Biden Considering Obama’s Anti-Israel Shill for Israel Ambassador by Daniel Greenfield
Wexler, now the head of the far-left S. Daniel Abraham Center for Middle East Peace, was back in town. Speaking at the Herzliya Conference, he said that Israel should consider extending the ban on Jewish property rights to within the 1949 armistice lines. Anyone Biden picks as his ambassador to Israel is going to be bad.
While some Jewish Biden donors thought that they would get the job, that’s not happening. It’s a State Dept post for leveraging pressure on Israel to make concessions to Islamic terrorists, take the blame for failed Biden policies in the region, and to do nothing about Iran.
The word is that the horse race has come down to Tom Nides and former Rep. Steve Wexler.
While he was seen as a pro-Israel voice in the Obama administration, he also did work to thwart efforts by Congress to limit US support for UNRWA, the UN agency for Palestinian refugees, as well as the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO). The Biden administration recently announced that it would restore funding for UNRWA that had been cut by the Trump administration.
That’s the nicer version of it.
President Obama responded to Congress’ act by admonishing Israel for supporting it, with Deputy Secretary of State Tom Nides telling Oren, “UNESCO teaches Holocaust studies, for chrissakes. You want to cut off f–king Holocaust studies?”
On another occasion, the deputy secretary of state, the number-two man in the State Department, Tom Nides, screamed at you, “You don’t want that eff-ing UN to collapse because of your eff-ing conflict with the Palestinians.”
That’s still the best-case scenario.
Secretary of State Blinken is reportedly pushing former Rep. Steve Wexler who would be an absolute nightmare.
Wexler, after leaving Congress, became a shill for Obama and assorted anti-Israel lefties. He’s done the usual J Street tour and is the guy that Obama kept bringing out to reassure Jews that he didn’t hate Israel. (Spoilert alert: he did.) Wexler was incredibly bad news and the only reason to pick him would be to go on gaslighting liberal Jews.
Wexler traveled to Israel multiple times in the early months of Obama’s presidency, to pressure Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu to submit to Obama’s demand and embrace the cause of Palestinian statehood. After Netanyahu finally announced his support for Palestinian statehood at his speech at Bar-Ilan University in September 2009, Wexler returned with a new demand – that Netanyahu enact a moratorium on Jewish property rights in Judea and Samaria.
In an interview with The Jerusalem Post at the time, Wexler promised that Israel would be richly rewarded if it took the unprecedented step of denying Jews the right to their property in Judea and Samaria simply because they were Jewish. Even if the moratorium were temporary, Obama would view the discriminatory measure as proof of Israel’s good intentions.
Netanyahu bowed to Obama’s demand and enacted a temporary ban on the exercise of Jewish property rights in Judea and Samaria. And in the aftermath of his stunning move, the Arab world did nothing.
Amazingly, far from calling their bluff, Obama doubled down on his pressure on Israel.
Among other things, since squeezing the first temporary ban on Jewish property rights out of Netanyahu, Obama has demanded that the moratorium be made permanent and be extended to Jerusalem
Wexler is bad news. Really bad news.
So it wouldn’t be too surprising if Biden were to pick him.
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