The 75th anniversary of the strong, historically unbreakable bond between the United States and Israel is being celebrated this year.
Unfortunately, the occasion is marred by President Joe Biden’s personal animus towards Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, which is weakening our relationship with the only democracy in the Middle East.
Biden snubbed Netanyahu by instead inviting President Isaac Herzog, Israel’s head of state, who lacks executive power, to an official state visit.
Almost invariably in the modern era, state visits are held with the head of government, not the head of state.
The last time the exception happened was 2007, when President George W. Bush hosted Queen Elizabeth and Prince Philip.
Unlike in 2007, this decision was not out of reverence but politics.
Biden despises Israel’s conservative government.
He has criticized the Netanyahu government as “the most extreme” in his lifetime and declared it is “part of the problem” in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
The president’s comments stem from two primary issues: Israeli Supreme Court changes and the latest Iran negotiations.
Biden’s doomsday narrative about Israeli judicial reform is disingenuous and deceitful.
Netanyahu and his coalition are working to bring Israel’s judicial system more in line with the United States’ system, something the president should support.
In the United States, our elected officials nominate and confirm Supreme Court justices, ensuring some accountability.
In Israel, bureaucrats make up the majority of the judicial selection committee. They can ignore the will of the people entirely in their own self-benefiting cycle of bureaucracy.
And, unlike in America, Israeli judges can use a “reasonableness” standard, whereby they can arbitrarily scrap laws if they deem them “unreasonable.”
Reasonableness is inherently a debatable and political issue, and in Israel, this political issue is being decided by bureaucrats with no accountability to the people.
Despite Netanyahu’s reforms being common sense, Biden insisted Israel “cannot continue down this road.”
US Ambassador Tom Nides said this plan is “going off the rails” and told Netanyahu he must “pump the brakes.”
Netanyahu is not the extremist here — Biden is.
The president’s second issue is Netanyahu’s staunch opposition to a new “less for more” Iran deal.
The Biden administration is clinging to the past, holding on to the belief that the Iran nuclear deal can be revived.
It is willing to give up nearly anything for any small concessions from Iran — and Iran knows it.
Iran has only grown more emboldened under the Biden administration.
Under President Donald Trump, Iran was at roughly 5% uranium enrichment, compared to the current 83.7% enriched uranium under Biden’s policies.
That’s 6.3 percentage points away from weapons-grade material and 24 times more than what the 2015 Iran deal allowed!
The notion that the Biden administration can negotiate a new deal, especially when Iran did not even comply with the original deal, is ludicrous.
Thank goodness Netanyahu is fighting for both Israeli and American national-security interests when he criticizes and opposes any new deal.
Netanyahu is the only responsible actor right now in our bilateral relationship.
Let me be clear: Any tensions between the United States and Israel are solely the fault of President Biden.
He must immediately reverse course and work to strengthen our relations with Israel, not weaken them.
He should end any attempts to re-enter the Iran deal or negotiate a new deal; stop interfering in domestic Israeli political issues; and, as a show of good faith, invite Prime Minister Netanyahu for a state visit on a specific date — not just say he’s welcome to come to the United States in months.
Instead of turning his back on our greatest ally in the Middle East for the past 75 years, Biden should be looking to strengthen this relationship.
He must stop disparaging Netanyahu and instead work with him to expand on the Abraham Accords that brought historic change to the region.
Then, and only then, could we realize Middle East peace and another 75 years of strong bilateral relations between our two democracies and beacons of freedom.
Claudia Tenney represents New York’s 24th Congressional District.
2 comments:
Times have been worse. Marshall tried to convince Truman not to recognize Israel and organized a weapons embargo against it. Eisenhower had no strong feelings for Israel and was more interested in partnering with the Arabs to keep the USSR out of the region. Carter ensured Israel gave up its only oil fields to Egypt in return for a whispered "Thank you" and Obama announced to the world that Israel is only a consolation prize to the Jews for the Holocaust. We survived them. We'll survive this.
Re "democracy" and "democracies"
Any alleged expert or layperson who talks about "democracies" AS IF a real democracy ACTUALLY EXISTS ANYWHERE IN THE WORLD (or has existed at any time in 'human civilization') is evidently a fool who's repeating mindlessly and blindly the propaganda fed to them since they were a kid and/or is a member of the corrupt establishment minions whose job is to disseminate this total lie because any "democracy" of 'human civilization' has always been a covert structure of the rule of a few over the many operating behind the pretense name and facade of a "democracy": www.CovidTruthBeKnown.com (or https://www.rolf-hefti.com/covid-19-coronavirus.html)
"There is no America. There is no democracy. There is only IBM and ITT and AT&T and DuPont, Dow, Union Carbide, and Exxon. Those are the nations of the world today. [...]. We no longer live in a world of nations and ideologies [...]. The world is a college of corporations, inexorably determined by the immutable laws of business. The world is a business [...]." --- from the 1976 movie “Network”
"We can either have democracy in this country or we can have great wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, but we can't have both." --- Louis Brandeis, Supreme Court Justice
Does anyone still not see how the deadly game on the foolish public is played ... or still does not WANT to see it?
"We'll know our Disinformation Program is complete when everything the American public believes is false." ---William Casey, a former CIA director=a leading psychopathic criminal of the genocidal US regime
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