President Biden’s War

Editorial of The New York Sun | May 19, 2021 @ The New York Sun

It’s hard to recall a more obnoxious phone call between an American leader and an Israeli premier than President Biden’s today with Benjamin Netanyahu. The White House says that Mr. Biden “conveyed to the Prime Minister that he expected a significant de-escalation today on the path to a ceasefire.” Bibi promptly issued a statement saying that he is “determined to continue the operation until its objective is achieved.”

How could Mr. Biden have expected anything else? Privately the call may have been more cordial than the public readout. Mr. Biden’s condescension, though, reminds us of a courtesy call Prime Minister Begin once paid to our Foreign Relations Committee. When a senator banged the table and threatened to cut off our aid over the issue of settlements, Begin reminded him of Israel’s 3,700 years of civilization and warned him against threatening the Jewish state “to give up our principles.”

The Senator — Mr. Biden, of course — made the same kind of mistake today. It was no surprise that Mr. Netanyahu called him on it. Israel has stood fast under a barrage against its population centers of more than 3,400 rockets. On what basis could Mr. Biden have been expecting a de-escalation by Israel? Mr. Netanyahu issued a statement saying he would press the attack until “quiet and security” is restored to “citizens of Israel.”

Just such quiet and security was, let us note, being enjoyed by Israelis only a few months ago. Such quiet had abided through President Trump’s four years in office. Mr. Trump launched his Mideast démarche with a visit to Saudi Arabia. He went to Jerusalem for his next stop. He soon moved our embassy to Jerusalem, in a bow to Congress, which had, in 1995, enacted, by a near unanimous vote, the law requiring the embassy move.

That statecraft was a rebuff by both Mr. Trump and Congress to the State Department’s long-held view that Jerusalem should be saved for “final status” negotiations. Instead, Mr. Trump and Congress understood that failing to move the embassy was an incentive to the Arabs to fight. After the embassy was moved, peace, in the form of the Abraham Accords, began to prosper, while pressure was kept on Iran.

Mr. Trump curtailed funding to the Palestinians, closed their office in Washington, and backed off our support for the United Nations Relief and Works Agency, which has nursed Palestinian Arab grievances for decades. Yet once in office, Mr. Biden began reversing those moves — or, in the case of the Palestinians, announcing plans to do so. In a gesture of appeasement, South Korea agreed to unfreeze for Iran a billion dollars in assets it had frozen.

The thing to remember here is that Hamas, which launched this war, is controlled by Iran, to which Mr. Biden has been signaling he wants to turn his attention. This is what appeasement looks like, and the war we are seeing today is the kind of fruit that appeasement bears. It is not hard to imagine that it will come to be known as the Biden war, triggered not by his intentions but by his folly.

The most amazing example of which might well be President Biden’s encounter, yesterday on the tarmac at Detroit, with Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib. A fellow Democrat, she confronted Mr. Biden over the war and, according to NPR’s report, echoed an earlier speech in which she accused Israel of “racism” and running an “apartheid system.” Mr. Biden later said of Ms. Tlaib, “God thank you for being a fighter.” How in the world will that help de-escalate the war?