Surrounded by critics of Israel, Muslim advisers prominent among them, US President Joe Biden has a spotty history of support for the Jewish state. Already as a young senator in 1982, he threatened to oppose aid for Israel. After the tragedy of October 7 last year, he openly empathized with Israel and its right to exist and defend itself, even authorizing the supply of arms to do so. That view changed quickly, however, and he ended up prolonging the current war.
Since January 2021, US foreign-policy decisions about Israel have been influenced by many senior advisers and specialists who previously worked in the Barack Obama administration, including Valerie Jarrett, Samantha Power and Susan Rice, who were hostile to Israel.
But they are not the only ones. Over a hundred Muslims, radicals among them, work in the Joe Biden-Kamala Harris White House. With control over key intelligence, defense and arms evaluations, these bureaucrats have for years impacted the information the president receives and the opinions he is exposed to.
(Editor’s note: Lest non-American readers dismiss the following as expected behavior by the Americans, or worse, it must be stressed that Israel’s relationship with dozens of other countries, particularly in Europe, is also strained at times.)
Among the advisors are an array of people, such as Mahar Bitar, senior director of intelligence and chief coordinator for intelligence and defense policy at the National Security Council. Bitar was a former executive-board member of the campus hate-group Students for Justice in Palestine (which endorsed Hamas and the October 7 massacre).
He was also organizer of a conference of the Palestine Solidarity Movement, which has worked with Hamas and whose previous conference included chants of “Kill the Jews.” According to the Council on Foreign Relations, Bitar is the “senior-most official responsible for coordinating U.S. Government intelligence and defense policy.”
There is also Uzra Heya, the Secretary of State for Civilian Security, Democracy, and Human Rights in the Biden-Harris administration, who researched a book sponsored by the Arab Lobby claiming Jews secretly control America.
In a series of analyses, American journalist Daniel Greenfield researched White House animosity towards the Israeli government. He exposed Harris’s relationships with terrorism supporters, claiming she has “a Muslim team whose views are extreme and whose hostility to America and Israel, as well as their ties to foreign governments and Muslim Brotherhood groups raise troubling questions” (“Kamala’s Islamists,” danielgreenfield.org, September 12, 2024).
The goal of winning the November 5 election was the top issue for the vice president. By being critical of Israel and supportive of Palestinian demands (a multi-year trend among Democrats), it was believed her chance at getting the votes of 4.5 million Muslims would be helped.
That aim needed to be balanced with winning the votes of seven million Jewish voters, most of whom expect the candidate to speak in defense of Israel.
There was also the significant issue of 40,000 US soldiers stationed across the Middle East. With a looming election, the last thing the White House wanted was American boys coming home in coffins. On the contrary, a ceasefire was the desired prize, a foreign-policy trophy that would have yielded many votes. But that would have only been a quick-fix and would have assured another war would be fought within a few months or years.
Netanyahu had other goals, however, including the dismantling of Hamas, so it would never again pose a threat, and the return of thousands of Israelis to their homes along the Gazan border.
Then, as Hizbullah’s attacks continued for a year, Israel’s goals grew to include the destruction of Hizbullah and the return of 60,000 to 80,000 Israelis to their homes along the Lebanese border.
As the Hamas-Hizbullah-Israel War dragged on and expanded, US criticism rose and American generosity waned. Biden and Harris spoke up for Israel’s right to defend itself, while demanding the rights of innocent Palestinians be preserved. Access to food and medical supplies needed to be increased.
The brutal realities of war should not be minimized, but the voices of military experts, such as former deputy supreme allied commander of NATO General Sir John McColl and British Col. Richard Kemp CBE, among others, were ignored. Kemp called the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) the “most humanitarian army in the history of warfare.” UN agencies themselves admitted there was no starvation in Gaza, but foreign governments and news outlets continued to accuse Israel of genocide and forced starvation.
The Americans increased pressure on Israel with a de facto arms embargo, “slow-walking” arms shipments, a code name for a maximum-delay strategy. Canada, France, Germany, the United Kingdom and other nations joined in canceling or delaying their own shipments to Israel.
There is also the matter of American aid. Three months after taking office, President Biden restored funding to Gaza, which President Trump had previously cut off during his own term in office. The next year, Israeli terror-related deaths quadrupled, ultimately rising 900 percent. And this was before the horrors of October 7, in which 46 Americans were killed and 12 taken hostage in Gaza.
Since October 7, Biden has handed out another billion dollars to Gaza. With negligible controls, that aid went right to the coffers of Hamas. The correlation is clear: Israel’s war against terrorism is being prolonged because the Biden-Harris administration is funding the enemy (“Biden-Harris Gave Over $1B to ‘Palestinians’ Since Oct 7,” danielgreenfield.org, October 19, 2024).
The repeated visits to Israel by US generals and Secretary of State Antony Blinken reflected the control they tried to exert on the conduct of the war. The US demands tried to hinder Israel at every step. The warnings were harsh, cautioning that civilian evacuations in Gaza would take months and humanitarian disasters would ensue. There was insistence that a strategy for “the day after” must be produced immediately. The demands were unprecedented in warfare at this stage. Unique standards were imposed with which only Israel had to comply.
