Obama-Biden Have Been Punishing Israel Since 2013

By Edward Davis, AM THINKER May 28/24

Image: Sean Naber via Flickr, CC BY 2.0.

Joe Biden’s vicious betrayal of Israel has surprised and alienated some of his supporters, who thought he was a moderate Democrat.

In the most recent outrage, his administration sent condolences over the death of Iran’s President Raisi and joined the U.N. in a reverent minute of silence.  In stark contrast, Biden disparaged Prime Minister Netanyahu as “a bad f—— guy and “a-hole” at a time when Israelis were traumatized and fighting for their lives.

It was predictable, considering that Biden brought back much of the foreign policy team of President Obama, whose backstabbing of the Jewish state foreshadowed Biden’s hostile policies.

Early in 2013, when the U.S. was still in shock over the December 14, 2012 Newtown massacre, the newly re-elected Obama decided that one of his priorities would be to pressure Israel to release scores of convicted killers, among whose victims were children.

Although political leaders, including presidents, are expected to flip-flop occasionally, this might have been the first administration in history to flip-flop on the issue of the murder of innocents.

That same year marked two anniversaries of child slaughter that the Obama administration reacted to in chillingly conflicting ways, apparently based on the victims’ nationality and religion.

To observe the 50th anniversary of the 1963 firebombing murders of four African-American girls in Birmingham, President Obama solemnly paid tribute to the victims.

One month later, Israel marked a similar tragic milestone — the 25th anniversary of the firebombing murders of the nine-months-pregnant Rachel Weiss, a 26-year-old second-grade teacher, and her sons — Netanel, 4; Rafael, 2; and Ephraim, 21 months.  Israeli soldier David Delorosa also died in a heroic attempt to save them.  Israel considered imposing the death penalty for the first time since Adolf Eichmann was put to death in 1962.

Unfortunately, the Weiss brothers did not look like Obama’s own imagined sons, and unfortunately, they, their mother, and the soldier who died trying to save them were citizens of the nation Obama’s mentor Jeremiah Wright referred to as “that dirty word.”  And so, using secretary of state John Kerry as his point man, Obama began pushing for the release of their killers, along with scores of other terrorists convicted of murder or attempted murder.

Then Kerry quickly resumed pressuring Israel, and by late April, he obtained an agreement for the mass release of prisoners with innocent blood on their hands.

Fast-forward to early August of that year, and another horrific, stranger-than-fiction coincidence that, like the timing of the Boston Marathon bombing, looked a lot like instant karma for the Obama administration.  Israel was two days away from obeying the State Department’s request to free the first 26 Palestinian terrorists when the news broke that Mexico had released the drug lord convicted in the heinous slaying of a U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration agent.

The Obama administration denounced the injustice: “We are deeply concerned by the release of Rafael Caro Quintero,” said National Security Council spokesperson Caitlin Hayden.  “We remain as committed today in seeing Quintero and others involved in this crime face justice.”

So American lives have value.  But what about the case of former U.S. Marine Frederick Steven Rosenfeld, a dual U.S.-Israel citizen who was stabbed to death by a terrorist in the Israeli city of Ariel?  Evaluating the worth of his life by Obama standards gets us into a gray area.  His worth as an American had to be weighed against his worthlessness as an Israeli.  His murderer was freed, although the administration expressed concern over the release after learning that Rosenfeld was an American.

Then there’s the barely noted issue of whether Obama had the right to nullify the verdicts of the judiciary of a sovereign foreign nation, and whether Netanyahu was legally permitted to obey.  Is overruling another nation’s judiciary through coercion an impeachable offense?  Professor Louis Rene Beres argued that the administration was “in violation not only of international law but also the law of the United States,” and that Israel has no legal right “to free terrorists as a ‘goodwill gesture.’”

(Amazingly, at the same time the Obama team were facilitating the release of perpetrators of hate-crime murders of Jews, they zealously prosecuted and sentenced an Amish man to 15 years in prison for the “hate crime” of forcibly cutting hair.  In contrast, the administration advocated the immediate release of attorney Lynne Stewart, sentenced to 10 years for assisting Islamic terror plots, after having served 3 years.  The double-standard legal targeting of Christians would prove to be another Obama policy  resumed under Biden.)

Far from bringing peace closer, the prisoner release further inflamed the passions of a terrorist culture whose support for serial killing always was, and remains, the chief obstacle to peace.  It was predictable that the freed killers would be praised as heroes and financially rewarded, and that Obama would have no complaints.

Obama’s demands on Israel contrasted dramatically with his pledge that his administration “does not meddle in Iran’s internal affairs.”  In his famous Cairo speech, he similarly assured the Muslim world that “America does not presume to know what is best for everyone.”

In no area do we tread more cautiously than in our consideration of what is best for the bereaved.  It’s the reason most Americans opposed the building of a mosque at Ground Zero.  The feelings of grieving families and their community rightfully trump all else, especially when it is children who are being mourned.  The callous infliction of additional anguish on Israelis, who perhaps had finally found some closure when the murderers of their loved ones were convicted and imprisoned, appears to be the sole exception to the rule, and unprecedented for one ally to do to another.

Additionally, had the convicted terrorists stayed in prison, Israel would have had the option of exchanging them for hostages after October 7, if they had wished to.

That was 2013, and from there the nightmare deepened.

In 2014, Obama stopped Israel from defeating Hamas, allowing the terrorists nine years to rebuild.

In 2015, he arranged a deal that gave U.S. approval to nuclear weapons in the hands of the Iranian regime in ten years.  Biden, in his role as president of the Senate, led a boycott of Netanyahu’s speech to Congress regarding the deal.

And in 2016, with Biden’s help, Obama engineered the passage of a U.N. resolution classifying Jews living in parts of their homeland as outlaws.  The diplomatic assault against Israel topped the Simon Wiesenthal Center’s list of  “2016 Top Ten Worst Global Anti-Semitic/Anti-Israel Incidents” (a stunning fact that President Trump might be wise to highlight).

Obama recently began taking an active role in Biden’s campaign, and for anyone who watches their joint campaign ads, it seems clear which of them is in charge.  Given another term, Biden’s policy towards Israel reportedly could get even worse.