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FOREIGN POLICY

Is Israel an ally? Biden’s administration is unclear on that one By Andrea Widburg

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2021/02/is_israel_an_ally_bidens_administration_is_unclear_on_that_one.html

Israel has been America’s staunch ally going back to the Cold War. Additionally, as a friendly nation that has been genocidally besieged by the anti-American, anti-Semitic bullies in its neighborhood, America felt the good guy’s responsibility to help Israel protect herself. Beginning in 1979 with the Iranian Revolution, Israel and America also shared a common enemy: radical Islam. But none of that matters to Joe Biden, who’s long been hostile to Israel and is following Obama’s delusional effort to make nice with Iran.

Biden has never liked Israel. Moreover, he shares Obama’s dislike for Netanyahu, something demonstrated by his refusing to talk to Netanyahu since entering office.

With Jews who are Democrats showing decreasing support for Israel, that made the campaign easier for Biden. Democrats, rather than supporting the Abraham Accords, which are causing peace to break out across the Middle East, resented the fact that Trump was able to broker the accords by circumventing the totalitarian and genocidal Palestinians, rather than pandering to them.

As the election drew near, confident that Democrat Jews’ loathing for Trump overrode any residual love for Israel, Biden became more openly hostile to Israel. In August, the Washington Post summed up Biden’s Israel policy as a morally muscular opposition to Trump’s unwavering support for Israel and the peace deals he was making by ignoring the Palestinians, who have proven themselves incapable of self-governance in both Gaza and the West Bank:

“The new UAE-Israel announcement does not just normalize bilateral relations between the two countries, which have existed barely under the table for many years,” wrote Khaled Elgindy, a senior fellow at the Middle East Institute. “For Palestinians, it also helps to normalize (if not actually reward) Israel’s occupation.”

Biden’s Pentagon ‘review’ falls short to deter communist Chinese By Robert L. Maginnis

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2021/02/bidens_pentagon_review_falls_short_to_deter_communist_chinese.html

On Wednesday, President Joe Biden visited the Pentagon to launch a review of how the U.S. military is postured to deter China in the Pacific.  Given the president’s statements concerning China, it is clear he doesn’t understand the existential threat posed by our Chinese enemy.

Mr. Biden totally misses Beijing’s threat because his “review” falls terribly short of the mark.  His worldview is naïve and shortsighted, and he fails to recognize that the Communist Chinese truly intend to conquer the world.  Indeed, Beijing seeks to destroy America — every aspect of our country and, by association, Western civilization.  We need to review and then act upon all aspects of our relations with that totalitarian regime or risk our future: trade, military, technology, cyber, ideological, media, geopolitical, and more.

There is no doubt that Beijing’s ultimate goal is to have the Middle Kingdom sitting atop the entire world.   Yes, Chinese President Xi Jinping and his communist puppets are worse than past dictators and on steroids. 

China’s Xi is a modern-day wannabe emperor, and he has taken steps to prepare China for global dominance through every means available — the Belt & Road Initiative and rapidly growing the world’s largest military, among others, and soon China will be the world’s largest economy. 

Meanwhile, the U.S. response to this threat is too little, too late.  Back at the Pentagon, Mr. Biden with Vice President Kamala Harris at his side called for a posture review to help “chart a strong path forward on China related matters.”

Iran nuclear program presents new challenges By Lawrence J. Haas

https://thehill.com/opinion/international/538409-iran-nuclear-program-presents-new-challenges

“If they want Iran to return to its commitments,” Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ali Khamenei, declared this week about the 2015 global nuclear agreement, “the United States must lift all sanctions in practice.”

Hours later, President Biden told CBS News that he will not lift sanctions until Iran agrees to abide by the agreement’s restrictions on uranium enrichment, enriched stockpiles, and related activities.

To be sure, the dueling statements may overstate the clash between Washington and Tehran over the agreement, officially known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) — from which President Trump withdrew in 2018 and which Tehran has begun to violate in increasingly brazen fashion.

Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif quickly walked back Khamenei’s absolutist demand, and U.S. officials are mulling whether to propose small concessions from each side to set the stage for new talks over Iran’s nuclear program.

Nevertheless, Iran’s nuclear progress of recent weeks — combined with the emerging political dynamics in and between Washington, Tehran, Jerusalem, and Europe — could leave the issue where it has lingered for years: with Tehran working both out front and clandestinely to build the architecture of a nuclear weapons program, and Washington and its allies desperate to find a peaceful way to stop it.

China in Focus (Feb. 11): Biden’s First Phone Call With China’s Xi Jinping By Tiffany Meier

https://www.theepochtimes.com/china-in-focus-feb-11-bidens-first-phone-call-with-chinas-xi-jinping_3694187.html

President Joe Biden speaks with Chinese Communist Party head Xi Jinping for the first time. We take a look at what Biden did in his first three weeks for U.S.-China policy.

