This well-known photo was taken by an AP photographer of me and my three children over 25 years ago in Washington D.C. at a pro-Israel rally.
Barry Shaw – A View from Israel
Biden’s Blunders. Day One.
In a knee-jerk reaction to remove anything linked to Donald Trump, newly elected President Biden took out his pen and reversed several rulings that will negatively impact every American citizen.
With a stroke of his pen, Biden cancelled the Keystone pipeline. Result? The loss of over eleven thousand jobs. As his Transportation Secretary and former small-town mayor, Pete Buttigieg contemptuously said, in so many words, “No big deal. Let them find other jobs.”
But when Biden followed up by imposing a moratorium on new oil and gas drilling, including fracking, on federal land, this will effectively wipe out thousands more jobs in key states dependent on the oil industry.
The loss to the American economy will run into billions of dollars in oil and gas exports, higher gas prices to every American household. The loss of so many jobs will impoverish thousands of households.
The resulting rise in unemployment at a time of stringent pandemic lockdowns will clash with yet another of Biden’s blunders.
Biden’s Executive Order to open the southern border permitting tens of thousands, potentially millions, of undocumented and unverified economic migrants from central America to freely enter America at a time of rising unemployment and desperation within America, will inevitably exacerbate the sinking job market and local economies.
While American citizens are being ordered to lose their jobs and to lock themselves into their homes, Biden is opening the southern gates of America and welcoming an unlimited number of undocumented migrants to enter the country in search of cheap jobs and American welfare benefits.
This can only result in an economic crisis of national proportions. Add to this Biden’s order for a $15 minimum wage. Whoever dreamed up that combination of unfolding events clearly does not understand economics or sociology.
Would this minimum wage apply to agricultural labor? How much would that add to America’s food bill?
Has Biden, or his advisers, taken into consideration that the first Americans to be negatively impacted by a tsunami of economic migrants will be the African-Americans and minorities that Biden’s election campaign promised to protect?
Obviously not.
These newly imported workers will take the place of American low wage earners in agriculture, the packing and restaurant industries, and other local low wage jobs? It is clear that Biden paid no heed to the inevitable friction that is bound to cause with his ill-conceived Executive Order.
Another consideration ignored by Biden is the impact on the current pandemic by the mass import of thousands of migrants sweeping into America. The juxtaposition of imposing limits to people flying into America in the name of public health and an unbridled and unchecked mass migration arriving on foot through the southern border is dangerously foolhardy.
The result of this blunder will inevitably lead to yet another spike in infections that America can ill afford, plus the potential of friction and a rise in violent crimes.
And the issue of violent crimes brings me to the final Biden blunder.
His pen-stroke that halted the deportation of thousands of criminal illegal immigrants was soaked in the blood of innocent Americans murdered and maimed by criminal immigrants included the notorious MS-13 gang members and drug dealers who have torn a hole in the soul of inner cities and have impacted the lives of their victims.
It raises the question. Why was this such an urgent high priority for President Biden on Day One and during a pandemic?
On its face, Biden seemed to be putting his moral force behind illegal migrants above the interests of American citizens.
And It was horrific to see Biden’s Press Secretary, Jan Psaki, smilingly wave off a critical question by saying, “The wall did not work, even to keep bad actors out.” Wrong!
The Press Secretary lied to the American people.
Biden’s first act has made America less safe. It has made American citizens second class citizens with urgent preference given to foreigners and imported criminals.
While they are locked out of their businesses and jobs and into their homes, the criminal migrants within America, already protected by sanctuary cities and liberal judges have received the green light to remain in America and continue their life of crime knowing the threat of deportation has been lifted off their shoulders.
A sociological Biden blunder was his Executive Order forcing sports organizations to accept transgender males into girls and women’s sports. Whereas transgender women are unlikely to impact the top levels of male sports transgender males will be at a physiological advantage at all levels of female sports. As gay men and lesbian athletes continue to try and find their place in sports their efforts to highlight their cause will be dimmed when the controversial participation of trans-males in top level women’s events will be spotlighted in televised domestic and international events, including championships and Olympic Games.
Indeed, the gay and lesbian committees have been at the forefront is voicing their opposition to the intrusion of trans people into gender sports. They feel that trans sportspeople should have their own categories. It is puzzling why the MeToo Movement is not rushing to support the protests of sporting girls and women. They will be forced to do so as this controversial issue continues to develop.
This will be an issue that will bite Biden throughout his presidency. It will highlight what former intelligence analyst, Robert Gates, once said. That Biden has been wrong on almost every issue throughout his political career.
And this was only Day One.
Barry Shaw. The View from Israel.
How the Biden Administration Will Impact Israel and the Middle East.
Anthony Blinken is the incoming US Secretary of State. The State Department executes American foreign policy.
