The State Department’s last-gasp effort to sabotage an Israeli victory over terrorists
The incoming president’s foreign-policy team should clean house of the Arabists.
By Mitchell Bard
JNS
Nov 20, 2024
Then Sen. Barack Obama is shown here with his Jew-hating mentor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, on March 10, 2005. It was not until Obama published his memoir that we learned how ignorant he was of Middle East history and how hostile he was towards Israel before he set foot in the White House.
Israel’s detractors believe that America’s unwavering support for Israel is driven by the mythologically omnipotent “Jewish lobby.” The truth is it is the Arab lobby, entrenched within the deep state, which has been adversely affecting U.S. policy since the discovery of oil in Saudi Arabia in the 1930s.
The Arabists fought first to prevent the establishment of Israel, then to strangle the nascent state at birth, and ever since, have sought to drive a wedge between the two countries despite their shared values and interests. This tradition has continued in the Biden administration, where the Arabists are determined to make a last stand before Donald Trump takes office and make their anti-Israel positions as Trump-proof as possible.
We have seen this movie before.
In the 1940s, President Harry Truman’s push for the creation of Israel was met with fierce resistance. The Arabists in the State and Defense Departments were adamantly against the establishment of a Jewish state, fearing the United States would lose access to Middle East oil (which we did not yet depend on), that Israel would be Communist, and that the Soviets would exploit Arab anger with America to gain influence in the region. Truman ordered them to support partition; however, after the resolution to create a Jewish and Arab state was adopted, American diplomats tried to prevent its implementation. The U.S. ambassador to the United Nations announced that partition was unworkable and proposed an international trusteeship for Palestine instead. Truman learned about it from the newspaper. Historian Robert Silverberg said Truman “became a staunch Zionist for the first time” and ensured that he would no longer listen to “the appeasers of the Arabs, the worriers over oil, the frenetic anti-Communists and the subtle anti-Semites in the Departments of State and Defense.”
The Arabists have never given up.
We saw President Barack Obama’s Arabist instrument, John Kerry, sticking it to Israel as he headed out the door in a preemptive strike against the incoming Trump administration. As I wrote at the time, he and Hillary Clinton “carried out President Obama’s agenda to turn on our most fervent allies, such as Israel, make catastrophic deals with enemies such as Iran and, in a nod to Nero, fiddled while Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Libya and Yemen burned.”
After the failure of Kerry’s efforts to broker peace between Israel and the Palestinians, and Trump defeated Clinton, Obama ordered the United States to abstain rather than veto Security Council Resolution 2334, a one-sided measure labeling Israeli settlements “a flagrant violation of international law” that damage the prospects of a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Obama had previously vetoed a similar resolution but now claimed the vote reflected longstanding U.S. policy.
Elliott Abrams, a former deputy assistant to the president and deputy national security advisor in the administration of President George W. Bush, said Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had been sensitive to the administration’s objection to settlements and restricted building in areas outside the Israeli consensus (i.e., blocs of settlements close to the Green Line that are expected to be annexed to Israel in any future agreement). The State Department, he said, refused to “distinguish between construction in isolated settlements in the West Bank in areas that must become part of Palestine if a State of Palestine is ever created; construction in major blocs that Israel will obviously keep in land swaps; and construction in Jerusalem. It treats them all equally.”
Obama later explained his decision: “I did believe it was important to send a signal and to lift up the facts that so often get buried under other news in terms of what is happening with settlements in the West Bank.”
It was not until Obama published his memoir that we learned how ignorant he was of Middle East history and how hostile he was towards Israel before he set foot in the White House.
Obama abandoned Israel in favor of appeasing the Arab world. Trump reversed course. The Arabists—many retreads from the Obama administration—guided President Joe Biden to a more critical approach towards Israel. They did their best to micromanage Israel’s war effort in ways that prolonged the fighting and promoted the two-state solution they religiously believe is the key to Middle East peace.
Biden has become exasperated with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his unwillingness to end the wars in Lebanon and Gaza. Even with Biden’s support for Israel’s right to defend itself, there is a noticeable shift in the administration’s approach to Jerusalem’s actions in Gaza and Lebanon. Chief Arabist Antony Blinken, the U.S. secretary of state, has been guiding the president towards punishing Israel for months. Nevertheless, Biden overruled his effort to cut off military aid over the issue of humanitarian assistance. State then decided to return to the Obama playbook by negotiating a U.N. resolution that could tie Trump’s hands. This is part of a broader effort to Trump-proof Biden’s accomplishments.
Professor Anne Bayefsky, director of the Touro’s Institute on Human Rights and the Holocaust, sounded the alarm, noting that the administration refused to veto four Security Council resolutions since Oct. 7, 2023, focused on aid to the Palestinians without mentioning Hamas or condemning it. This was Arabist 101. Would Blinken convince Biden to approve or abstain from a resolution that will make Israel a prisoner of U.N. diktats: adopt a “Chapter VII” resolution, which, unlike others, is legally binding; demand an immediate and permanent ceasefire without linking it to the release of all hostages; create sanctions for Israeli violations of council orders; and make “Palestine” a member state of the United Nations?
Biden is no Israel hater like Obama, however, and vetoed the resolution that the rest of the council approved because of the hostage issue. The Arabists may try to get a different version adopted and have almost two months to make more mischief.
Trump was unable to stop Obama’s betrayal, but he and Israel’s supporters in Congress, who form an overwhelming majority, must spoil the Arabists’ last-ditch gambit to sabotage U.S.-Israel relations, weaken Israel’s international standing and irreparably damage its security.
Once the incoming team takes charge, it should clean house and rid the Pentagon, Foggy Bottom and Langley of Arabists once and for all.
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