Sunday, September 22, 2024
Elder of Ziyon
Why I have requested anonymity for this piece:
In my place of work there is intense hostility to Israel. If I openly argued what I am about to argue, that anyone who cares about Israel cannot support the Democratic candidate for President and must seriously consider supporting the other candidate, the one they all hate, my professional status would be seriously compromised. To borrow the point made by another recent essay, that is why this essay both needs to be published, and to be anonymous. The situation is that dire.
======
I am a lifelong Democrat.
But I also support Israel and American Jewry.
After October 7 the two are no longer compatible.
There are many issues I care about, for which the Democratic Party has traditionally been the better vehicle; but the current existential emergency for Israel and American-Jewry means that that issue must now take priority. Though it hurts to say it, this lifelong Democrat cannot vote for the current Democratic candidate for President. I am not the first to reach this conclusion. There’s even now a whole organization called “Jexit,” for Jews exiting the Democratic Party. With great regret I realize I must now join them, for the following now strikes me as indisputable:
Harris-Walz will be a disaster for Israel and for American Jewry.
There have been some positive moments. Biden-Harris said the right things immediately after October 7, and allowed the U.S. Navy to be present in the region at a couple of important times, for which an Israel-advocate rightly feels gratitude. But aside from these and their occasional banal remark about believing in Israel’s right to defend itself—doesn’t every country have the right to defend itself?—heaps and mounds of evidence point unambiguously toward that dire conclusion. As I write, in September of 2024, Hamas leader Khaled Meshal is praising Biden-Harris for helping Hamas to remain in power, for always waiting patiently for and listening to Hamas’s demands in negotiations and for pressuring Israel to submit, and for recognizing Hamas as a legitimate diplomatic partner. What Meshal is gushing over is not the behavior of an ally of Israel, but of an administration that has largely taken the side of Israel’s enemies.
Since Harris has so far given no indication that her relevant policies will differ from Biden’s, and also repeatedly expressed her support for Biden’s, we may treat the Biden-Harris record as an indication of her own tendencies. If anything, in fact, the evidence suggests that Harris’s policies and actions will be worse. In September of 2024 here is Harris gloating about withholding weapons from Israel in order to put leverage on Israel to “accept the deal”: the deal, that is, that does not return all the hostages, that leaves Hamas in power, and forces Israel to withdraw in defeat. That is not the behavior of an ally, again, but of a friend of the enemy.
But that is just the tip of the iceberg.
Iran
(1)
Biden-Harris supported the disastrous JCPOA treaty with Iran, have continued to make efforts to reestablish it, and Harris states that she will rejoin it if elected. That treaty enriched the Islamic Republic with hundreds of billions of dollars, enabling it to fund its proxies Hamas, Hezbollah, and the Houthis, and to fund its “Ring of Fire” surrounding Israel (including jihadi groups in Syria, Iraq, the West Bank, and Yemen). Biden-Harris funding is thus directly responsible for the seven-front war currently be waged against Israel. That treaty and the Biden-Harris administration have also failed to adequately monitor and prevent the regime’s uranium enrichment. Iran is now perilously close to the nuclear weapon they have repeatedly proclaimed they will use to destroy the Jewish state and murder its seven million Jews.
(2)
Biden-Harris continued to waive the sanctions on Iran even after October 7, and even after Iran directly fired upwards of 300 missiles at Israeli homes. They are renewing these waivers many months into a war where now over 20,000 Iranian-funded missiles have been fired at Israel. Just this week the Senate Foreign Relations Committee sent an angry letter to the Biden administration for violating federal law by not enforcing Congress-mandated sanctions. And it’s not just about waiving sanctions. Just recently it was reported that the Biden-Harris administration has been working around internal sanctions on Iran in order to produce a trade increase of 43% with Iran this past year—after October 7. Biden-Harris appear to be doing everything in their power to flood Iran with the cash that funds its goal of destroying Israel. Harris’s running mate Walz also endorses JCPOA and supports waiving sanctions.
(3)
Harris has close ties with many members of and has received a top 100% rating from the National Iranian American Council (NIAC), the pro-Khamenei lobby that advances the Islamic Republic’s interests in Washington D.C. NIAC was founded by rabid antisemite Trita Parsi. The rating is no surprise, given Harris’s record above of supporting the Iranian regime and its global campaign of terror. This alone should dissuade anyone who cares about Israel and Jews from voting for her: Harris got the top rating from the lobby group that represents the greatest enemy of Israel and the Jewish people, the enemy that funded and orchestrated the October 7 massacre and the year of war since. Running mate Walz also received a top NIAC rating.
