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As the author predicted, US policy is guided by anti-Israel parrots for J-Street
- 14 June 2023
- 9:05 pm
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- 14 June 2023
- 9:05 pm
Secretary of State Antony Blinken served as Deputy National Security Advisor from and Deputy Secretary of State under President Barack Obama. (Official White House Photo By David Lienemann)
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I asked TheJ.ca to reprise an article I wrote more than two years ago about how the personalities who were about to reframe US foreign policy would impact America, Israel, and other countries for the worse.
Sadly, my predictions have all come true.
This is what I wrote in January 2021. I have not changed a single word.
Antony Blinken is the incoming US Secretary of State. The State Department executes American foreign policy. Blinken was Obama’s Deputy Secretary of State.
Out of office, he founded a strategic consultancy firm called West Exec Advisors. They represented global corporations and foreign governments in their efforts to gain access to the White House and top Government officials. His website boasted that “West Exec conveys our shared commitment to our country, to each other, and to our clients.”
Antony Blinken reflects what Trump euphemistically called “the Washington Swamp.”
In office, Blinken made human rights a cornerstone in formulating foreign policy. Let’s see how that worked out:
Libya
Under Hillary Clinton and Obama and Biden in the White House, a decision was made to remove Muammar Gaddafi from power and let the Libyan people set their own destiny. This, despite the fact that Gaddafi had renounced his nuclear ambitions and was reaching out to the West. In 2011, The United States led a NATO military attack against Libya on the pretext of “protecting civilians and civilian populated areas under threat of attack.”
The result was a disaster. Gaddafi was deposed and killed, Libya descended into a warring hellhole of rival Islamist and nationalist groups, and Ambassador Stephens was murdered at the Benghazi US Consulate. The State Department failed to rescue the ambassador and his security team.
When news of their fate was released, Blinken’s State Department employed a fake human rights story to cover up their fatal failure by blaming the assault on a bunch of protesters angry at an amateur video that insulted Islam. And the person who went on TV to sell that fabrication, Susan Rice, has been rewarded with a White House appointment running domestic policy.
The “Arab Spring”
As protests spread across the Muslim world against corrupt leaders, the State Department celebrated it as a positive expression of human rights. They called it the Arab Spring. In Israel, strategic experts, who understand the undercurrents of the Muslim world, told American and European diplomats, “You’ve got your seasons wrong. This is the start of the Islamic Winter.”
As protests grew in Egypt, Blinken, then Vice President Joe Biden’s national security adviser, and others urged Obama to get “on the right side of history” by supporting the Muslim Brotherhood.
The Muslim Brotherhood had hijacked students’ peaceful protests and violently targeted the police and government institutions that eventually toppled Mubarak’s regime. They imprisoned thousands and, in less than two years, had ruined Egypt’s economy driving millions into poverty.
The Obama Administration and State Department failed to feel the mood of the Egyptian people. One month after Mohamed Morsi, the Islamist Muslim Brotherhood leader was sworn in as Egyptian President, protesters pelted Clinton’s motorcade with tomatoes during her July 2012 visit to Cairo. The army, under General al-Sisi, staged a popular coup. They arrested the Muslim Brotherhood leadership, restored law and order, and began to forge a more stable Egypt.
This did not sit well with Obama who said of America’s response to Sisi’s popular victory, “We can’t be seen as aiding and abetting actions we think run contrary to our values and ideals.”
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US military aid to Egypt was stopped. It led to a divide between the White House, the State Department and a Defense Department that advocated maintaining US aid to Egypt.
By 2015, General Sisi had reached out to Russia for a large military aid program to be paid by Saudi Arabia and the UAE, Egypt’s allies in the region. Obama’s team wilted and renewed US military aid to Egypt. Sisi celebrated by flying the first delivery of American F-16s over Cairo. A triumphant gesture perceived in Egypt as Sisi’s victory over Obama.
Syria
By the fall of 2013, Syria had plunged into a sectarian civil war and Assad was slaughtering his people with chemical weapons. Obama threatened Assad against using such weapons. A deal was struck to remove chemical reserves from Syria.
Blinken, as Deputy Secretary of State under John Kerry, said, “Imagine what Syria would look like without that deal. It would be awash in chemical weapons, which would fall into the hands of ISIS, Al Nusra or other groups.”
