The Blame Israel First Policy
https://www.nysun.com/editorials/the-blame-israel-first-policy/91484/
Must Israel hold its fire against Iran in order to make it easier for President Biden to rejoin a nuclear deal that the Jewish state opposes? That is the question that is coming into focus in the wake of the explosion at the Natanz nuclear site and of what the Times is calling “shadowy naval skirmishes” in Mideast seas. Mr. Biden seems to think Israel is obligated to stand down while he pursues his appeasement of the ayatollahs.
That question also confronts an Israeli security delegation that is due in Washington today to air its objections to an entente with Iran, with whom we’re in what are called “indirect talks” at Vienna. On Friday the White House press secretary, Jen Psaki, was asked whether the delegation — led by the director of Israel’s legendary Mossad — is likely to change the administration’s position. “No,” she answered.
The idea that Israel must stand down amounts, in our view, to a kind of political supersessionism. Mr. Biden seems to believe that his diplomatic ambitions in respect of Iran ought to trump — forgive the expression — Israel’s interests. “Israel’s relentless attacks on Iran may endanger Biden’s diplomacy” is the headline over an editorial in the Washington Post earlier this month. Scant hint that the danger might come from Iran.
The Post does acknowledge that Mr. Biden “doesn’t have much room to pressure” Prime Minister Netanyahu for restraint. It reckons, though, that Mr. Biden “should persist with his diplomatic strategy — and hope that the Iranian regime chooses to make a distinction between Israel and the United States.” It is a blunt call to put daylight between America and one of its closest allies. Call the policy “blame Israel first.”
It’s not our purpose here to suggest that Mr. Biden is without standing to treat with Iran. He just won the biggest popular vote in American history. The real test of where the American people are, though, will be whether he can get an Iran deal ratified in the Senate. Israel, meantime, doesn’t get (or seek) a vote in the American election. Nor does its right to act in its own national interests stem from its friendship with America.
We’d have thought that a politician as experienced as Mr. Biden would appreciate all this. Way back in 1982, he sprang his political supersessionism on Menachem Begin when the prime minister stopped by to say hello to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. Mr. Biden, then a young Senator, infamously pounded a table and tried warning Begin, then 68, that his policy on settlements was eroding support for American aid.
“Don’t threaten us with cutting off aid to give up our principles,” Begin warned him in an exchange recalled recently in the Wall Street Journal. “I am a proud Jew with 3,700 years of civilized history. Nobody came to our aid when we were dying in the gas chambers and ovens. Nobody came to our aid when we were striving to create our country. We paid for it. We fought for it. We died for it. We will stand by our principles.”
Mr. Biden isn’t the only president to have lost his way on this head. During the first Gulf War, President George H.W. Bush blocked Israel from flying, in its own defense, against Iraq, even as Saddam prepared to fire missiles at Jerusalem. President George W. Bush, in his first term, found himself at odds with his old friend Ariel Sharon. That led Sharon to warn that Israel would not play the part of pre-World War II Czechoslovakia.
That is, its democracy would not be sacrificed on the altar of appeasement. Both Bushes came to appreciate the shared interests of Israel and America. Together with President Reagan, they helped the GOP emerge with the better policy on Israel. And now the Democrats are issuing a blunt “no” — in advance — to a distinguished Israeli delegation trying to warn us against the same kind of error that led to World War II.
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