Blinken was Obama’s Deputy Secretary of State. Out of office, he founded a strategic consultancy firm called West Exec Advisors. They represented global corporations, foreign governments, gain access to the White House and top Government officials. His website boasted that “West Exec conveys our shared commitment to our country, to each other, and to our clients.”
Anthony Blinken reflects what Trump euphemistically called “the Washington Swamp.”
In office, Blinken made human rights a cornerstone in formulating foreign policy. Let’s see how that worked out;
Libya. Under Hillary Clinton and Obama and Biden in the White House, a decision was made to remove Muammar Gaddafi from power and let the Libyan people set their own destiny. This, despite the fact that Gaddafi had renounced his nuclear ambitions and was reaching out to the West. In 2011, The United States led a NATO military attack against Libya on the pretext of “protecting civilians and civilian populated areas under threat of attack.”
The result was a disaster. Gaddafi was deposed and killed, Libya descended into a warring hellhole of rival Islamist and nationalist groups, and Ambassador Stephens was murdered at the Benghazi US Consulate. The State Department failed to rescue the ambassador and his security team. When news of their fate was released, Blinken’s State Department employed a fake human rights story to cover up their fatal failure by blaming the assault on a bunch of protester angry at an amateur video that insulted Islam. And the person who went on TV to sell that fabrication, Susan Rice, has been rewarded with a White House appointment running domestic policy.
The “Arab Spring.” As protests spread across the Muslim world against corrupt leaders, the State Department celebrated it as a positive expression of human rights. They called it the Arab Spring. In Israel, strategic experts, who understand the undercurrents of the Muslim world, told American and European diplomats, “You’ve got your seasons wrong. This is the start of the Islamic Winter.”
As protests grew in Egypt, Blinken, then Vice President Joe Biden’s national security adviser, and others urged Obama to get “on the right side of history” by supporting the Muslim Brotherhood.
The Muslim Brotherhood had hijacked students’ peaceful protests and violently targeted the police and government institutions that eventually toppled Mubarak’s regime. They imprisoned thousands and, in less than two years, had ruined Egypt’s economy driving millions into poverty.
The Obama Administration and State Department failed to feel the mood of the Egyptian people. One month after Mohamed Morsi, the Islamist Muslim Brotherhood leader, was sworn in as Egyptian President, protesters pelted Clinton’s motorcade with tomatoes during her July 2012 visit to Cairo.
The army, under General al-Sisi, staged a popular coup. They arrested the Muslim Brotherhood leadership, restored law and order, and begin to forge a more stable Egypt.
This did not sit well with Obama who said of America’s response to Sisi’s popular victory, “We can’t be seen as aiding and abetting actions we think run contrary to our values and ideals.”
US military aid to Egypt was stopped. It led to a divide between the White House, the State Department and a Defense Department that advocated maintaining US aid to Egypt.
By 2015, General Sisi had reached out to Russia for a large military aid program to be paid by Saudi Arabia and the UAE, Egypt’s allies in the region. Obama’s team wilted and renewed US military aid to Egypt. Sisi celebrated by flying the first delivery of American F-16s over Cairo. A triumphant gesture perceived in Egypt as Sisi’s victory over Obama.
Syria. By the fall of 2013, Syria had plunged into a sectarian civil war and Assad was slaughtering his people with chemical weapons. Obama threatened Assad against using such weapons. A deal was struck to remove chemical reserves from Syria.
Blinken, as Deputy Secretary of State under John Kerry, said, “Imagine what Syria would look like without that deal. It would be awash in chemical weapons, which would fall into the hands of ISIS, Al Nusra or other groups.”
He may have been right, but that did not stop the devious Assad from inflicting a sarin attack, killing an estimated 80 civilians. Obama was tested but failed to respond.
“We always knew we had not gotten everything,” Blinken admitted.
It took President Trump to punish Assad when he launched combined attacks in 2016 and 2017 destroying Syria’s chemical weapon facilities. Obama blinked. Trump acted.
Iran. If human rights were a cornerstone of the Obama Administration, it was sadly missing when it came to Iran. When mass protests erupted across Iran, Obama kept silent. The State Department in which Blinken served failed to stand affirmatively with the Iranian protesters. The opposition Green Movement was brutally crushed and has never been reconstituted. Instead, they bent over backward to appease the Tehran leadership with a highly criticized nuclear deal cemented by the delivery of $150 Billion that enabled the Republic Guard to brutally advance Iranian hegemony across the Middle East and down into Yemen.
This issue is the most consequential one for Israel with Iran spreading its hegemony and forward bases throughout the Middle East. In 2020 alone, Israel launched over 500 attacks against Iranian bases and weapon storage facilities in Syria.
Israel insists that the new Administration keep the chokehold on the Iranian economy but this is hardly likely after Biden selected Wendy Sherman to be his Deputy Secretary of State. She waso ne of the principle architects of the disastrous 2015 nuclear deal.