He may have been right, but that did not stop the devious Assad from inflicting a sarin attack, killing an estimated 80 civilians. Obama was tested but failed to respond.
“We always knew we had not gotten everything,” Blinken admitted.
It took President Trump to punish Assad when he launched combined attacks in 2016 and 2017 destroying Syria’s chemical weapon facilities. Obama blinked. Trump acted.
Human rights violations in Iran including detention of human rights defenders and other prisoners of conscience, unfair trials, torture and mistreatment in detention, deaths in custody and the application of the death penalty (photo: Amnesty.ca)
Iran
If human rights were a cornerstone of the Obama Administration, it was sadly missing when it came to Iran. When mass protests erupted across Iran, Obama kept silent. The State Department in which Blinken served failed to stand affirmatively with the Iranian protesters. The opposition Green Movement was brutally crushed and has never been reconstituted.
Instead, they bent over backwards to appease the Tehran leadership with a highly criticized nuclear deal cemented by the delivery of $150 Billion that enabled the Republic Guard to brutally advance Iranian hegemony across the Middle East and down into Yemen.
This issue is the most consequential one for Israel with Iran spreading its hegemony and forward bases throughout the Middle East. In 2020 alone, Israel launched over 500 attacks against Iranian bases and weapon storage facilities in Syria.
Israel insists that the new Administration keep the chokehold on the Iranian economy but this is hardly likely after Biden selected Wendy Sherman to be his Deputy Secretary of State. She was one of the principal architects of the disastrous 2015 nuclear deal.
There is nothing that gives us hope that Blinken will maintain Trump’s tough stance on Tehran. Israel and the Palestinian Problem. Donald Trump has been the most pro-Israel president since Harry Truman. His achievements have been many and Trump’s Abraham Accord initiative is sufficient reason to reward him with a Nobel Peace Prize.
That is a hard act to follow and it is doubtful that Blinken can help Biden achieve that status, not with Biden’s declared aim of refunding an unapologetic Palestinian Authority that continues to promote their ‘Pay to Slay” policy which rewards their killers. This despite the Taylor Force Act, named after an American stabbed to death by a rampaging Palestinian on Tel Aviv’s beachfront, a bill introduced by President Trump to dis-incentivize the PA from this heinous policy.
The Democrat Manifesto also declared it would reopen the PA Washington bureau and the US consulate in Jerusalem to serve Palestinians, despite having a new Embassy there, thanks to Trump. All this with no demand for the Palestinians to desist from promoting terror and instead recognize Israel’s right to exist.
Antisemites claim that the Biden administration is slanted towards favouring Israel, but many of even his Jewish appointments are actually far-left anti-Zionists (Photo: Instagram)
Former Defense Secretary, Robert Gates, said of Biden, “I think he has been wrong on nearly every major foreign policy and national security issue over the past four decades.”
By default, one can say the same about Antony Blinken. Policy meetings took place in the White House Situation Room in which Antony Blinken participated. The results were poor. Blinken, as US Secretary of State, must insist that Iran removes its powerful precision missiles from Syria, Lebanon and Yemen. A nuclear Iran poses an existential threat to the existence of Israel, but the presence of these lethal weapons pose an immediate danger to Israeli civilian centres and vital infrastructure.
Perhaps Blinken can spend the next four years trying to convince the Palestinian leadership to change its behaviour and ideology, and recognize and normalize their relationship with Israel, as moderate Arab and Muslim states have done, rather than push Israel into a corner, because peace with the Palestinians is impossible without it.
Foreign Policy for America is an influential policy advocacy group in Washington. They push their foreign policy proposals into Congress and the White House. They have some disturbing perspectives on Israel.
Avril Haines, Biden’s CIA Chief, and others signed a public letter earlier in 2020 urging the Democratic Party to adopt a more pro-Palestinian language in its platform. By pro-Palestinian Haines did not clarify if the language should be that of the PLO, Hamas, or Islamic Jihad in Gaza. If she means the language of the Palestinian Authority, it is an aggressive anti-Israel language back by violence and shared by other malevolent Palestinian factions.