Funding Palestinian Violence
(4)
Biden-Harris reinstated funding to the Palestinian Authority (P.A.), which supports its “pay-to-slay” program, thus incentivizing Palestinians to murder Jews. Numerous terrorist attacks, including and after October 7, and including those against American citizens, are thus rewarded with the American taxpayer money. They continue to fund the P.A. despite its regularly failing to meet State Department requirements for fiscal transparency, which helps the P.A. keep “pay-to-slay” going. Biden-Harris also continue to fund the P.A. in direct violation of the Taylor Force Act, which prohibits it precisely due to “pay-to-slay.” There seems to be no federal law they are unwilling to break to keep the cash flowing to the declared enemies of Israel.
Biden-Harris also reinstated funding to UNRWA, thus providing a direct funding line to Hamas—which, the current war has revealed, has entirely infiltrated UNRWA. Many Hamas (and Islamic Jihad) members are employees of UNRWA and at least 19 UNRWA employees were active participants in the October 7 massacre, all while their salaries are paid by Biden-Harris. None of this is a secret. The P.A.’s “pay-to-slay” program is highly publicized, as is the UNRWA-Hamas link. But Biden-Harris keep pouring the money in.
The Israel-Hamas War
(5)
Biden-Harris have shown far more concern for Palestinian civilians than for Israeli civilians,
at one point even dictating to Israel (through their Secretary of State) that Israel’s “Job Number One” in fighting Hamas had to be protecting and aiding Palestinian civilians. One doesn’t even know where to start with that remark. It is not addressed to Hamas, the governing authority in Gaza that is (a) responsible both for the war in the first place, (b) is responsible, in refusing to return hostages, for the war’s continuation, and (c) is actually responsible for the welfare of Gazan civilians. Instead this disrespectful and condescending remark is addressed to the supposed ally of the U.S., and is simply absurd in suggesting that Israel should (a) have more concern for enemy civilians than in protecting its own civilians, which is its reason for waging war, and (b) more concern for enemy civilians than their actual governing power has for those civilians. The remark is also both ignorant and offensive, implying that Israel is not already doing more than any modern army in attempting to minimize civilian casualties, and doing so in nearly impossible conditions. And it expresses such profound incompetence that should be disqualifying in a commander-in-chief, as it amounts to open support for Hamas’s use of human shields: Israel cannot go after Hamas if, as Hamas openly does, they hide behind civilians. Needless to say that would be a disastrous policy for any democracy engaged with a terrorist group. With such remarks Biden-Harris seem to be doing everything they can to restrict Israel’s ability to wage this existential war.
(6)
Speaking of incompetence, Biden-Harris have bent over backwards to provide massive amounts of “humanitarian aid” to Gaza. That on its own isn’t necessarily objectionable, but the execution has been both laughable and directly harmful. Start with the expensive boondoggle pier that wasted hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars and the lives of several soldiers defending it in order to deliver essentially nothing before being dismantled; that alone should have had those supporting the policy fired, including the policy-makers-in-chief. But the relentless insistence that Israel facilitate aid, the prioritizing of aid over essential war efforts and aims, has produced an even greater disaster. From the start of the war it has been widely publicized that Hamas steals the aid that Biden-Harris compel Israel to facilitate. Yet Biden-Harris continued anyway to insist that Israel facilitate the aid, and in so doing have created a situation where, eleven months into the war, Hamas has not only has earned some half billion dollars from selling the stolen aid to Gazans, but is now sitting on enormous stockpiles of supplies, literally “overflowing warehouses,” allowing it to entrench itself indefinitely in the tunnels. This is worse than incompetence. Funding Iran (above) was bad enough, but this amounts to directly funding the Hamas war effort and thus perpetuating the war on behalf of Hamas. Biden-Harris behavior here is literally indistinguishable from that of a party openly supporting Hamas over Israel in the war.
(7)
The relentless insistence that Israel focus on facilitating aid is only one of many ways in which Biden-Harris have consistently hampered Israel’s war effort. For only one particularly heinous example, they demanded that Israel not enter Rafah, causing a months-long delay in that essential operation. Biden threatened Israel with withholding weapons if they went in; Kamala “I’ve studied the maps” Harris condescendingly reproached Israel even for thinking about Rafah, claiming the operation was impossible and warning Israel about crossing her “red line.” She said, “We have been clear in multiple conversations and in every way that any major military operation in Rafah would be a huge mistake … I have studied the maps. There’s nowhere for those folks to go.” For several months Israel complied, the delay not only extending the war by months but likely leading to the deaths of multiple hostages. Harris in particular was then made to look like an incompetent fool when Israel managed to evacuate a million people from Rafah in just over a week and take control of the strategically essential Philadelphi corridor in just days. She has yet to acknowledge her error but instead continues to threaten to withhold weapons from Israel. Just this week she reiterated yet again that she supports withholding weapons from Israel as leverage over Israel, implying that she would emphasize that strategy if elected.
It’s not just the incompetence of the current and potential future commander-in-chief that matters here. It’s the policy they repeatedly emphasize: they didn’t merely threaten to withhold weapons, they acted on it, and continue to. This stunning fact must be repeated: Biden-Harris withheld weapons for many months, that is, withheld weapons from its alleged ally while that ally is engaged in an existential war with a radical Islamist terrorist group.
