It s a mistake to believe that Biden will be a friend of Palestine
US President Joe Biden at the White House Washington, DC on 26 January 2021 [Doug Mills-Pool/Getty Images] January 27, 2021 at 4:08 pm
Palestinians are eager to turn a new page after four years of the Trump administration in Washington, which undermined the whole Palestinian cause. Trump let Israel s right-wing government do as it pleased, and gave its illegal activities a veneer of acceptability.
Joe Biden s election win was thus welcomed, not least by Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, who saw it as a step towards advancing a peaceful solution for Palestine-Israel. However, Dr Yara Hawari, senior analyst at the Palestinian Policy Network, Al-Shabaka, pointed out that Trump s policies were really just Washington s traditional stance on Palestine, with full and unconditional support for the state of Israel.
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The cantankerous end to the turbulent Trump presidency has imbued the incoming administration with a halo of bright expectations by simple virtue of the disastrous four years that precede it. Like a stand-up feature act that follows an opener’s bombed set at a comedy club, the Biden-Harris duo takes center stage with an easy advantage that requires only the slightest effort to win over a disappointed crowd.
When it comes to Israel, Biden has his work cut out for him. On the foreign policy front, the Biden White House will be pushed to restore Obama’s Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, known more commonly as the Iran nuclear deal, among other initiatives that began while he served as vice president. Israeli human rights activist Miko Peled detailed this and many other policies scrapped by the Trump administration in an editorial for
While the saccharine continues to ooze from the mainstream media for the incoming Biden administration, the real iron fist of what will be the Biden foreign policy is starting to materialize. As if on cue, major bombings in Baghdad by ISIS…remember them? have opened the door for the Biden administration to not only cancel President Trump s troop drawdown from Iraq but to actually begin sending troops back into Iraq.
Is this to be Iraq War 4.0? 3.7? 5.0? Anybody s guess.
If Biden uses this sudden and convenient unrest in Iraq as a trigger to return US troops (and bombs), it should not surprise anyone. As Professor Barbara Ransby points out in this video, Biden did much more to make the disastrous 2003 attack on Iraq happen than just vote yes on the authorization to use force. As Professor Ransby reminds us, Biden used the full power of his position as chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee to ensure the Senate approved George W. Bush s lie-based war on Iraq. Biden pr
The Israel lobby is good for America
Each hinterland fights for its cause. Each provides diplomatic support, financial aid and armaments.
(January 25, 2021 / JNS) When American citizens pressure their government in favor of Israel, some foreign-policy mandarins snootily condemn this as privileging an ethnic group’s narrow priorities over the disinterested formulation of foreign policy. But, in fact, lobbies like the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) and Christians United for Israel (CUFI) actually improve U.S. foreign policy.
In the 1950s, critics of Israel blamed the “Jewish lobby” for obstructing an anti-Soviet alliance. In the 1970s, they blamed robust U.S.-Israel relations for the Arab oil boycott. In the 2000s, they blamed the Israel lobby for the Iraq war. In the 2010s, they criticized it for first obstructing and later repealing the Iran nuclear deal. Most famously, John J. Mearsheimer of the University of Chicago and Stephen M. Walt of Harvard made t