A friend sent me a link that, upon opening it, I initially thought I had been directed to The Babylon Bee. I rubbed my eyes and pored over the blurb again. Amazed, I remembered Mr. Biden’s State of the Union declaration: “What makes our moment rare is that freedom and democracy are under attack at—both at home and overseas at the very same time.”
Of course, I was aware of how Mr. Biden and his leftist supporters have been assiduously attacking American democracy. Indeed, in recounting how the Democratic Party is anything but democratic, Victor Davis Hanson concluded:
The Left talks grandly of ‘democracy dies in darkness’ as Joe Biden beats the dead horse of January 6 to warn that democracy is in its greatest peril. But all such rhetoric is projection. The verbiage masks the most comprehensive effort in modern American history to radically change, destroy, or warp American laws, customs, and traditions for the short-term aim of gaining and retaining political power.
The rationale is that the left is of such superior morality and wisdom that it has the right to violate the Constitution or the hallowed traditions of the country to achieve the higher end of ensuring a progressive agenda.
However, I was unaware of how Mr. Biden and his leftist supporters had been attacking democracy abroad. Of course, I knew the Authoritarian Axis of communist China, Putin’s revanchist Russia, terrorist-state Iran, and the Cuban and Venezuelan dictatorships had been persistently attacking democracy. But none of these rouge states besieging free peoples were the target of the Biden administration’s call for regime change.
The ever so nuanced Biden administration does not seek regime change within a barbarous regime developing nuclear weapons, exporting terrorism, and orchestrating its proxies’ murdering of innocents—a rouge nation like, say, Iran. No, the Biden administration is attacking the democracy of our ally Israel.
This issue is over the war in Gaza and how it is affecting democracy—American democracy, specifically Mr. Biden’s re-election chances.
According to The Times of Israel’s “White House exploring how to force Netanyahu out—report,” which was based upon an earlier piece in New York Magazine, “The Biden Plan to Ditch Netanyahu: The “come to Jesus moment” is already here, according to Israeli and U.S. sources, Mr. Biden has a problem in his Democratic voter base. The crux is that many Muslim-Americans and Jewish-Americans differ on what should happen in Gaza, and substantial numbers of both groups are loyal Democratic voters. This point was forcefully driven home to the Biden team when a large segment of Michigan’s Muslim-American community expressed their opposition to the administration’s Gaza policy by voting “uncommitted” in Mr. Biden’s recent primary.
Never having been accused of being Solomonic, Mr. Biden has decided the way to save himself is to throw the Bibi out with the bathwater. Thus, he and Vice President Kamala Harris have adopted their own version of the leftist trope, “We support the troops but not the war:”
In the event the new American position over Netanyahu remained unclear, Vice President Kamala Harris left no doubts in a Friday interview with CBS News, which asked, ‘Are the Israelis at risk of losing U.S. aid if this continues?’ Harris replied, ‘I think it’s important for us to distinguish, or at least not conflate, the Israeli government with the Israeli people.’
You mean the Israeli voters who elected the Netanyahu government? Or just the Israeli voters who oppose it and agree with the Biden administration? Both? It matters little, for this canard is designed to pacify American Democratic voters.
So, what is this “new American position over Netanyahu?” In many ways, it is the old Obama administration policy of thinly veiled public contempt for the Prime Minister and the subtle undermining of Israeli foreign and domestic policies:
Itamar Rabinovich, a former Israeli ambassador to the U.S. and an authority on the relationship between the two countries, says the White House has been unhappy with Netanyahu for a long time, ‘but now, in my view, they’re even angrier, and they are sharpening the tone. Biden is not coming at him personally, but off the record and in closed meetings, the sentiment is clear. They disagree on many things: on Gaza the day after the war; on the Palestinian Authority; on a return to Israeli-Palestinian negotiations; all very significant issues.’
Methinks the former ambassador spoke too soon. Presently, Democratic politics have spurred Mr. Biden to make a public display of his loathing for Netanyahu and opposition to Israeli policies. Consider Mr. Biden’s allegedly accidental “hot mic” remark that, in his characteristically tone-deaf words, “I told him, ‘Bibi’—don’t repeat this—‘you and I are going to have a come to Jesus moment.’”