That behavior is indistinguishable from that of a party supporting Hamas over Israel in the war.
(8)
Biden-Harris both regularly parrot Hamas talking points, including citing Hamas’s alleged numbers of casualties, repeatedly suggesting “far too many innocent civilians have died”—even after numerous analysts have demonstrated that Hamas’s numbers are simply not credible (just one example here), and despite it being notably striking that Hamas does not bother distinguishing civilians from combatants so there is literally no way to know how many “innocent civilians” have died. They just take the terrorists’ word for it, treating those who perpetrate barbaric massacres as credible sources. The Biden-Harris comments are also deeply offensive, given that the Israel Defense Force (IDF) is achieving perhaps the lowest civilian:militant casualty record in modern warfare and doing so in the most adverse conditions possible (urban warfare, tunnels, an enemy who deliberately uses human shields etc). Nor have Biden-Harris been able to spare a single word of praise for the IDF’s professional concern to minimize civilian casualties, just the repeated condemnations. These comments are again designed to hamper Israel’s war effort, to raise the bar so high against military operations (“not a single civilian may die”) that they become impossible, and doing so by applying to Israel alone a standard no one applies to any other military conflict elsewhere. The best Harris can offer is the banal “Israel has the right to defend itself” which is then instantly followed by “but it matters how they do so,” followed by the criticisms above—all of which amounts to preventing Israel from defending itself, exactly as an ally of Hamas and enemy of Israel would do.
(9)
Throughout the war Biden-Harris have pressured Israel not only to negotiate with the terrorist group responsible for October 7 but to make massive concessions to them. They have pressured Israel to accept defeat from Hamas, in other words, by withdrawing from Gaza without all the hostages and without removing Hamas from power, which is a sure guarantee that Hamas will rearm and rebuild (not least by stealing international aid) and do October 7 again and again—as they have openly said they plan to do. They have put absolutely no pressure on Hamas to surrender, which was in their power to do—for example by their leverage over Hamas allies Qatar (which funds and lavishly hosts Hamas leaders to this day) and Egypt (which allowed Hamas to build its massive arsenal and tunnel system). To the contrary, not only do Biden-Harris-Qatar relations remain healthy and flourishing eleven months into the war against Israel that Qatar supports and partially funded, but Biden-Harris even just rewarded Egypt with hundreds of millions in aid despite Egypt’s (a) refusing to accept a single Gazan refugee, (b) demanding Israel vacate the essential Philadelphi corridor, and (c) operating the massive smuggling that made October 7 possible in the first place. Harris, when asked in an interview this week what she would do “differently” from Biden, answered by emphasizing the importance of applying leverage over Israel to capitulate. Leverage over Israel, while lavishly rewarding the parties who openly support the enemy of Israel.
Biden-Harris’s behavior here is indistinguishable from that of a Hamas ally and enemy of Israel.
(10)
Harris snubbed Netanyahu’s speech on Congress. This came after months of repeated Biden-Harris interference in Israel’s own democracy, including outright efforts to unseat Israel’s democratically elected leader. Whether one is for or against Netanyahu as a politician, he is the elected leader of an alleged ally in the midst of an existential war; the lack of respect, and the lack of support for that alleged ally while it is engaged in an existential war, was a disgrace. The disgrace was only magnified by the simultaneous boycott of the speech by many Democratic members of congress, following Harris’s lead, which alone gives a strong indication of what her leadership will bring. When Harris did meet with Netanyahu individually she publicly reproached him (“We have a lot to talk about it,” she announced sternly) and spread unsubstantiated claims (i.e. libels) about mass starvation in Gaza.
This is not the behavior of an ally
The Two-State Delusion
(11)
Biden-Harris repeatedly demand that those who committed the October 7 atrocities should be rewarded with a "state" of their own. Harris repeats this demand every single time the question arises, including in the debate with Trump and the handful of interviews she has given since. Not only does this demand reward the barbaric massacre and incentivize jihadi violence both against Israel and the West in general—why wouldn’t they perpetrate mass violence, when they get their demands met by doing so?—but she constantly repeats the demand despite the fact that Hamas leaders repeatedly, openly, proclaim their intention to perpetrate October 7 again and again and again, until all the Jews are murdered. Let that point sink in: Hamas openly proclaims their desire to murder as many Jews as possible, and Harris then insists on giving them a state—the land, the resources—to empower them toward achieving that genocidal ambition. Note that she insists on this while also forcefully pressuring Israel to accept a ceasefire “deal” that leaves Hamas in power, and thus in the position of continuing its jihad against Israel and Jews. Nor can you imagine that somehow Hamas won’t be in charge of the future Palestinian state that Harris is working hard to produce. Hamas’s October 7 operation enjoyed massive support from the Palestinian population, even many months into the war, and nearly a year into the war Hamas remains the most popular party among Palestinians. Hamas conquered Gaza from the P.A. back in 2007 in a matter of days, and will easily overrun any future Palestinian state within days as well, particularly with the support of Harris who insists that they emerge undefeated from the war. So put that all together: Hamas aims to destroy Israel and murder all its Jews, undertakes October 7 as a step in that direction, and Harris responds by (a) working to keep them in power and (b) to give them a state, land, and resources, in order to advance their genocidal campaign against the Jews.
