Biden’s Hamas conundrum

The president’s continued reliance on his anti-Israel, pro-Iran officials is not merely a policy disaster. It is a political problem.

By Caroline Glick (October 27, 2023 / JNS)

U.S. President Joe Biden meets with senior advisers on Sept. 6, 2023, in the Oval Office. Credit: Adam Schultz/Official White House Photo.

Since Oct. 7, American Jews have seen their civil rights trampled every day. Jewish students are subjected to constant intimidation, assault, battery and threats from Hamas supporters on campus. And from coast to coast, the stories are depressingly similar. University authorities refuse to protect them from their pro-Jewish genocide peers.

Then, too, on Thursday, the New York Police Department told the Jews of Brooklyn to stay off the streets on Shabbat afternoon. Pro-Hamas will be demonstrating, and the police said that they will be unable to protect Jewish residents as the terror supporters march through their neighborhoods.

How is this happening? How is it that at a time of maximum peril, law-enforcement bodies are doing all but nothing to defend the Jewish community? Why is the FBI not arresting terror supporters as required under U.S. law? Why is the U.S. Justice Department not directing local authorities to defend the Jews?

A good place to begin to look for answers is the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division. That powerful division is led by Assistant Attorney General Kristen Clarke.

Clarke’s appointment in 2021 caused an uproar in Jewish circles because she has a record of anti-Semitic activism and was an ardent supporter of the pro-Hamas, anti-Jewish Black Lives Matter movement.

In 1994, as the head of the Black Students Association at Harvard Law School, Clarke invited Wellesley College Professor Tony Martin to speak at Harvard. Martin had just written a Protocols of the Elders of Zion-style anti-Semitic book called The Jewish Onslaught.

Clarke defiantly defended Martin at the time and attacked the Jewish students who expressed concern about her move. She never apologized for her actions. Instead, ahead of her Senate confirmation, she told progressive, anti-Israel Jewish reporters and activists that she “regretted” the invitation. That was enough for them to declare that the allegation that Clarke remains hostile towards Jews is slander.

U.S. President Joe Biden has a problem. He staffed his administration at all levels and across departments with hardened ideologues, many of whom have records of hostility towards Jews and support for Hamas, Iran and other terror groups and regimes. Under Biden, these officials have advanced his Middle East policies that until Oct. 7 were largely aligned with the interests of Iran, Hezbollah, Hamas and the Houthis.

Now that those policies have been shown to be counterproductive, and at least partly responsible for the threats America now faces to its core Middle Eastern interests, the same officials remain in their positions and continue to direct the Biden administration’s policies.

Consider the Palestinians.

U.S. policy towards the Palestinians is directed by the U.S. Special Representative to the Palestinians, Hady Amr. Amr is a longtime supporter of Hamas. In 2018, at the Qatar-based offices of the Brookings Institute, Amr was the lead author of a Brookings policy paper titled, “Ending Gaza’s Perpetual Crisis–A New U.S. Approach.”

Amr’s basic recommendations were to change terror financing laws to permit U.S. contractors to work with Hamas, as well as to use any new round of war between Israel and Hamas to launch a new three-pronged policy towards Israel and Hamas.

Amr’s plan accepted Hamas as a legitimate actor. It called for the Palestinian Authority to unite with Hamas and reorganize under Hamas’s leadership in light of Hamas’s stronger support among Palestinians. Finally, it called for the United States to coerce Israel into making unreciprocated concessions to Hamas and the P.A., even though Amr acknowledged that the concessions would endanger Israel. Among other things, he called for Israel to end its maritime blockage of the Gaza coast and permit Hamas free access to the sea.

As the architect of Biden’s Palestinian policies, Amr’s Brookings paper was a blueprint for many of the policies adopted by the administration, including its willingness to fund Hamas indirectly through the P.A. and U.N. Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA), the U.N. agency operating in Gaza. Some 90% of UNRWA employees are Hamas members.

Amr remains in his position.

The ongoing Iran problem

Then there is Iran. Biden appointed Iran apologist Robert Malley to lead the administration’s Iran policy. Malley’s policy was so pro-Iranian that several career U.S State Department officials, not known for their hostility to Tehran resigned in protest. As Semafor and Iran International exposed last month, Malley surrounded himself with advisers in and out of government with records of serving as Iranian regime agents in Washington. One of those aides, Ariane Tabatabai remains in her position as Chief of Staff to the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Special Operations and Low Intensity Conflict, with her security clearance intact, a month after her direct ties to the Iranian regime became public knowledge.

Although Malley was booted from his position under a cloud of suspicion of misuse of classified information and is reportedly under FBI criminal investigation, his policy of courting Iran and enabling its rise as a nuclear power and regional power remains in place.

This week many observers, including former U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo expressed shock when they discovered the Biden administration gave a U.S. entry visa to Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian to speak at the United Nations. The move signaled that despite the fact that Iran trained Hamas terrorists in Iran ahead of Oct. 7’s atrocities, oversaw the planning of the Oct. 7 slaughter, green-lighted the atrocities and finances Hamas, the administration is still implementing Malley’s Iran policy. This comes despite the fact that Abdollahian used his speech to threaten the United States with war if it continues to support Israel and despite the fact that since Oct. 7, Iranian proxies in Syria, Yemen and Iraq have repeatedly attacked U.S. forces in the region.

Continue Reading Article