Biden’s Putting That Old Anti-Israel Band Back Together

Photo Credit: White House Photo by Pete Souza

[Reposted from The Lid}

Joe Biden’s been saying he will appoint a staff representing diversity, and in a way, he has.  Some of his appointees are anti-Israel. Others are both anti-Israel and anti-Semitic. Biden’s been announced who will be on his team if he ends up in the Oval Office, and sadly, just as I predicted, his team is as anti-Israel as is much of his track record and the sentiments of the Democratic Party base.

The team he’s announced so far includes Obama and Clinton retreads unfriendly to the Jewish state. The Joe Biden anti-Israel team includes Tony Blinken, Secretary of State, Reema Dodin Deputy Director White House Office of Legislative Affairs,  Avril Haines DNI, John Kerry Climate Czar,  Karine Jean Pierre Deputy Press Secretary, and Neera Tanden OMB Director.

Tony Blinken, Secretary of State,  was deputy secretary of state during the last two years of the anti-Israel Obama administration. He was part of a team negotiating the JCPOA that put the U.S., Israel, and the Sunni Muslim states in danger of an Iranian nuclear attack, and deputy director of the state department that gave the Jewish State a going away smack down in the UN Security Council. He is one of the leading voices pushing Biden to get back into the JCPOA.

• Blinken opposed designating the IRGC Terror Organization:  In a 2017 CNN appearance, Blinken opposed sanctioning and designating Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) as a foreign terrorist organization – even though terror is what IRGC’s mission. The Iranian constitution established the IRGC to perpetrate terror against “enemies of Allah” (meaning, the U.S., Israel, and Sunni states) and expand Iranian Islamic sovereignty throughout the world. The IRGC’s terror involvement include murdering hundreds of American troops in Iraq; Iranian nuclear proliferation and weapons delivery systems development; plotting to set off a bomb in a Georgetown restaurant (to murder a Saudi diplomat and innocent American diners); providing weapons, training, funding, and logistical support to Iranian terrorist proxies, including Hezbollah, Hamas, Iraq-based militias, the PFLP (Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine), and Palestinian Islamic Jihad; and numerous other major terror attacks, including on the Buenos Aires Jewish Center. 
• Blinken believes in the myth that continued Israeli control of Judea and Samaria will lead to the Israeli Arab population growing larger than the Jewish population.
• During a speech at the J Street Conference in 2012, Blinken praised the anti-Israel J Street as a “ constructive force.”
• After anti-Semite Linda Sarsour spoke at the DNC, a Biden staffer sent an email disavowing her hatred.  After the email went public, Blinken apologized to  Arab and Muslim Democrats about Sarsour during a private phone call, “My apologies for what we did and what happened,” acknowledging the “hurt and disappointment.” Adding that “Historically, Republicans and Democrats have been quick to dismiss Muslim, Arab-American and especially Palestinian-American voices, and I want to reiterate on behalf of all of us our support for your communities.”

Reema Dodin, Deputy Director White House Office of Legislative Affairs. Reema Dodin has excused Palestinian Terrorism and opposed U.S. support of Israel.  Of Palestinian descent, Dodin joined with Palestinians and their supporters who used to routinely and openly justify the most heinous terror attacks, blowing up buses and pizza shops, and Passover seders. In 2002, during the height of the murderous Palestinian terror spree that was killing Jews daily, she spoke at a church in Lodi, CA, condoning the terrorism saying, “The suicide bombers were the last resort of a desperate people. During that same speech, Dodin falsely claimed that the Israeli government cuts off water supplies “to coerce the Palestinian population.” In fact, Israel provides abundant water to the Palestinian Arabs – far more than specified in the Oslo accords.  Dodin also falsely portrayed Palestinian Arabs (the recipients of the most generous aid in the world) as malnourished and denied medical care.