This behavior is indistinguishable from that of a direct Hamas ally and declared enemy of Israel.
Bias Against Israelis
(12)
Biden-Harris repeatedly denounce Israelis in Judea-Samaria for defending themselves from Palestinian violence, and have repeatedly imposed sanctions on numerous Israelis there while literally doing nothing about the far more serious and more frequent violence of Palestinians against Israelis. The Biden-Harris sanctions go beyond those deplorable thugs who occasionally perpetrate unacceptable violence against Palestinian civilians; they are being applied broadly, to protesters within the Green Line, civic organizations, community leaders, security forces, and even those who tried to provide relief to those sanctioned. They amount to a determined battle against Israel to restrain Israel from exercising its sovereignty, being perpetrated against Israel while Israel is engaged in an existential war. At the same time as they work to hamper Israel, Biden-Harris are, per above, (a) funding the P.A. that pays Palestinians to attack Israelis, (b) funding Hamas through UNRWA and supplying it through aid in order to maintain its war against Israel, (c) waiving sanctions on Iran which funds and supplies Palestinian violence against Israelis in the West Bank as well, then (d) ignoring that Palestinian violence against Israelis that results.
This behavior is indistinguishable from that of an ally of the Palestinians and their war against Israel, and of an enemy of Israel.
Lawfare Against Israel
(13)
Beyond some lip service denouncements, Biden-Harris have done nothing serious or substantial to support or defend Israel from the international lawfare being waged against it from the United Nations (U.N.), the International Criminal Court (ICC), and the International Court of Justice (ICJ). For just one example, they simply allowed the ICC to move forward toward the mass arrest of Israeli Jews, starting with the Jewish state’s political leaders and soldiers, and the subsequent crippling of the Israeli economy. (In contrast, when the ICC attacked the U.S. in the past, the U.S. responded with crippling sanctions against the members of the court, and the court backed off.) Just this week Israel, frustrated with the Biden-Harris inactivity, initiated its own legal activity at the ICC. Biden-Harris shockingly allowed a U.N. Security Council resolution to pass demanding an “immediate ceasefire” in Gaza while leaving Hamas rin power and still holding 130 hostages, thus empowering the terrorist group committed to Israel’s destruction. (Why should it negotiate and concede anything if the U.N., with U.S. support, will force Israel to withdraw?) Biden-Harris then offered no substantial resistance to the U.N.—whose budget depends heavily on U.S. contributions—for “seating” the alleged state of “Palestine” in the General Assembly, and took no public actions to prevent “Palestine” from submitting its anti-Israel resolution that just produced the General Assembly calling for Israel to be unilaterally removed from Judea/Samaria, to be removed from the Old City of Jerusalem, for sanctions on Israeli officials, and an arms embargo preventing Israel from defending itself. The U.S. did at least vote against the resolution, and it’s true that the U.S. Representative to the U.N. released a statement criticizing the resolution—though one that went on at length condemning Israeli “settlements” in Judea-Samaria and affirming its general support for the ICJ despite is reprehensible behavior toward Israel. I’m unable to find either Biden or Harris bothering themselves to comment on the resolution afterward. In contrast, 30 Republican Senators publicly and unambiguously denounced that resolution—joined by zero Democrats, apparently following the silence of their Biden-Harris Democrats-in-chief. Meanwhile Biden-Harris continue to fund the P.A., whose budget also depends on those contributions, even as the P.A. initiates these extreme unilateral measures against Israel—measures proscribed, by the way, by the same Oslo Accords that the U.S. signed as a guarantor.
In other words: In addition to violating various laws (per above), Biden-Harris are violating U.S. international legal commitments in order to support the actions of the declared enemy of Israel.
Other Anti-Israel Foreign Policy
(14)
(a) One of the very first Biden-Harris foreign policy decisions was to remove the Iran-funded Houthis from the list of designated Foreign Terrorist Organizations. They have continued to resist relisting them as recently as this week, despite numerous calls by others to do so, despite the Houthis’ ongoing attacks on Red Sea shipping and their repeatedly attacking Israel. Here, again, their behavior is indistinguishable from that of an enemy of Israel.
