fully destroy Hamas.
On January 8, when confronted by left-wing protestors opposing the war in Gaza, Biden said that he had been “quietly working with the Israeli government to get them to reduce and significantly get out of Gaza,” adding that he had been “using all that I can” to negotiate a ceasefire.
That revelation marked a stark reversal from Biden’s initial statement on the Israel-Hamas conflict, in which he called Hamas’s attacks “pure, unadulterated evil” and pledged to “make sure that Israel does not run out of” weapons to defend itself, declaring “The United States has Israel’s back.”
Taking their cue from the president, Biden’s foreign policy team has also now begun ramping up pressure on Israel. During a meeting between Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in January, Blinken made clear that his top concern was “allowing displaced Palestinians to return safely to homes” – not rooting out more Hamas terrorists.
During that meeting, Blinken also appeared to blame Israel implicitly for instigating the attack –echoing the cries of the far left back the United States.
“Israel must stop taking steps that undercut Palestinians’ ability to govern themselves effectively,” he said. “Extremist settler violence carried out with impunity, settlement expansion, demolitions, evictions all make it harder – not easier – for Israel to achieve lasting peace and security.”
Notably, American leftists often refer to Israel as a “settler-colonial state” and blame Israeli “settler violence” for the constant terrorist attacks perpetrated by Hamas.
Moreover, Blinken apparently forgot or ignored the fact that it is Palestinians “governing themselves” which allowed Hamas to rise to power in the first place. The last elections held in the Gaza Strip back in 2006 produced a government run by Hamas – who then proceeded to cancel all future elections.
On the same trip, Blinken also repeatedly affirmed his desire to arrive at a so-called “two-state solution” – granting recognition to some form of a Palestinian state. Although the prospect has been the fantasy of American liberals for decades, Blinken nonetheless stated, “Every partner that I met on this trip said that they’re ready to support a lasting solution that ends the long-running cycle of violence and ensures Israel’s security… But they underscored that this can only come through a regional approach that includes a pathway to a Palestinian state.”
Last October, just weeks after Hamas’s attack, Biden himself also declared, “When this crisis is over, there has to be a vision of what comes next. And in our view, it has to be a two-state solution.” But as Netanyahu and other Israeli leaders have been pointing out repeatedly, the only organized authority that Israel could negotiate with is Hamas – which is absolutely determined to bring about the complete destruction of Israel at any cost.
73 congressional Democrats have also now publicly called for a ceasefire – a list that continues to grow. In December, 92 Democrats voted “present” on a resolution condemning antisemitism around the world, while 13 outrageously voted against it.
Of course, Democrats’ first failure to adequately support Israel and the Jewish people was their muted reaction to the outpouring of virulent anti-semitism on college campuses and in major American cities following Hamas’s October 7 attack. Despite mass numbers of liberal students and faculty openly targeting Jewish students and faculty with harassment and even threats of violence, elected Democrats remained largely silent.
This silence was compounded again when Republicans called in the presidents of several elite universities before the House of Representatives to answer questions on their schools’ failure to stop the rhetorical attacks on Jews on campus. Even when the presidents of Harvard, UPenn, and M.I.T. refused to condemn calls for genocide against the Jewish people, elected Democrats largely stood by them.
No comments:
Post a Comment