Biden threatens to veto Israel aid. And he will pay no political price.
By David Harsanyi, THE FEDERALIST 7 February 2024
Cameron Smith/The White House/Flickr
Joe Biden promised to veto any standalone aid bill for Israel, and Hakeem Jeffries and most House Democrats voted against one. The administration maintains that Israel’s security is so “sacred,” it must be tied to a doomed legislative package containing entirely unrelated issues that deal with border security and Ukrainian aid.
Which, of course, makes absolutely zero sense.
Does anyone believe that the president would veto a standalone bill for Ukrainian aid? Or what about a standalone bill for “humanitarian” aid to Palestinians? Color me skeptical. Now, a standalone border security bill? That he’d definitely veto. Priorities, you see.
In the years before Barack Obama, a vote to help a longtime ally against a proxy terror army that — not incidentally — murdered 30-plus American citizens would have been a no-brainer. Today, a Democrat who takes an unrepentantly pro-Israel position puts himself in a precarious position. Biden is free to play games with Israeli aid because there will be no political repercussions. Most Democrats don’t really care anymore. And those who do are in the pro-Hamas wing — whether openly or functionally.
“Forget No Labels. Biden’s Third-Party Peril is on the Left,” warns Politico. Numerous polls, writes Jonathan Martin, find that young leftists are angry about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Not the mass rape and murder of civilians, mind you, but Israel’s efforts to root out the attackers. Many of these people are socialist ideologues, many are identitarian dimwits, and others are just antisemites. Some, like members of the “squad,” are all of the above. Whatever the case, they are always “angry” at Israel. These are the people who were demanding “ceasefires” before Israel had even begun retaliating for Oct 7.
Still, the situation remains something of a balancing act for Biden. There are still enough Jewish Democrats and independents who feel a historic kinship with Israel. Enough that the president doesn’t attack Israel unequivocally. Like Obama before him, Biden uses Benjamin Netanyahu as a straw man, framing the prime minister as some kind of warmongering fascist.
Here’s a little-known reality: Right or left, Netanyahu or someone else, no Israeli prime minister would act any differently in Gaza. Israeli voters rightly demand it. Just as it would have been impossible to lead the United States after 9/11 on a plank that gave al Qaeda a pass, it would be impossible to hold power in Israel and allow Hamas to continue to operate next door.
Moreover, though Netanyahu might be a ruthless politician, he is an ideological moderate with a long record of liberal reforms in Israel. His biggest failure wasn’t acting too bellicose or authoritarian, but rather underestimating his country’s mortal enemies.
In any event, Biden acts like a statesman in public but simultaneously leaks angry quotes about Netanyahu to placate the growing anti-Israel left. Recently, for example, we learned that Biden supposedly called Israel’s prime minister a “bad f-cking guy.” (Notice that Democrats have tougher words for Israelis than they ever do for mullahs who murder Americans.)
This leak reminded me of the time in 2014 when Obama’s stenographer Jeffrey Goldberg “reported” that White House officials referred to Netanyahu as “chickensh-t.” Now I don’t mean to demean people like Ben Rhodes, who survived a creative writing MFA program at NYU, but Netanyahu did serve in the IDF, saw combat, and led a special force unit that specialized in freeing hijacked planes. Netanyahu was shot in one of these operations. So I’m going to go out on a limb and say he’s less of a coward than anonymous White House officials. Certainly, he is a better “guy” than the gaggle of Rob Malley types the president surrounds himself with.
A few weeks ago, good guy Biden was accusing Israel of engaging in “indiscriminate bombing,” which he knows is a lie. “Like everyone in the administration and any Democrat with a pulse,” Politico explains, Biden is “deeply suspicious of Benjamin Netanyahu.” The president’s “deep-seated fear,” we learn, is that Netanyahu “is eager to drag the U.S. into a wider war in the Middle East.”
This is the favorite blood libel of radical Democrats and far-right influencers. They must be quite excited to hear that the president is no longer “hypnotized” by Israel’s evil, as Ilhan Omar might say. Then again, not one American soldier has ever died, much less fought, for Israel (something we can’t say about Kuwaitis, Iraqis, Afghans, or the French, for that matter.) If anything, the U.S., especially during the Obama years, often restrained Israel from preemptively acting to weaken its enemies.