(b) In 2022 Biden-Harris envoy Amos Hochstein was sent to negotiate a deal for (i.e. pressure) Israel to surrender 100% of its claim to Eastern Mediterranean gas fields to Lebanon and thus Hezbollah. That one-sided deal, much to Israel’s detriment, was sold to Israel by claiming that it would bring peace, by mollifying Hezbollah—which has now used the profits from that gas to fund and fire at least 9000 rockets at Israel over the course of eleven months. In recent weeks Hochstein was back trying to force a deal in which Israel gives up more land to Hezbollah, to mollify them, because the first deal clearly worked so well. Biden-Harris are either unable to understand that any resources given to an Islamist jihadi enemy of Israel will only be used to advance their genocidal campaign against Israel, or they actively support that jihadi campaign.
(c) The disastrous withdrawal from Afghanistan—Harris proudly notes she was the “last person in the room”—not only consigned Afghani women to their painfully subservient fate but emboldened all of the United States’ enemies who recognized that they had nothing to fear from the U.S. for their aggression: Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, China’s belligerency toward Taiwan, and Iran-Hamas’s invasion of Israel. Biden-Harris’s behavior is indistinguishable from that of an enemy of Israel.
Support for Campus Jew-Haters
(15)
Many campus enemies of Israel and of the Jews responded to October 7 by celebrating, endorsing, and calling for more mass genocidal violence against Jews, demanding the destruction of Israel, and then spent eleven months ostracizing, harassing, and in dozens of instances physically assaulting Jewish students on our campuses. Harris has repeatedly expressed support for these people; “They’re showing exactly what the emotions should be” was only her most recent example. One might have thought that the appropriate emotions in response to an attempted genocide would be something other than celebrating it and calling for more. Meanwhile Harris has said essentially not a word in support of the Jewish students who have confronted a year of terror and record-setting antisemitism on their campuses. In one of her first speeches as presumptive presidential nominee, instead, Harris slammed Donald Trump for promising to deport foreign students who engage in pro-Hamas protests and terrify Jewish students; in so doing she described harassing Jewish students and defending and celebrating a U.S.-proscribed terrorist organization as “free speech.”
It's true that in May of 2024 Biden-Harris did eventually unveil their “National Strategy to Combat Antisemitism.” This was about as useless a program against antisemitism as could be expected from policymakers who think glee at the genocide of Jews is the “right emotion.” That utter incompetence can no better be displayed than by their appointing the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), an antisemitic, Hamas-affiliated hate group, to be one of its partner organizations in combating antisemitism. As I write, CAIR is busy protesting against a proposed Los Angeles city ordinance that would protect houses of worship from rioting mobs because they support the pro-Hamas mobs who have been attacking synagogues, and suing the University of Maryland for the right of pro-Hamas students to co-opt the painful date of October 7 itself for a mass campus celebration of the Hamas massacre. Either Biden-Harris are utterly clueless to the nature of CAIR, or, more sinisterly, they deliberately included CAIR on the list knowing that would necessarily dilute the battle against antisemitism. Massive incompetence or sinister anti-Jewishness? Unfortunately, given their intimate familiarity with anti-Israel activists (see the section on personnel below), and given their consistent tendency to side with the enemies of Israel in items (1)-(14) above, I can no longer insist on the mere incompetence.
That Harris-Walz will continue the unhappy tradition, and worse, is quite clear. In a recent speech Walz, after giving the requisite “October 7 was bad” disclaimer, blamed Netanyahu for all the problems, entirely ignored Hamas’s responsibility for the ongoing war, praised the pro-genocide-of-the-Jews protesters, and insisted on the immediate creation of a Palestinian state (i.e. reward for October 7, see above): “I think those folks who are speaking out loudly in Michigan are speaking out for all the right reasons,” he said. The folks, that is, openly supporting the genocidal agenda of Hamas.
(16)
The Biden-Harris Justice Department has been entirely missing in action this past year. It has not only ignored the widely reported mass wave of antisemitism occurring on campuses and in many major cities (including vandalism, incitement to mass murder, violence, and more), but has actively ignored requests that they get involved. There are many actions they could take, or could have taken, that they have simply chosen not to, as described here: invoke the Ku Klux Klan act against pro-Hamas activists blockading public spaces, invoke the FACE act against them attacking Hillels and synagogues, prosecute the threats of violence and actual physical assaults directed at Jewish students, investigate the flow of money to pro-Hamas campus groups from foreign entities and terrorist groups, investigate and prosecute the undeclared funds that countries such as Hamas ally Qatar have contributed to universities, and more. At the same time Democratic District Attorneys have been notoriously lax in prosecuting the crimes perpetrated by pro-Hamas protestors on campuses and in city streets, including promptly dismissing charges against numerous violators. Stunningly, Biden-Harris Attorney General Garland just issued an opinion that UNRWA, whose members participated in the October 7 massacre, should be immune to prosecution, aiming to protect that Hamas-ridden organization from being sued! The message this behavior sends is clear: It’s open season on Jews, you can harass, assault, vandalize Jews and Jewish institutions, and the Biden-Harris admin will stand down.