• That Lodi speech was given a few weeks after one of the most violent of Palestinian terror attacks. A Palestinian homicide bomber blew up the Park Hotel in Netanya, Israel, during a Passover seder. Thirty innocent civilians were killed in the attack, and 140 were injured.
• The book Muslim Mafia: Inside the Secret Underworld That’s Conspiring to Islamize America,” by former federal agent and counterterrorism expert P. David Gaubatz and Paul E. Sperry, revealed that Dodin justified the 9/11 attacks as a reaction to U.S. support of Israel:

Avril Haines, Director of National Intelligence (DNI). An Obama loyalist and a John Brennan acolyte. Ms. Haines’ appointment was endorsed by the anti-Israel group J-Street.  She signed their letter to the DNC berating them for being “silent on the rights of Palestinians and on Israeli actions that undermine those rights.’  As Daniel Greenfield noted in Front Page, the purpose of the letter that Haines signed was a sell-out of the pro-Israel community.

• Greenfield also noted:

“Currently, Avril Haines heads up Columbia World Projects. A big part of the university’s internationalization effort is the Obama Foundation Scholars initiative. Being a Foundation Scholar requires “a proven commitment to service and leadership within a community, region or country outside the United States,” and, it ought to go without saying, the right set of political agendas.

The Obama “Scholars” at Columbia World Projects she manages include Mor Efrat, the head of the Occupied Palestinian Territories Department for PHR-I. Physicians for Human Rights-Israel (PHR-I), despite its name, isn’t really about medicine. It’s an anti-Israel organization whose founder promotes BDS and seeks to try Israeli soldiers for war crimes. PHR-I’s founder had urged a move to “integrate BDS in every struggle for justice and human rights by adopting wide, context-sensitive and sustainable boycotts of Israeli products, companies, academic and cultural institutions, and sports groups.”

Even while at Columbia, Haines continued her political work as the co-chair of Foreign Policy for America. The board of Foreign Policy for America includes Jeremy Ben Ami, the head of J Street. In contrast, the Advisory Board includes Joseph Cirincione, the head of Ploughshares, a key Iran nuclear legalization pressure group, alongside Haines, and Rob Malley, the Obama adviser initially forced out for his Hamas contacts (and his father was a close friend of Arafat). He now heads Soros’ International Crisis Group. Malley is also an advisor at Columbia.

John Kerry- Climate Czar. According to Biden’s announcement, Kerry’s climate activities including some international responsibilities.  Along with his anti-Israel tenure in the Obama administration (if really you need an explanation, click here) and his belief that the Trump peace deals between Israel and Gulf Sunni states were impossible because no Arab state would make peace with Israel unless the Jewish State first made peace with the Palestinians (who refuse to make concession). Kerry’s appointment as Climate Czar makes many think of the famous line in the play “Fiddler on The Roof” when Tevye’s rabbi says, “May God bless and keep the Czar—far away from us.”

Kerry has spent much of his post-Obama tenure trying to damage Israel and Trump’s Foreign policy.

• During interviews to promote his book in Sept. 2018, Kerry told an interviewer that he met with Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif three or four times since leaving office and that their talks touched on the international nuclear agreement which Kerry negotiated, and President Trump killed ( because it was such a bad deal for America). This was the first time Kerry admitted a Logan Act violation. However, many of his offenses were reported earlier.
• In May of 2018, the Boston Globe reported that Kerry went to the U.N. to meet with Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif to discuss ways to save the Iran nuke deal. “It was the second time in about two months that the two had met to strategize over salvaging a deal they spent years negotiating during the Obama administration, according to a person briefed on the meetings.”
• In January 2018, Israeli Newspaper Ma’ariv reported that John Kerry had given a message to Palestinian Authority Pres. Abbas, “that he should stay strong in his spirit and play for time, that he should not break and will not yield to President Trump’s demands,” because Trump will be out of office within the year.”

Karine Jean Pierre Deputy Press Secretary- Karine Jean-Pierre is a longtime campaign adviser chief of staff to Kamala Harris.

