Biden-Blinken Act II in the Middle East

Will Israel remain an Independent Nation-State?

Politics plays a part of all foreign and domestic policy decisions as a matter of fact.   What is “right” to do or in the “national interest” to do is always just one of the main reasons why leaders make policy decisions.  That much has been clear at least since Machiavelli created the modern world, if not millennia before that.  Staying in power is a politician’s main goal since, in their eyes, he or she is best for the country, city, town, village, etc.

However, what the pundits think is not always right.  As we have seen over the last few decades in the West, they are often dead wrong.  That is what we are seeing here regarding the Biden-Blinken middle east policy.  But let’s look at Ukraine first, as background.

Holman Jenkins, truth revealer extraordinaire for the WSJ (whether you agree with him or not is not the point, he always cuts through all the narratives to get at the actual truth) in a recent piece in the WSJ editorial page clarified the Biden Ukraine policy for all who are interested, without the partisan fog.  Contrary to the natural course of things in the US, Speaker Johnson decided he had to take control of this urgent foreign policy issue in spite of, as Jenkins pointed out,  “Republicans [becoming] co-owners of a Biden policy they don’t control, which they understand perfectly well points to a messy outcome, neither victory nor defeat in Ukraine”. 

Jenkins has been pointing out for quite awhile what is obvious to all that Biden wants to “[h]elp Ukraine defend itself but not too well”.

From the days before Putin invaded Ukraine until a few days after, it was pretty clear that Biden-Blinken were not interested in any Ukrainian victory but would have preferred, if not a defeat, at least a negotiated solution that appeased Putin enough to lay off the Baltic countries and Moldova - for awhile, at least.

The general narrative that Biden-Blinken of course want spoken is that they have been pro-Ukraine while the Trump Republicans have been the stumbling block to a Ukrainian victory.  Trump of course has not discouraged this view but the administration used Trump’s opposition to mask their real policy -a Ukraine that is partially under Russian control (Donbas, etc.) and only nominally independent. 

Which brings us back to the middle east.  The generally accepted narrative in the press and elsewhere is that Biden-Blinken want Israel to defeat Hamas however, in order to get the Dearborn, Michigan votes they need in that swing state they are willing to delay Israel’s victory.  They need to appear to hold Israel at bay and to parrot the Islamic line that Israel is starving innocent Gazans and denying the legitimate rights of Palestinians in the West Bank, too.   That is why, the narrative goes, they emphasize the number of aid trucks heading into Gaza, why the administration has all but demanded that Prime Minister Netanyahu resign, that Blinken and State have veto power over any Israeli ground offensive, and the US starts to delegitimize the Israeli presence in the West Bank by treating Israel, not as a democratic country under the rule of law, but as they would any criminal country by sanctioning soldiers who serve there.

But what if accepted narrative is wrong?  What if the real goal of a second Biden administration is the delegitimization of not only the Israeli presence on the West but the country’s political and judicial system?  What if the true policy is, like the one Jenkins pointed out in the Ukraine, to create a smaller, semi-independent country whose every move needs the approval of the US State Department?  What if the goal of the administration is the Progressivization of Israeli policy where it accepts that it is an “illegitimate settler-colonialist state” whose Jewish population is allowed to stay in Israel for “humanitarian” reasons in spite of the fact that it has no moral or legal right to the land?

What if the “pro-Israel” part of their policy is to appease enough Jewish voters to vote Biden and Democrat? New York and California most certainly won’t go red but what about Pennsylvania? There are around 300,000 voting age Jews in that swing state that Biden won by just 80,000 votes.  Assuming he won 80% of the Jewish vote as was the case with the rest of the country that is 240,000 votes.  If that drops to just 60% that takes away 75% of Biden’s margin of victory.  Too close for comfort.   Pennsylvania is not the only swing state with Jewish voters.

Does that seem out of line with what has been going on in the State Department and  in the Democratic party today?  

You will say, but what about the many billions in arms that the US is giving and selling to Israel?  Is that not proof that its overall policy is pro-Israel and that the pro-Hamas side is just for election purposes?  Well, I would say that the arms deals are part of the pro-Arab argument because the official statements of Biden-Blinken & Co. are that the US will forever help Israel defend itself from attack.   Israel clearly needs technological superiority to defend itself from attack.  The Iran attack last week proved that.

However, the Biden-Blinken policy from the start has been defense with no offense.   The Administration sent US Army brass to try to convince the IDF that a ground incursion into Gaza would be too costly to Israel and the veto the US has had on both Rafah (so far) and the north amounts to allowing Israel’s enemies to survive and even thrive so long as Israel can “defend itself”.  Biden’s “take the win” after the massive Iranian attack is just the same.  If we remember the famous “red-line” question that Biden was asked, he stated clearly that he would never prevent Israel from defending itself, would never stop shipment of Iron Dome missiles.  The Iron Dome has, as we know no offensive capabilities.

The point is what to expect regarding the middle east in a second Biden administration?  If Biden is appearing pro-Israel in order to get the Jewish vote, as opposed to appearing sympathetic to the Palestinian-Hamas cause in order to get Arab votes in Michigan then we can expect a resort to the original Rogers Plan from the Nixon administration to force Israel to compromise its security “for its own sake”.  

The delegitimization of Israel as a fully independent nation-state with rights like every other has begun under the Biden Administration.  If this continues into a second administration then Israel might be forced into a purely defensive posture with no offensive opportunities against the terrorist organizations in Gaza, the West Bank, Lebanon, Syria or Iran. 

Israel, in this view, will have the ability to defend itself but never through offensive actions. 

Sports enthusiasts know well what this means.