It’s more than just that “The Golden Age of American Jews is Ending” and that we are witnessing “The Vanishing: The Erasure of Jews From American Life”: American Jews are being removed from leadership and public positions, withdrawing from the public square, hunkering down into ghettos and making plans to get out. Biden-Harris policies in fact are a direct threat to the future of American Jewry. And Harris-Walz will only be worse: a recent report suggests that Keith Ellison—Israel-hating, antisemitic Farrakhan-devotee, current Walz-supported Attorney General of Minnesota—is on Harris’ shortlist to become the Attorney General of the United States.
Miscellaneous
(17) The Biden-Harris administration, through its National Security Council, recently hosted the leader of a group with a track record of collaborating in Gaza with Hamas officials. That meeting was of a piece with its extensive courting and platforming of various anti-Israel activists, as part of its ongoing campaign strategy: Biden-Harris, and now Harris-Walz, actively seek the votes of the most Israel-hating members of its demographic, in particular in the swing state of Michigan. Harris herself secretly met with the openly pro-Hamas mayor of Dearborn, MI. If these were one-offs they could perhaps be forgiven; politicians also have to meet with people they disagree with or even dislike, and sometimes even court their votes. But not only is the widescale pattern of such meetings clear, the Biden-Harris administration in fact has met over 60 times with a rabidly anti-Israel, Boycott-Divestment-Sanctions(BDS)-supporting group. The evidence is clear: the Harris-Walz administration will keep the door wide open for even the most Israel-hating constituents and parties.
(18) A few things collected together.
(a) As a Senator Harris voted against anti-BDS Legislation and aid to Israel. In 2019 she joined Israel-hater Bernie Sanders in voting against the Strengthening America’s Security in the Middle East Act (S.1). The bill pledged security assistance to Israel and clarified that state and local governments have the right to counter boycotts of Israel.
(b) Harris has defended Rep. Ilhan Omar’s antisemitism. When Omar tweeted that support for Israel was “all about the Benjamins,” for example, Harris rushed to her defense and insisted anti-Zionism is not antisemitism, saying, “Like some of my colleagues in the Congressional Black Caucus, I am concerned that the spotlight being put on Congresswoman Omar may put her at risk… I also believe there is a difference between criticism of policy or political leaders, and anti-Semitism.”
(c) Harris downplays the threat, and even existence, of radical Islamic terrorism. For example, she insisted that we should have the courage to not use the term “radical Islamic terrorism.”
(d) Harris enjoys the endorsement of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Ilhan Omar, Bernie Sanders, Mehdi Hasan, numerous celebrities, and countless others among the leading public antisemites and Israel-haters. Perhaps that is not unrelated to her policy of leaving her door wide open for meetings with that demographic. But how could a supporter of Jews and Israel vote for the person endorsed by all the haters of Jews and Israel?
(e) Harris’s pastor, Amos Brown, has a history of radical, anti-American statements as well as antisemitic political alliances, including serving as a delegate at the notoriously antisemitic 2001 Durban Conference that launched the modern Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions campaign against Israel; Harris says of him that he is “an inspiration to me always,” that he has been “on this journey with me every step of the way, from when I first thought about running for public office almost two decades ago,” and she has invited him multiple times to the White House.
(19)
As for her immediate family, her step-daughter, Ella Emhoff, raised over eight million dollars for Hamas-affiliated UNRWA after revelations of its direct involvement with Hamas were published. Harris is obviously not responsible for her adult step-daughter but this is the company she keeps, and this who she has regular dinner conversations with. Ella Emhoff also disavows her Jewish identity, which again is her business but also puts all the sweet talk about Doug Emhoff being “First Mensch,” and his stories about brisket and plastic-covered couches in Brooklyn, into perspective. Jews have no reason to be comforted by this Jew being First Gentleman. Speaking of Doug Emhoff, his law firm represented avowed Israel-enemies Qatar and the PLO, suggesting where their sympathies may lay. Though Harris’s family is her business, surely these very public activities reveal a little bit about the world she inhabits.
The Personnel
They say “personnel is policy”; given the glimpse of policy in the many points above, one can only recoil in horror as one contemplates what is yet to come from the current, and likely future, personnel of a Harris-Walz administration. The personnel issue is only that much more pressing given that Harris is not exactly considered a policy wonk; the influence the following people might therefore have in formulating and executing policy could be simply enormous.
As one article title puts it, “Harris would fill her administration with anti-Israel radicals”—and supporters of Iran, the greatest enemy of Israel and of Jews on the planet.
(1)
Harris’s Arab-American outreach coordinator, Brenda Abdelall, once complained that “The Zionists have a strong voice in American politics... I would say they’re controlling a lot of it,” and further complained that the defeat of a particular congressman “shows the Jewish influence in politics.” Needless to say, the trope of Jewish control of governments and politics is a classic antisemitic one.