• In an opinion piece she wrote for Newsweek in March 2019, Jean-Pierre praised Democratic politicians for not going to that year’s AIPAC conference, saying, “boldly choosing to prioritize diplomacy and human rights over the power of a lobbying organization.” In the same op-ed, she made other false accusations and statements about Israel and AIPAC. She accused AIPAC of “severely racist, Islamophobic rhetoric,” and “trafficking in anti-Muslim and anti-Arab rhetoric while lifting up Islamophobic voices and attitudes.”
• Jean-Pierre falsely slandered Israel when the IDF was defending Israeli citizens against Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) terrorists. The terrorists set off explosives at Israel’s border fence in an attempt to allow 30,000 Hamas-led Arabs to invade Israel and commit more violence. \She accused Benjamin Netanyahu’s government of committing war crimes against the violent Gazan protester, citing a United Nations commission slander.
• Karine Jean Pierre also condemned speakers at the 2019 AIPAC Conference who criticized the Antisemites and Israel-haters in Congress like Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib and AOC.
• Jean Pierre is the senior advisor and national spokeswoman for the anti-Israel progressive group funded by George Soros, MoveOn.org.

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Neera Tanden OMB Director The day after the 2015 Israeli election, when Netanyahu won a surprise victory in the national elections, Hillary adviser and President of the Center for American Progress, Neera Tanden, responded to a John Podesta note calling the Israeli govt, ruthless wingnuts.

• Neera Tanden’s tenure as the head of the Center for American Progress (CAP) was marked by Antisemitism.  In the lead up to the 2012 election, Politico published a piece about how CAP, lead by Tanden, was fighting to change the Democratic Party to the anti-Israel party.  Stories by CAP bloggers had appeared in the vehemently anti-Israel terrorist supporting publication The Electronic Intifada.  CAP bloggers have also accused American Jews of dual loyalty, calling them “Israel-Firsters.”
• “There’s two explanations here – either the inmates are running the asylum or the Center for American Progress has made a decision to be anti-Israel,” said Josh Block, who at the time was AIPAC’s spokesman.
• The Simon Wiesenthal Center went further they called CAP anti-Semitic:

….When it comes to the charges of being “Israel Firsters” and having “dual loyalty,” we not only plead innocent but also counter-charge that these sponsored bloggers are guilty of dangerous political libels resonating with historic and toxic anti-Jewish prejudices.

These odious charges have been around since Henry Ford in 1920 said, “Wars are the Jews’ harvest,” Charles Lindbergh in 1940 condemned Jews for conspiring to plunge America into World War II, and “Jewish neocons” were charged with colluding with Israel to cause the 2003 Iraq War. Recently, University of Chicago Professor John Mearsheimer, co-author of The Israel Lobby and Foreign Policy, has descended to making the accusation that American Jews — unlike American Poles, Italians, Greeks, Turks, Chinese, Africans, etc., etc. — exercise a uniquely malevolent influence over American foreign policy. ….

The Center for American Progress ought to stick to fair-minded discussion of serious issues about the U.S’s future. It ought to disown immediately “Israel Laster” bloggers who take the low road and drag down policy debates into the gutter of individual and group defamation.

Sadly none of this is a surprise. Biden not only wants to appoint an anti-Israel team, he Vice President for the most anti-Israel and anti-Semitic president in my lifetime. But even before he joined Obama, when he was in the Senate making his own decisions, many of Biden’s actions toward the Jewish state were negative and disturbing. For example, during his Senate years, Biden screwed up some easy ways to look pro-Israel. He didn’t sign his name to non-binding pro-Israel letters supported by his senate colleagues’ overwhelming majority. He also warned Israel that they should get used to a nuclear Iran.

As Obama’s Defense Secretary Robert Gates noted, Biden has “been wrong on nearly every major foreign policy and national security issue over the past four decades.” One of those foreign policy “wrongs” was his lack of support for America’s closest ally in the Middle-East- Israel. He is putting together a team that will support his anti-Israel mistake.