There is nothing that gives us hope that Blinken will maintain Trump’s tough stance on Tehran.
Israel and the Palestinian Problem. Donald Trump has been the most pro-Israel president since Harry Truman. His achievements have been many and Trump’s Abraham Accord initiative is sufficient reason to reward him with a Nobel Peace Prize. That is a hard act to follow and it is doubtful that Blinken can help Biden achieve that status, not with Biden’s declared aim of refunding an unapologetic Palestinian Authority that continues to promote their ‘Pay to Slay” policy which rewards their killers. This despite the Taylor Force Act, named after an American stabbed to death by a rampaging Palestinian on Tel Aviv’s beachfront, a bill introduced by President Trump to disincentivize the PA from this heinous policy.
The Democrat Manifesto also declared it would reopen the PA Washington bureau and the US consulate in Jerusalem to serve Palestinians, despite having a new Embassy there, thanks to Trump. All this with no demand for the Palestinians to desist from promoting terror and instead recognize Israel’s right to exist.
Former Defense Secretary, Robert Gates, said of Biden, “I think he has been wrong on nearly every major foreign policy and national security issue over the past four decades.”
By default, one can say the same about Anthony Blinken. Policy meetings took place in the White House Situation Room in which Anthony Blinken participated. The results were poor.
Blinken, as US Secretary of State, must insist that Iran removes its powerful precision missiles from Syria, Lebanon and Yemen. A nuclear Iran poses an existential threat to the existence of Israel, but the presence of these lethal weapons pose an immediate danger to Israeli civilian centers and vital infrastructure.
Perhaps Blinken can spend the next four years trying to convince the Palestinian leadership to change its behavior and ideology, and recognize and normalize their relationship with Israel, as moderate Arab and Muslim states have done, rather than push Israel into a corner, because peace with the Palestinians is impossible without it.
Foreign Policy for America is an influential policy advocacy group in Washington. They push their foreign policy proposals into Congress and the White House. They have some disturbing perspectives on Israel.
Avril Haines, Biden’s CIA Chief, and others signed a public letter earlier in 2020 urging the Democratic Party to adopt a more pro-Palestinian language in its platform. By pro-Palestinian Haines did not clarify if the language should be that of the PLO, Hamas, or Islamic Jihad in Gaza. If she means the language of the Palestinian Authority, it is an aggressive anti-Israel language back by violence and shared by other malevolent Palestinian factions.
Equally troubling is that Jeremy Ben Ami, the founder of JStreet, a Jewish group with the overriding policy of creating a Palestinian state on unacceptable (for Israel) 1967 borders, sits on the FPA board of directors to impose his views onto Israel. He sees Israel as the obstacle to peace, not PA rejectionism, nor Hamas denial of the right of Israel to exist.
The Foreign Policy for America section on the ‘Israel-Palestinian Conflict’ is copy-paste drawn from JStreet literature. It includes tips on how to persuade Congress to be more sympathetic to the Palestinians, and angry against the Israeli Government.
FPA published a history of the conflict. According to them it began in 1949. They conveniently forgot that Arabs have been murdering Jews since the 1920s.
The Oslo Accords was ruined, they say, “by growing settlements in the West Bank, continued Israeli military presence, and a blockage on Gaza.” No mention of decades of Palestinian terrorism, rockets and suicide attacks. Nor does it mention incessant anti-Semitic rhetoric and incitement, and a stubborn refusal to accept a Jewish presence in Judea & Samaria or in the Jewish state anywhere.
FPA avoids mention of the ultimate Palestinian ambition of a state “from the River to the Sea” as if it doesn’t exist. And their top personnel are moving into decisive positions in the Biden Administration.
Democrat anti-Israel activists have seeped into the Biden White House.
Reema Dodin has been an apologist for Palestinian suicide bombers. She is the Deputy Director of the White House Office for Legislative Affairs. She is alleged to have blamed the 9/11 attacks on US support for Israel, and she supported the anti-Israel BDS Movement.
Karen Jean-Pierre was selected to be the White House Deputy Press Secretary. She was the national spokesperson for the George Soros-sponsored anti-Israel MoveOn.org. She has accused Israel of “war crimes,” called AIPAC “severely racist” for supporting Israel against Palestinian terrorism, and praised Democrats who wimped out of attending the last AIPAC annual conference.
Jeremy Ben Ami tweeted this is “Exactly the type of leadership this country deserves.”
As their agenda unfolds, Israel must be prepared for cold winds to blow in our direction under such a Biden Administration.
Barry Shaw is the International Public Diplomacy Director at the Israel Institute for Strategic Studies. He is the author of many books including ‘Fighting Hamas, BDS & Anti-Semitism’ and 1917. From Palestine to the Land of Israel.’