(2)
Harris’s Muslim outreach coordinator, Nasrina Bargzie, is an Afghan Muslim immigrant who was interviewed by the FBI after 9/11. They were interested in her because of “troubling comments” she made to friends, who reported her to the FBI. She has active ties to the pro-Hamas advocacy group CAIR and is directly linked to the main perpetrator of campus antisemitism and Israel-hatred, Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP). She allegedly used her power and influence to shut down Jewish students complaining about harassment in Berkeley by SJP.
(3)
Perhaps Harris’s appointments to Arab and Muslim outreach might be expected to be unfriendly to Jews and Israel (though one might reflect on just why that must be, and what it portends when a very Arab-Muslim-friendly Harris starts appointing personnel across many departments: genocidal hatred toward Jews is apparently not disqualifying). But then there’s her general “faith outreach director,” i.e. Christian outreach coordinator: Jen Butler, another anti-Zionist, despite the fact that large swaths of the Christian community are quite pro-Israel. Butler is a staunch follower of prominent antisemite Linda Sarsour, and referred to Jesus as “a brown skin Palestinian Jew.” Was there really no other Christian available who might be a little friendlier to the Jews? The massive organization Christians United for Israel indicates that there is, so Harris’s choice here, regrettably, is clearly quite intentional.
(4)
Well surely her director of Jewish outreach … Meet Ilan Goldenberg. Goldenberg currently serves as Harris’s Mideast advisor, and is likely to continue in that important position or something similar in her administration, while being recently appointed to Jewish outreach as well. Goldenberg has a history of working with Iranian advocacy group NIAC lobbying for the interests of the Islamic Republic. His friends on Facebook include anti-Israel activists such as Khamenei agent Trita Parsi, Jeremy Ben-Ami, Ben Rhodes, Matt Duss, and Shadi Hamid, and he has retweeted noted antisemite Rep. Ilhan Omar. Goldenberg currently is responsible for crafting the extensive sanctions that the Biden-Harris Administration is imposing on Jewish Israelis (above), while simultaneously relieving sanctions against the Islamic Republic of Iran. There is hardly an anti-Israel position that Goldenberg does not endorse. He advocates for a divided Jerusalem, a return of pre-1967 borders, including dismantling every Jewish town in Judea and Samaria and the Golan Heights, and giving the terrorist-loving P.A. a state and international recognition. He opposes recognizing Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, opposes the Taylor Force Act (which ends economic aid to the P.A. as long as it maintains the “pay-for-slay” program), supports the Iran Deal, and wants to fund UNRWA, the Hamas front group.
This is the person who will likely be formulating Harris’s Israel policy moving forward—or should we say “Anti-Israel policy” (or “pro-Iran” policy)—whom she also thinks is well suited to appeal to the Jewish community. With friends like these, they say, who needs enemies….
Put differently: the Jews she aims to appeal to are the Jews who are opposed to Israel.
(5)
Already mentioned above: Keith Ellison on the shortlist for Attorney General. Ellison’s antisemitism emerged when he became a contender for the top spot at the Democratic National Committee (DNC) in 2017. His ties with the Nation of Islam and its founder Louis Farrakhan were exposed, Farrakhan being about as extreme and explicit an antisemite as they come. In 2010, a recording of Ellison claiming that American foreign policy is “governed” by Israeli interests came out. His bid for DNC chair was perhaps undermined when reports emerged of his suggesting that “European white Jews are trying to oppress minorities all over the world.” This is the person likely to be in charge of the Harris Department of Justice, tasked with deciding whether to prosecute antisemitic Israel-hatred on college campuses and the mobs calling for the end of Israel on city streets and in front of synagogues. Ellison could not possibly do less for the Jewish community than the Biden-Harris Justice Department has done (per above), but, frighteningly, he could do worse: begin prosecuting Jewish students when they push back against the onslaught against them. Recently when a pro-Hamas activist charged and tackled from behind a pro-Israel activist peacefully standing and protesting in Newton, MA, the Democratic District Attorney chose to prosecute the pro-Israel activist for defending himself. A preview of what’s to come, across the land?
(6)
Meet Maher Bitar. Bitar is already in place in the Biden-Harris administration: In 2021 he was appointed Special Assistant to the President and Senior Director for Intelligence Programs at the National Security Council—the same NSC that recently met with the pro-Hamas group (per above). In 2024 Bitar became, in the NSC, Deputy Assistant to the President and coordinator for intelligence and defense policy, the highest-ranking official coordinating U.S. policy in that area. His 2021 appointment was praised by Israel-hating Iran negotiator Rob Malley, currently under investigation for various malfeasance, and by the antisemitic Israel-hating American Task Force on Palestine. That tells you most of what you need to know about the man, who in that role is among the people briefing Biden on the Middle East on a regular basis, and perhaps tells you much about the Biden-Harris approach on all the matters outlined above. It will come as no surprise to learn that Bitar was a board member and leader of SJP at Georgetown University, a major proponent of the anti-Israel BDS movement who organized a BDS conference there, was pictured in a yearbook dancing in front of a banner demanding “Divest From Israeli Apartheid,” and even apparently spent some time working for the Hamas-front-group UNRWA. Recall that SJP and the BDS movement are the same actors primarily responsible for the massive assaults on Jews on campus this past year. As I write Congressman Mike Lawler (R-NY) has written a letter to Biden-Harris expressing his concern that “Mr. Bitar’s resume features a distinct and decades long theme of controversial associations with antisemitic parties,” and depicts “an activist with a clear bias against and disregard for Israel, our closest ally and the only multicultural, multi-ethnic, multi-racial, and multi-religious democracy in the Middle East.”