That said, the United States has no obligation to assist any nation — not even a longtime ally that shares our objectives and values. I suspect Democrats are probably a couple of presidential cycles away from turning entirely against Israel. Still, it is peculiar that the same people who are purportedly terrified of being dragged into a Middle East war by Israel have no deep-seated fears about the perils of funding a war against a nuclear power in Europe. On the contrary, Volodymyr Zelensky, who runs a country far more authoritarian (not to mention corrupt) than Netanyahu’s Israel, is treated as the sainted defender of democracy by Washington and the media.
It’s almost as if the arguments being used by Democrats to distance themselves from Israel don’t really make any sense.
Hi, Tanna
It’s refreshing, to see someone talking about the Kingdom of God. My wife and I usually begin our prayer sessions with the Lord’s Prayer:
“Our Father, which art in heaven, hallowed be Thy name.
Thy kingdom come; thy will be done on earth, as it is in heaven…
If we don’t do that, I know the tendency is to plunge ahead into asking for our daily bread, and much more.
I would prefer to see the Kingdom of God manifested in and around me, in place of the ruling structure we see nowadays. God’s ways are not harsh:
Micah
[8] He hath shewed thee, O man, what is good; and what doth (Yahweh) require of thee, but to do justly, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with thy God?
His kingdom WILL come; I don’t doubt this. For our part, we require faith, patience boldness and fearlessness; but we will never fall short for lack of FPV drones and 155 mm artillery rounds.
I’m glad you didn’t wreck your truck 🙂
Michael, I was listening to the news and heard this story while driving, thought I might wreck my truck, laughing. But here was my thought, Yeshua’s main teaching as recorded in the Christian scriptures is “Repent for the kingdom of God (governance of God) is at hand” and he once told the ruling elite of his day “who has warned you to flee from the wrath to come.” We can only hope, we live long enough to see the judgement of God come upon our ruling elite.
Unfortunately, the US has a President who literally is too mentally incompetent, to be held accountable for his actions — LITERALLY.
alternative answer: Because he’s a schmuck? 😀
Democrat Policies Aim to Destroy America and Israel
https://substack.com/home/post/p-141320324?source=queue
BY RON KAMPEAS FEBRUARY 7, 2024 6:29 PM
WASHINGTON (JTA) — As Congress debates various bills that would send emergency military aid to Israel, Jewish groups across the political spectrum have advocated for their passage.
But the push for aid ended up dividing those groups on another issue that often animates Jewish activism: immigration reform. Legacy Jewish groups parted ways over whether a compromise bill had gone too far in toughening America’s asylum system.
Israel and immigration — or border security — became linked when Republicans said they’d only support aid to Israel and Ukraine if it was paired with significant new U.S. immigration restrictions. A bipartisan group of senators proposed a bill to address both issues, providing aid for Israel and Ukraine and funds for protecting houses of worship while cracking down on an unprecedented flow of migrants across the U.S.-Mexico border. It also would have tightened the United States’ rules for seeking asylum.
The bill failed in the Senate on Wednesday, doomed by opposition from House Republicans and former President Donald Trump, the party’s likely presidential nominee, who said it did not go far enough. Standalone efforts to give Israel military aid have also failed in Congress.
But Trump wasn’t the only one to breathe a sigh of relief at the bill’s failure: He was joined by liberal Jewish groups that also opposed its immigration provisions — because they were too strict. As lawmakers determine their next steps, the debate has exposed fissures among Jewish groups on what to do when two issues that have historically tugged at Jewish heartstrings — supporting Israel and aiding refugees — clash on Capitol Hill.
Large Jewish organizations have historically pushed for increased rights for migrants, dating back to a period when Jews in peril sought the safety of U.S. shores. But in recent weeks, some of those groups embraced the compromise bill — including the Jewish Federations of North America, the Anti-Defamation league, and the American Jewish Committee.
“All bipartisan efforts require compromise,” a spokesman for the ADL told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency. The Senate bill, the spokesman said, “includes critical assistance to Israel and funding to protect Jewish and vulnerable communities at a time when we are facing historic threats.”
The spokesman added, referring to immigration, “We will continue to work with Congress to advocate for justice and fair treatment to all.”
Other Jewish organizations said that the aid to Israel was not worth the blow the package dealt to the asylum system and other American humanitarian policies. Those groups included the Reform movement, the National Council of Jewish Women, the Jewish Council for Public Affairs, the liberal rabbinic human rights group T’ruah and HIAS, the refugee aid agency and immigration advocacy group.
“It’s upsetting that there are some Jewish organizations that are willing to essentially sacrifice the asylum system in favor of getting short term foreign aid for Israel,” said Rabbi Jill Jacobs, the director of T’ruah.