Mandatory vaccinations are required for citizens in one Chinese city. But authorities are keeping quiet about possible side effects.

British television station BBC is banned from airing in China in a new form of retaliation from Beijing.

And a Canadian visa application center in Beijing could be run by Chinese police—putting citizens’ personal information at risk.

Subscribe to our YouTube channel for more first-hand news from China.
For more news and videos, please visit our website and Twitter.

Follow Tiffany on Twitter: @tiffanymeier_

Palestinians: More Corruption as Biden Resumes Financial Aid by Bassam Tawil

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/17042/palestinians-corruption-financial-aid

The assumption that renewed financial aid would lead the Palestinian leadership to make “concessions” has proven, over the past three decades, to be completely baseless. Anyone in the Biden administration who thinks that the Palestinian leadership would make real “concessions” to Israel in return for hundreds of millions of dollars is living under an illusion.

Last year, the Palestinians rejected Trump’s $50 billion Middle East economic plan that would create a global investment fund to lift the Palestinian and Arab state economies. The Palestinians dubbed it an “attempted bribe.”

The “innocent Palestinians” the Biden administration is talking about would undoubtedly be happy to receive financial aid from the US or the European Union. These Palestinians, however, are concerned that their leaders will continue to deprive them of the financial aid, and that the money, ever-fungible, would, as usual, just end up in the pockets of Palestinian leaders as well as to incentivizing murder for “pay-for-slay” terrorists.

A recent public opinion poll showed that a majority of Palestinians are still worried about the corruption of their leaders, especially the Palestinian Authority.

The majority of Palestinians believe that corruption is concentrated among senior public sector employees, particularly in the executive public institutions (the ministries, the presidency and the security services). The Palestinians continue to believe that senior employees are the most corrupt individuals among the Palestinians.

All this means that, if and when the general elections take place, Hamas is well on its way to score another easy victory.

The message that the findings send to the Biden administration and other Western donors: The funds you are sending to Palestinian leaders are being stolen. If you want to send money, you must ensure that the money does not end up in the private bank accounts of Palestinian leaders.

If, as the poll shows, a majority of Palestinians continue to see their leaders as corrupt, this means that Abbas’s rivals in Hamas are again likely to win the vote.

Ignoring rampant corruption in the Palestinian Authority (PA), the US administration of President Joe Biden says it is preparing to resume unconditional financial aid to the Palestinians.

“The suspension of aid to the Palestinian people has neither produced political progress nor secured concessions from the Palestinian leadership,” US State Department Spokesman Ned Price said at a press briefing earlier this month. “It has only harmed innocent Palestinians.”

Biden’s appeasement of Iran begins Paul Mirengoff

https://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2021/02/bidens-appeasement-of-iran-begins.php

Joe Biden is determined to appease Iran, and the appeasement has already commenced. Its public manifestation centers now on Yemen, and the Houthi rebels there.

The Houthis have long received considerable Iranian financial and military support, including in recent years cruise missiles and drones. They have used Iranian weaponry not just against the government of Yemen, but also against Saudi Arabia and the UAE, Iran’s arch enemies and allies of the U.S.

Thus, as John Bolton says, the Houthis are a threat to the oil-producing Gulf monarchies. As is Iran, of course.

Bolton explains:

In effect, Iran is trying to encircle its Arab enemies, chief among them Saudi Arabia, by installing a friendly regime in their backyard. Among the Arabian Peninsula states, Yemen is the poorest and most notably the only one without oil. Armed conflict and political hostility are the rule, not the exception, there.

The Trump administration recognized the threat posed by the Houthis, but didn’t do much about it. According to Bolton, direct U.S. involvement in the Yemen conflict ended with the 2018 suspension of in-flight refueling of Saudi air operations in Yemen. And Trump didn’t designate the Houthis as terrorists until his last day in office.

Team Biden may wish Trump had done more. That way, the new administration could more dramatically signal its willingness to back Iranian interests and sell out Saudi Arabia.

President Biden and the Muslim Brotherhood Trap Ambassador (Ret.) Yoram Ettinger

https://bit.ly/3qjQDMo

Experienced Counsel

President Biden is about to re embrace the Muslim Brotherhood – in the mold of the Obama/Biden Administration – in defiance of all pro-US Arab countries, which consider the Muslim Brotherhood a clear and present, existential terrorist threat.

President Biden may benefit from the following advice, provided by Sir John Jenkins, a top British specialist on the Muslim Brotherhood, political Islamism and the Middle East, and former Executive Director of the British International Institute for Strategic Studies – Middle East branch: “[The West] should resist the temptation to seek to understand the Muslim Brotherhood through our own cultural or epistemological [knowledge] categories…. [Jenkins cautions against] viewing the world through lenses ground by an exclusivist Western modernity, shaped in the distorting crucible of European nationalism….