Bitar will almost surely at least retain his role in a Harris-Walz administration, or perhaps even be promoted to Director of National Intelligence. This is the man who is likely to have the ear, every morning, of a President Harris.
(7) And front runner for National Security Advisor, or perhaps even Secretary of State? According to the Wall Street Journal, Harris is thinking of installing Phil Gordon, currently Harris’s National Security Advisor, as Secretary of State. Gordon is an ally of Iran-loving Ben Rhodes, has ties with numerous other pro-Iran individuals, did substantial work with the pro-Khameini lobby NIAC, has written numerous pro-Iran articles and even a book arguing for appeasement of the Iranian regime (that at the same time blames America for Muslim hatred), and is currently under congressional investigation about these ties and proclivities, including his participation in an Iranian operation to “expand Tehran’s soft power in the United States.” Senator Tom Cotton’s and Rep. Elise Stefanik’s concerns about him were addressed in a letter directly to Vice President Harris back in July, who appears unmoved. It’s no surprise that Gordon is a dedicated Israel-hater who has argued to reverse the move of the American Embassy to Jerusalem and to apply various sanctions to Israel.
A Secretary of State who works to empower Iran, the great enemy of Israel and Jews, while disempowering Israel?
Welcome to a Harris administration.
So there you have it. Major people formulating policy, executing policy, communicating policy, are and will be avid, open haters of Israel. If Biden-Harris were bad for Israel and the Jews, Harris-Walz, with these folks on their roster, empowered and granted a mandate with an election win, will only be dramatically worse.
Conclusion
As a lifelong Democrat, with the fate of Israel and American Jewry on the line, then, it is impossible for me to support this candidate. I find myself posting regularly on Twitter, in response to nearly every relevant news story about Biden-Harris-Walz policies and behavior: “Biden-Harris-Walz are and will be a DISASTER for Israel and for American Jews.” I find this conclusion literally indisputable, their occasional obligatory remark about “Israel has the right to defend itself” notwithstanding. I shudder when the phrase “ironclad commitment” occasionally pops in—because, given all the material above, it is nothing but a direct, open, bald-faced lie.
Biden-Harris-Walz are and will be a disaster for Israel and for American Jews.
As a lifelong Democrat it hurts me even more to admit that, this time around, given the prominence of the currently major issue for me, I believe I have to vote for the Orange Man.
Much as there is to despise about him, much as I myself despise him, much as there is to dislike about the company he sometimes keeps and things that he sometimes says, much as I recognize that there are risks associated with his future presidency as well, and that he is nothing like a genuine panacea—when I cut through the noise, the personality, the character, and some of the behavior, when I focus just on the policy and the personnel, his is the administration that is far more likely to align with the issue that currently matters most to me, the future of Israel and of American Jews.
It hurts to admit it, but Trump was perhaps the most pro-Israel President in American history, with a long list of actions supporting Israel.
Just a few:
(1) He recognized Jerusalem as the capital of Israel and moved the U.S. embassy there, a feat in fact mandated by Congress but which decades of American presidents of both parties failed to do.
(2) He shut down funding of Iran and thus support for its terrorist activities, for its proxies in Hamas, Hezbollah, the Houthis, and others. He imposed strict economic sanctions and had essentially stalled Iran's nuclear program due to lack of funds.
(3) He shut down the funding of UNRWA, and thus direct U.S. funding of Hamas, funding that built the tunnels and the rockets and made the October 7 massacre possible.
(4) He shut down the funding of the P.A., which was being used for “pay to slay.” He also removed Palestinian offices from Washington, D.C.
(5) He withdrew the U.S. from the biased organs of the UN, such as the absurdly antisemitic UN Human Rights Council and UNESCO.
(5) He aligned U.S. Central Command with Israel, fostering daily communications and overall military coordination with the IDF.
(6) Most of all he brokered the Abraham Accords, the greatest advance toward Middle East peace since at least the Egypt-Israel accord, and perhaps providing a pathway to the only prospect of a just peace in the region.
The conclusion is indisputable:
Biden-Harris-Walz are and will be a disaster for Israel and for American Jews.
Trump was the most Pro-Israel President ever.
Nose held and deep breath taken, but:
Orange Man it is.
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