BY CLINT COMBS
President Joe Biden and Secretary of State Antony Blinken thought they secured a deal with the help of French President Emmanuel Macron. In private, Israel officials had agreed to the same deal: a 21-day ceasefire between Israel and Lebanon.
Ilhan Omar
This gave diplomats three weeks to hash out a broader plan that would end the war in Gaza, release all hostages and prevent a wider conflict in the Middle East.
National Security Council Spokesperson John Kirby said that the Biden Administration, “had every reason to believe that in the drafting of [the statement] and in the delivery of it, that the Israelis were fully informed and fully aware of every word in it.” Specifically Ron Dermer, the former U.S. Ambassador to Israel now serving as Israeli Minister of Strategic Affairs, agreed to the initial deal according to a report from Haaretz. “We wouldn’t have done it if we didn’t believe that it would be received with the seriousness with which it was composed,” Kirby added.
Since January, Netanyahu’s behavior suggested an increasing defiance against the Biden Administration. Israel accepts deals in private and then humiliates their western allies by publicly throwing cold water on these agreements. Declining to even read the terms of the 21-day pause, Netanyahu chartered a plane to the U.N. General Assembly in New York.
“Israel’s policy is clear: We are continuing to strike Hezbollah with full force,” Netanyahu told reporters. “And we will not stop until we achieve all our goals, chief among them the return of the residents of the north securely to their homes.”
“There will be no ceasefire in the north,” Foreign Minister Israel Katz posted on the social media platform formerly known as Twitter.
Benjamin Netanyahu
Some in Biden’s camp privately suspected that Netanyahu was trying to torpedo the electoral chances of Kamala Harris. Rep. Ilhan Omar is the first U.S. lawmaker to openly suggest that Netanyahu was intentionally trying to help Trump.
“I know that Netanyahu is not really listening to our president,” Omar told voters at a townhall in Spring Lake Park, MN. “He has, I believe, a political reason for doing that.”
Biden’s White House wasn’t upset that Hezbollah’s leader Hassan Nasrallah was killed by Israel’s military calling it a “measure of justice”. It was the fact that Israel gave no advanced warning to the U.S. of the strike on Sept. 28.
Biden’s fiercest critics argue that he has been complicit in the starvations and killings in the Gaza Strip. Twelve US officials have resigned from the White House. That sentiment flows from former Biden officials to abortion advocates in Minneapolis. The Minnesota Abortion Action Committee (MNAAC), an abortion rights organization increasingly concerned that Biden is contributing to a maternal and reproductive crisis in Gaza, marched with thousands of other activist groups at the DNC in Chicago last August.
“We want abortion on demand — not genocide and stolen land!” MNAAC posted on the social networking platform formerly known as Twitter. (Biden has famously told donors in New York that “I don’t want abortion on demand”) “MNAAC joining thousands in the streets at the #marchonthednc demanding a free Palestine and an end to U.S. aid to Israel!”
Despite some outrage among progressives, the clearest link between Trump and Netanyahu is Ron Dermer, the former U.S. diplomat who is so committed to his work in Israel that he renounced his U.S. citizenship in 2005. Dermer’s beef with Biden stems from the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPA), which curbed Iranian nuclear activity in exchange for sanctions relief.
“The administration of President Biden does not have a policy to prevent Iran from developing nuclear weapons. They have a policy to contain a nuclear Iran,” Dermer told Michael Makovsky, head of the Jewish Institute for National Security of America, a hawkish pro-Israel think tank in DC.
Netanyahu called the JCPA a “very bad deal,” in a 2015 address to congress. Trump in a speech to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) during his 2016 campaign saying that, “my number one priority is to dismantle the disastrous deal with Iran.” The U.S. left that deal in 2018 and AIPAC has since spent record amounts of money attempting to unseat two incumbents, Cori Bush (M0-1) and Jamaal Bowman (NY-16). Omar outlined a linked between AIPAC and Netanyahu opposing previous Democratic administrations posting:
• AIPAC and Netanyahu vigorously opposed President Obama’s efforts to secure the Iran nuclear deal
• AIPAC and Netanyahu openly opposed the Oslo Accords — and the 1993 peace process.
Harris is in an obvious bind between moderate baby boomers who support Israel and Muslim voters in the swing state of Michigan. The U.S. warned Israel that it will withhold arms shipments if it doesn’t allow Palestinians access to food and medicine in 30-days. Critics have questioned the sincerity. Omar considers the administration helpless in dealing with Netanyahu who appears willing to exploit conflicts in U.S. voting blocs by expanding his war into Lebanon.
“The humiliation in some of these supposed negotiations, that our President and our Secretary of State are being exposed throughout the world intentionally by Netanyahu because he does want a different administration,” Omar said.
“My heart aches that our leaders somehow find themselves powerless even though they do represent the most powerful country in the world,” Omar said. “That for me as an American had been embarrassing and humiliating. “
