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 and Jake Sullivan, another Obama holdover and now Biden's National Security Advisor, were 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.
William
Burns, Biden’s CIA pick, has a tainted history with Israel from his days
working under James Baker.
Avril
Haines, Biden’s National Intelligence Agency Chief, signed a public
letter with others 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.’