Then it became personal: Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was regaled as a megalomaniac out of touch with reality. The news media happily parroted the White House line.
Compounding the damage wrought by Washington, Israel discovered classified information it was sharing with its US allies didn’t remain secret. American officials, Greenfield wrote, “leak constantly, and they do so deliberately. The goal is to sabotage any Israeli operation, much the way [President Barack] Obama’s people sabotaged a planned Israeli strike on Iran’s nuclear program [in 2012] by leaking the information” (“Biden-Harris Officials Leak Every Piece of Info They have About Israeli Attack on Iran,” Daniel Greenfield, Gatestone Institute, October 14, 2024).
After Iran fired 181 ballistic missiles at Israel on October 1, Israel promised a severe response. Specifics of the planned operation remained murky, yet US officials were kept partially informed. Mid-October, however, Iranian reports published details of the Israeli plans, shocking Israel. Incredibly, on October 26 again, the White House leaked details of the Israeli attack as soon as they determined Israeli jets were headed for Iran.
Why would Washington release details to the press? The White House still hopes for a renewed nuclear deal with the Iranian regime following on the one Obama made in 2015. Washington doesn’t want to anger the Iranians and has a history of trying to appease Tehran, including releasing hundreds of billions of dollars of frozen Iranian assets and loosening oil sanctions. Attacks by Israel would complicate that strategy, possibly irreversibly if nuclear or oil facilities were targeted. US intelligence leaks, therefore, might embarrass Israel into calling off an attack, even more so if Iran knows what to expect.
All of these were delaying and braking tactics that keep Israel from defending itself effectively and winning the war.
Israel must stop fighting and accept a ceasefire, must withdraw from Gaza and Lebanon (allowing Hamas and Hizbullah to survive), must accept a Palestinian state along its borders, must do everything Biden demands, so the Democrats can keep the White House, so a nuclear deal with Iran can be concluded, so a Palestinian state can be created.
Defiantly, Netanyahu did not comply with the threats. He prosecuted the war, despite reduced arms, and proved the critics wrong on every fear they had expressed. Evacuations took place in a fraction of the predicted time. There was no starvation and there was no medical crisis. “Invincible” terrorist leaders were dispatched one by one, whether in tunnels, underground bunkers or overseas in Damascus or Tehran. Begrudgingly, dumbfounded world leaders praised the Israeli army for its military and humanitarian achievements.
As early as October last year, one subject has been repeated ad absurdum. It has been the mainstay of politicians and news commentators for decades, the standby off-the-shelf solution for Valhalla, nirvana and the Garden of Eden in the Middle East. It is the aphrodisiac of government thinkers and news pundits.
Of course, it’s about the “Two-State Solution.” Create a Palestinian state next to Israel–the former for the Palestinian-Arabs, the latter for the Jews–and voilà, peace has a chance. It would be difficult to find a nation that has not chided Israel and urged it to work toward the “only solution,” the Two-State Solution.
Until a year ago, not a few Israelis were among those who agreed with such a plan. As of October 2023, however, Israelis have been united in rejecting that non-solution. Perhaps, in a generation or two, if the Arab neighbors change their thinking about the Jews, the subject might become a possibility.
The idea of legitimizing the creation of a terrorist state alongside the Jewish homeland is a non-starter. Even left-wingers realize the radicalized Arab population cannot be entrusted with a state. It would enable war, not yield peace. The conflict has never been about acquiring statehood; it has always been about exterminating any Jewish presence.
And there have been opportunities: Since 2005, after Israel’s withdrawal from the area, Gaza had the possibility of creating a state with only weapons restrictions. Its elected leadership, however, absconded billions of dollars of humanitarian aid (to which every reader of this essay has contributed) and built tunnels and missiles instead. Ismail Haniyeh and Khaled Mashal, the top leaders of Hamas, were reputedly worth $4 billion each. It was only when Gazans started firing hundreds of rockets into Israel that a weapons blockade by Israel ensued.
In the Palestinian Authority in Judea and Samaria (West Bank), the corrupt leaders seated in Ramallah likewise transferred the largesse received from the nations into their private Swiss accounts.
Meanwhile, in Jordan, where seventy percent of the population are Palestinian-Arabs, no one dares admit what everyone knows, that it is in fact already a Palestinian state. The remaining thirty percent are Bedouins, who control the army.
Israel has been the most loyal ally of the US at the UN and other international forums. Cooperation in scientific and defense research has been intensive. Yet it is understood that the Americans will look out for their own interests first.
For Israel also, its own survival will always be first. In security matters it will sometimes say no to friends, if it must, even at the cost of America’s generous support. Political trickery and foreign-policy intrigues by the White House harm that relationship.
Israel is alone, the French philosopher Bernard-Henri Lévy concluded in his book “Israel Alone” (2024) about Israel’s relationship with the world.
There is One that is greater, however, and He has promised to watch over His people: “Can a woman forget her nursing child, that she should not have compassion on the son of her womb? Yea, they may forget, yet I will not forget you” (Isai. 49:15).