Still, political necessity required a pretext to mask Mr. Biden’s problem with his Democratic base. The Biden team could not appear to be saving its political behind by sticking it to our ally. So, what could explain the administration’s pivot (well, its public pivot, anyway) away from the Israeli government? Claim your disinterested, noble motives and project your actual squalid motives onto someone else, namely Prime Minister Netanyahu.
This is something of a pivotal moment,” says Daniel Seideman, an Israeli attorney and expert on the geopolitics of the country. “The danger of regional war is palpable. They are thinking in terms of the Cuban Missile Crisis [or] of 1938. Things are going on that could easily trigger a broader conflict, and preventing that is clearly the administration’s interest—and Netanyahu is not being cooperative.
One supposes “cooperative” would be Prime Minister Netanyahu taking military advice from the Biden administration’s, whose maladministration wrought the deadly fiasco that was the American withdrawal from Afghanistan, or taking strategic advice from a president who, for over half a century, has been wrong on nearly every major foreign policy issue.
This is the pretext for the Biden administration’s attack on Israeli democracy, a scant six months after our ally suffered a Hamas terrorist attack that claimed 1,200 Israelis murdered, 250 kidnapped, and scores more raped and tortured:
One Israeli expert frequently consulted by American officials says, ‘I have been asked by a serious administration figure what it is that will force the Netanyahu coalition to collapse. They were interested in the mechanics, what can we demand which will collapse his coalition.’
Through its words, deeds, and leaks, the Biden administration is heralding its continuing attacks upon Israeli democracy, including: trotting out Senate Majority Leader Charles Schumer (D-New York) to parrot the president’s calumnies against the Israeli Prime Minister and demand new elections; unilaterally declaring America’s installation of a sea pier for Gaza (which Israel publicly supports); announcing the U.S., Jordan, and the United Arab Emirates air lift without telling Israel; an executive order sanctioning West Bank settlers and their supporters, including Israeli policymakers; and signaling the administration’s receptiveness to recognizing a Palestinian state in Gaza and in the West Bank. With friends like these…
Evidently, the Biden administration is suffering from a bout of cognitive dissonance, letting it be known that they consider Prime Minister Netanyahu an “afterthought,” but at the same time fixating upon his political demise:
An American source familiar with the administration’s thinking says the White House realizes that ‘Netanyahu is in a corner of his own making. He has no room to maneuver. He is screwing us. The politics of this have to completely change, and I think time is running out.’
Seideman says the administration is getting ready ‘to put Netanyahu to the test in ways that have not happened before. ‘Are you with us or are you against us? We’re not going to dictate the result. But if you’re against us, there will be consequences.’
One cannot help but notice how this is far more apt concerning Mr. Biden’s political situation vis-à-vis his Democratic base. Yet, in dumping upon the present Israeli government to improve Mr. Biden’s own political prospects, he and his team are oblivious to the import of what they are citing as Prime Minister Netanyahu’s abysmal approval ratings. Per New York Magazine:
Netanyahu is highly vulnerable at home. For months, he’s faced blistering anger from the family members of the remaining hostages, whose fate he seems ambivalent about at best. A recent poll shows that a majority of Israelis, 53 percent, believe Netanyahu is extending the war so as to ‘survive politically,’ not to defeat Hamas.
Hence, if the Biden team truly believes Prime Minister Netanyahu and his cabinet are irredeemable, warmongering extremists, the situation will soon resolve itself without their election interference. The Israeli voters will do it of their own accord, without them. In fact, given how deftly they have alienated large swaths of their own Democratic Party base, they will likely alienate Israeli voters and boost the Prime Minister’s support, especially as New York Magazine concedes, “there’s not much Biden can do to force him out, but that hasn’t stopped him from trying to undermine Netanyahu politically.”
I’m rubbing my temples now, pondering the administration’s folly, wondering why I clicked that damned link, and praying it was indeed for the Babylon Bee.
An American Greatness contributor, the Hon. Thaddeus G. McCotter (M.C., Ret.) served Michigan’s 11th Congressional district from 2003-2012, and served as Chair of the Republican House Policy Committee. Not a lobbyist, he is a frequent public speaker and moderator for public policy seminars; and a Monday co-host of the “John Batchelor Radio Show,” among sundry media appearances.