While Joe Biden and his administration don’t yet hold a candle to Barack Obama and his inexcusable treatment of Israel while fawning over the poor, put-upon Palestinians, they’re getting damn close. In a keynote speech to the anti-Israel group, J Street on Sunday, Secretary of State Antony Blinken declared that the Palestinians have an equal claim to Israel’s capital of Jerusalem, raising GOP eyebrows.
And that was just for starters.
During his remarks to J Street, Blinken called the group a “remarkable organization.” But others have criticized the group for its anti-Semitic positions and the company it keeps, including Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas.
Over the years Abbas has blamed the Holocaust not on anti-Semitism and Adolf Hitler’s Nazis, but instead on “the behavior of Jews.” And in 2015, Abbas opined that “Al-Aqsa [Mosque] is ours, and they [the Jews] have no right to defile it with their filthy feet.” Get the picture of J Street and its pals? Blinken didn’t say a word about any of it.
As reported by the Washington Free Beacon, Blinken did say that while the Biden administration “continues to recognize Jerusalem as Israel’s capital,” it is “central to the national visions of both Palestinians and Israelis, and must be a city for all of its people.” To that end, Blinken touted the administration’s “renewed engagement” with the Palestinians, including nearly $1 billion in U.S. taxpayer aid.
To suggest that no U.S. taxpayer money handed to the Palestinian Authority will end up in the hands of Islamist terrorist groups Hamas and Hezbollah, both of which are committed to the destruction of Israel, would be naive as hell — or lying.
As you might recall, multiple anti-Israel groups and most of the Democrat Party were passionately opposed to former President Donald Trump’s recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s undivided capital, with J Street calling it “a reckless decision that brings with it no tangible benefits.”
One would be right to ask if the unification of Jerusalem brought no “tangible benefits” to anyone, why did the Islamists — and the Democrat Party — oppose it so strongly?
Blinken, at one point in his speech Sunday, pledged to “unequivocally oppose” Israeli “incitement of violence.”
“[The Biden administration will] unequivocally oppose any acts that undermine the prospects of a two-state solution, including, but not limited to, [Israeli] settlement expansion; moves toward annexation of the West Bank; disruption to the historic status quo at holy sites; demolitions and evictions; and incitement to violence.”
I missed the part where Blinken also pledged to unequivocally oppose Palestinian violence, including indiscriminately firing missiles into Israeli civilian areas.
Texas Senator Ted Cruz was not amused by Blinken’s pandering address to J Street, telling the Free Beacon that Blinken’s comments were an effort by the Biden administration to “elevate Palestinian claims” to Jerusalem.
“The Biden administration is committed to leveling the claims between the Palestinians and Israel to Jerusalem, Israel’s eternal and unified capital. If they could move our embassy out of Jerusalem they would, but they’re not prepared to pay the political price that would incur. So instead, they intend to elevate the Palestinian claims, most notably by trying to open a Palestinian-facing consulate in the city. It’s both predictable and abhorrent.”
Ted’s right. Predictable and abhorrent, for sure– and a shot in the arm of the Palestinians and militant Islamist organizations committed to “drive the Jews who live in their midst into the sea.”
Following Blinken’s speech, the activist group, already a longtime critic of incoming Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu, doubled down on its anti-Netanyahu agenda, as noted by the Free Beacon, writing in a Monday fundraising pitch that “with right-wing extremists coming to power in Israel and threatening to ramp up settlement construction, crack down on Palestinian rights, and undermine Israel’s own democratic institutions, J Street’s mission is more urgent than ever.”
The Bottom Line
So, let’s recap. As Ted Cruz suggested, Biden and the Democrats would likely move the U.S. embassy back to Tel Aviv in a heartbeat if they didn’t think they’d suffer in the polls-and ultimately pay a serious price with the loss of independent voters and “light blue” Democrats.
But, as is often the case with the left, Democrats want it both ways–supporting Jerusalem as the capital of the Jewish State [wink-wink], while kicking a cool billion dollars of U.S. taxpayer money to the Palestinians, and God only knowing where a sizeable chunk or two of that ends up. The administration’s fawning over anti-Israel J Street will continue.