“Islamism – to which the Muslim Brotherhood is central – like other totalizing, anti-rational and authoritarian ideologies is a profound ideological challenge to the modern Western conception of the rational state and its foundational principles….”

Engaging or Confronting the Muslim Brotherhood?

Will President Biden’s foreign policy and national security team – led by Secretary of State Antony Blinken, Deputy Secretary of State Wendy Sherman, National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan, CIA Director William Burns and Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines – heed Sir Jenkins’ counsel?

Opinion: Biden’s dysfunctional human rights policy By David Isaac

https://worldisraelnews.com/opinion-bidens-dysfunctional-human-rights-policy/

The Biden administration has an awfully strange approach to human rights.

President Joe Biden has taken a peculiar approach to human rights. Where he can’t make a difference, he talks big. When he can make a difference, he acts wrongly.

Biden could make a difference with the Palestinians by exacting a price for their misdeeds. Rather than follow Trump’s lead, which would mean continuing to hold back aid until they change their terror-loving ways, Biden’s first move was to announce he’s reinstating it.

In a rhetorical slight of hand, Biden separates the Palestinian leadership from the Palestinian people. U.S. Ambassador Richard Mills in his Jan. 26 speech to the UN Security Council said, “We do not view these steps as a favor to the Palestinian leadership. U.S. assistance benefits millions of ordinary Palestinians…”

Yes, OK, and what’s the delivery address for that aid? Try sending a shipment of aid to “Care of: The Palestinians” and see where it ends up.

Setting aside its support for terror against Jews, (a quick survey of Biden’s team would suggest it’s not going to be of great concern to them) the Palestinian leadership is a human rights horror show against its own people, with torture, arbitrary arrests and the hounding of reporters being the order of the day.

THE MALLEY TEST BY MARTIN PERETZ

https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/news/articles/the-malley-test

Martin Peretz was Editor-in-Chief of The New Republic for 36 years and taught social theory at Harvard University for nearly half a century.

What does progressive foreign policy actually accomplish on the ground?

In the rhetoric of restoration-era Washington, D.C., reality is reclaiming a place. The post-insurrection hoopla was always going to deflate into the realpolitik of competing ideologies—and, in foreign policy, it already has. Robert Malley’s appointment as special envoy to Iran points to a deepening fissure within the Democratic Party: It is being hailed as a victory for those who reject the postwar liberal promotion of American capitalism and democracy and instead identify with the credo of institutional progressivism. This is an ideology increasingly endorsed by powerful American structures, in which correcting the West’s historical marginalization of people of color, people with different sexual identities, women, people from developing nations, and others is understood to be the determining goal of politics.

Malley is a policy expert and operative—he is a doer, not an active ideologue. But the policies he has promoted and facilitated over 20 years are consistently in the service of rapprochement with the Palestine Liberation Organization, Hamas, and Iran, which are held up by institutional progressives as the marquee victims of Western interventionism in the Middle East. To be fair, Biden’s entire foreign policy team, starting with Biden himself, supported and implemented the Iran deal, which was the cornerstone of Barack Obama’s second-term foreign policy and would now appear to be heading into its third term—with Malley, Jake Sullivan, Antony Blinken, Wendy Sherman, and Samantha Power all serving in nearly the same roles they occupied while ensuring the Iran deal’s implementation and passage. What’s new is the liberal Democratic establishment’s use of the new, harder progressive logic, which holds that any opposition to its policies is psychologically rooted in inherited racism, sexism, or trauma.

Maher Bitar and Israel’s Ideological Elections Biden’s choice of an anti-Israeli for the Nat’l Sec Council spells trouble. Caroline Glick

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2021/02/maher-bitar-and-israels-ideological-elections-caroline-glick/

Israel’s March 23 elections are being presented as a simple referendum on Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. The media and Netanyahu’s opponents would have us believe that there is no ideological struggle; it’s all just a question of whether you love or hate Bibi.

But this is untrue. The coming elections are primarily about ideology. To understand why this is the case, we need to look no further than U.S. President Joe Biden’s appointments.

Last week, the White House announced that Maher Bitar had been appointed to serve as the senior director for Intelligence at the National Security Council. The position is one of the most powerful posts in the U.S. intelligence community. The senior director is the node to which all intelligence from all agencies flows. He decides what to share with the president. And in the name of the president, he determines priorities for intelligence operations and collection.

The senior director of intelligence also determines what information the U.S. intelligence community will share with foreign intelligence services. Likewise, he decides how to relate to information that foreign intelligence agencies share with the Americans.

As one former senior national security council member explained, “The senior director for intelligence controls the information everyone sees. And by controlling information, he controls the conversation.”

Usually, the sensitive position is reserved for a CIA officer who is detailed to the National Security Council. Bitar, however, is not an intelligence professional. He is an anti-Israel political activist.