Equally troubling is that Jeremy Ben Ami, the founder of JStreet, a Jewish group with the overriding policy of creating a Palestinian state on unacceptable (for Israel) 1967 borders, sits on the FPA board of directors to impose his views onto Israel. He sees Israel as the obstacle to peace, not PA rejectionism, nor Hamas denial of the right of Israel to exist.
Secretary of State Antony Blinken has showered compliments on J-Street, while Joe Biden’s CIA chief Avril Haines signed a letter demanding a Pro-Palestinian platform from the Biden Democrats (Photo: US State Dept.)
The Foreign Policy for America section on the ‘Israel-Palestinian Conflict’ is copy-paste drawn from JStreet literature. It includes tips on how to persuade Congress to be more sympathetic to the Palestinians, and angry against the Israeli Government. FPA published a history of the conflict. According to them, it began in 1949. They conveniently forgot that Arabs have been murdering Jews since the 1920s.
The Oslo Accords was ruined, they say, “by growing settlements in the West Bank, continued Israeli military presence, and a blockage on Gaza.” No mention of decades of Palestinian terrorism, rockets and suicide attacks. Nor does it mention incessant anti-Semitic rhetoric and incitement, and a stubborn refusal to accept a Jewish presence in Judea & Samaria or in the Jewish state anywhere.
FPA avoids mention of the ultimate Palestinian ambition of a state “from the River to the Sea” as if it doesn’t exist. And their top personnel are moving into decisive positions in the Biden Administration. Democrat anti-Israel activists have seeped into the Biden White House.
Reema Dodin has been an apologist for Palestinian suicide bombers. She is the Deputy Director of the White House Office for Legislative Affairs. She is alleged to have blamed the 9/11 attacks on US support for Israel, and she supported the anti-Israel BDS Movement.
Karen Jean-Pierre was selected to be the White House, Deputy Press Secretary. She was the national spokesperson for the George Soros-sponsored anti-Israel MoveOn.org. She has accused Israel of “war crimes,” called AIPAC “severely racist” for supporting Israel against
Palestinian terrorism, and praised Democrats who wimped out of attending the last AIPAC annual conference.
Jeremy Ben Ami tweeted this is “Exactly the type of leadership this country deserves.”
As their agenda unfolds, Israel must be prepared for cold winds to blow in our direction under such a Biden Administration.
Barry Shaw is the International Public Diplomacy Director at the Israel Institute for Strategic Studies. He is the Host of The View from Israel, and author of several books including Fighting Hamas, BDS & Anti-Semitism, BDS for Idiots, 1917 From Palestine to the Land of Israel, and A Tale of Love & Destiny.
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Our positioning as a Zionist News Media platform sets us apart from the rest. While other Canadian Jewish media are advocating increasingly biased progressive political and social agendas, TheJ.Ca is providing more and more readers with a welcome alternative and an ideological home.
We revealed the incursion of anti-Israel progressive elements such as IfNotNow into our communities. We have exposed the distorted hateful agenda of the “progressive” left political radicals who brought Linda Sarsour to our cities, and we were first to report on many disturbing incidents of Nazi-based hate towards Jews across Canada.
But we can’t do it alone. We need your HELP!
Our ability to thrive and grow in 2020 and beyond depends on the generosity of committed readers and supporters like you.
Monthly support is a great way to help us sustain our operations. We greatly appreciate any contributions you can make to support Jewish Journalism.
We thank you for your ongoing support.
Happy reading!
Thank you for choosing TheJ.Ca as your source for Canadian Jewish News.
We do news differently!
Our positioning as a Zionist News Media platform sets us apart from the rest. While other Canadian Jewish media are advocating increasingly biased progressive political and social agendas, TheJ.Ca is providing more and more readers with a welcome alternative and an ideological home.
We revealed the incursion of anti-Israel progressive elements such as IfNotNow into our communities. We have exposed the distorted hateful agenda of the “progressive” left political radicals who brought Linda Sarsour to our cities, and we were first to report on many disturbing incidents of Nazi-based hate towards Jews across Canada.
But we can’t do it alone. We need your HELP!
Our ability to thrive and grow in 2020 and beyond depends on the generosity of committed readers and supporters like you.
Monthly support is a great way to help us sustain our operations. We greatly appreciate any contributions you can make to support Jewish Journalism.
We thank you for your ongoing support.
Happy reading!
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