Melanie Phillips: The last, overlooked but still active front of World War Two
In World War Two, the allies fought an attempt to conquer and destroy western civilisation and exterminate the Jews.Caroline Glick: Biden's skin-deep support for Israel
Today, the Palestinians of both Hamas and Abbas’s Fatah constantly churn out Nazi-style, murderous incitement against the Jewish people. And the Iranian regime, which funds and arms Hamas, has been at war against the west for four decades and regularly announces its genocidal intentions towards the Jews.
So today’s war against western civilisation and the Jews amounts to infernal unfinished business. But unlike the Second World War, when those in the free world on the side of the fascists were regarded as traitors, such people today march on the streets of London and elsewhere arm-in-arm with those pledged to Islamic holy war against the Jews and the rest of the “infidel” world.
In the United States, President Joe Biden told Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that America expects an immediate and “significant de-escalation” on the path to a ceasefire. This while the rockets from Gaza were still flying against Israel. The demand was as unconscionable as it would have been to tell the British to de-escalate during the Blitz.
Worse yet, after Democrat Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.) confronted Biden over the Gaza war and echoed an earlier speech in which she accused Israel of “racism” and running an “apartheid system,” Biden said of Tlaib: “God thank you for being a fighter.”
The heirs to the Nazis are still intent upon the same terrible aims. The difference now is that those fighting for civilisation are being undermined by an enormous fifth column — and even the leader of the free world itself has become a useful idiot for the other side.
Until Wednesday, President Joe Biden had maintained a fairly supportive posture towards Israel in the face of the Hamas terror regime in Gaza’s launch of its newest round of war against the Jewish state.
In the first week of the new war, Biden’s administration blocked the United Nations Security Council from adopting anti-Israel statements and resolutions three times.
Until Wednesday afternoon Israel time, Biden avoided publicly calling on Israel to halt its counterstrikes against Hamas and expressed his support for Israel’s right to protect its citizens from Hamas’s missiles.
So it wouldn’t be surprising if some Israelis were flabbergasted when Biden told Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Wednesday afternoon that he “expected a significant de-escalation today on the path to a ceasefire,” effectively ordering Israel to stand down by day’s end. But Biden’s week of professions of support for Israel was hardly the last word on his administration’s positions on Israel and the war. Indeed, they weren’t even its first word.
Biden’s actual policies regarding Israel are revealed in three different ways. First, there are the policies Biden had already adopted before Hamas opened its missile offensive from Gaza and its spate of organized anti-Jewish pogroms in mixed Arab-Jewish cities throughout Israel.
Biden’s courtship of Iran through the renewal of nuclear talks in Vienna, in which he has signalled his willingness to end U.S. economic sanctions on Iran, and his administration’s persuasion of Iraq and South Korea to unfreeze billions of dollars in Iranian oil revenue have signalled Iran and its terror proxies, including Hamas, that the Biden administration is abandoning the U.S. alliance with Israel and the moderate Sunni states in favour of Iran and its proxies.
Likewise, Biden’s announcement that he is restoring U.S. funding to UNRWA and the Palestinian Authority despite their funding of terrorism was a tailwind for Iran and Hamas plans to attack Israel. With U.S. funding and sanctions relief, not only did they realize that the United States had their back, Iran and Hamas gained the economic wherewithal to wage war. So too, Hamas was able to use America’s abandonment of Israel as a means to persuade Israeli Arabs that they could safely participate in pogroms against their Jewish neighbours and accept Hamas as their representative.
Here's the speech I gave to the Tikvah Fund Conference in March where I discussed whether American Jewry has a strategy for survival.https://t.co/fwSW3AJxYl
— Caroline Glick (@CarolineGlick) May 20, 2021
The Tikvah Podcast: Michael Doran on America’s Strategic Realignment in the Middle East
In wake of President Biden’s inauguration, experienced foreign-policy hands argued over what could be learned about his administration’s approach to Israel and the Middle East from his early statements and appointments. They faced an unresolved question: would President Biden’s longtime instincts, which tend to be sympathetic to Israel, hold sway over the louder and more progressive voices arrayed against Israel in the Democratic party? Would he continue to support Israel in the Oval Office as he did for so long in the Senate? Or would President Biden advance the strategy pursued by the Obama administration, strengthening Israel’s main adversary, Iran?Victor Davis Hanson's The Classicist Podcast: The Israelis, the Palestinians, and the Future of the Middle East
This week’s podcast guest believes that the answer has now been revealed. Michael Doran is a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute, a long-time Mosaic writer, and the co-author of an important new essay about the Biden administration’s developing Middle East policy. In it, he argues that instead of working with Israel and the Sunni Arab states to contain Iran, President Biden and his team want to partner with Iran to bring a different kind of order to the Middle East. In conversation with Mosaic editor Jonathan Silver, Doran discusses his argument and explains why Israel and America’s Sunni allies need to prepare for the final act of America’s strategic realignment.
Victor Davis Hanson analyzes the recent conflict between the Israelis and the Palestinians, how it reflects on the foreign policy of the Biden Administration, and what the consequences may be for the future of the Middle East.