Officials at the groups that rejected the bill said they were stunned that it was embraced by Jewish groups they had considered their allies.
“They don’t seem to realize that asylum is a Jewish issue, rooted in the lessons of the Holocaust as well as the Torah,” Mark Hetfield, the HIAS CEO, told JTA. “Assistance to Israel is crucial, but not at the expense of America’s commitment to refugee protection.”
Hetfield said he was equally angry at Democrats. “The Democrats compromised their values on human rights and asylum, moved the goalposts and got absolutely nothing in return,” he said.
The Senate bill would have severely narrowed the qualifications for asylum seekers. It would have shut down asylum processing and begun mass expulsions if the number of entries reached an average of 4,000 daily over a five day period, or 5,000 in any one day. The bill does not offer a path for citizenship to so-called “dreamers,” undocumented migrants who arrived as children, a component that was once a must-have for Democrats.
“We have significant concerns about the way the bill undermines our commitment to domestic and international asylum laws and revives some of the more extreme immigration policies seen in recent years,” Laura Frank, a spokeswoman for the Union for Reform Judaism, said in an email. “It also reflects Congress’s failure, yet again, to protect DREAMERs, young people who are particularly at risk.”
Republicans who opposed the bill said the caps were indicative that Biden and Democrats were not serious about stopping the illegal flow across the border. Stephen Miller, Trump’s top immigration policy adviser, who is Jewish, said on Fox News that the bill showed the “Biden policy: cross illegally, get resettled.”
The Jewish groups that backed the compromise emphasized its aid for Israel as well as for Ukraine, another country whose fight many Jewish groups have been outspoken in defending. An AJC letter urging senators to vote for the measure said it addressed “the urgent security needs of key allies, including Israel and Ukraine, as they face existential threats.”
“What is at stake in both conflicts will have rippling effects for generations to come, far beyond Israel and Ukraine,” the letter said. “American global leadership is more important now than ever before as both of these nations need the American government to unite the world against Hamas’s terrorism and Russia’s ongoing aggression.”
The Senate package — and the Jewish divisions over it — come as at least one group has deemphasized its immigration advocacy. A spokesman for the Jewish Federations said the umbrella body is no longer active on the issue. Its predecessors of decades past, however, were at the forefront of immigration advocacy well into the post-World War II period, when they sought to remove discriminatory measures that affected not just Jews but other minorities.
In 2010, AJC was at the forefront of Jewish advocacy for a reform effort that would have facilitated citizenship for “dreamers” under then-President Barack Obama. The AJC letter about the Senate bill also referenced its immigration portion, saying that the group supports “immigration solutions that meet both the economic and national security needs of our country, while upholding our international obligations and shared American values of justice, equal opportunity, and respect for the human rights and dignity of all people.”
Amy Spitalnick, the JCPA CEO, said Jewish groups should be more conscious of how bigotry against immigrants dovetails with antisemitism. She noted that antisemitic tropes played a part in another recent vote, the failed impeachment Tuesday of Jewish Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, which many Jewish groups opposed in part because of the antisemitic tropes leveled against Mayorkas.
“If we don’t realize the ways in which the fundamental rights and dignity of immigrants are inextricably linked with Jewish safety, both because we of course, once were immigrants, and some of us still are, and also the ways in which antisemitism and anti-immigrant hate have been inextricably linked over the last few years in our politics,” she said. “We’re missing the broader dynamics of the moment and how they make all of us less safe.”
https://www.jta.org/newyork
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My comment: This isn’t just fringe leftwing anti-Israel groups like “Jewish Voice for Peace.” Many American Jews fetishize and universalize Emma Lazarus’ poem*. I remember having arguments with Orthodox Jews even about the flood of Syrian Muslim immigration under Obama. and again, under Trump.
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*””Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free.” These iconic words from “The New Colossus,” the 1883 poem written by American Emma Lazarus etched in bronze and mounted on the Statue of Liberty’s pedestal, have again been catapulted into a heated political debate on immigration.
“The story behind ‘The New Colossus’ poem on the Statue of Liberty and how it became a symbol of immigration
The poem has again been catapulted into a heated debate on immigration.
ByDeena Zaru
August 14, 2019, 4:49 AM
https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/story-colossus-poem-statue-liberty-symbol-immigration/story?id=64931545#:~:text=%22Give%20me%20your%20tired%2C%20your,heated%20political%20debate%20on%20immigration.