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Nice to get a re-affirmation. Particularly from a dear friend nd a fine analyst. Also fellow memo reader:
"Dear Dick,
White House Ducks Question on Whether Biden Administration Still Considers Israel Its Closest Ally
Photo Credit: The White House / Wikimedia / Public Domain
The Biden Administration may not yet have a clear stand on its relationship with its “closest ally in the Middle East” – or if it does, the Oval Office may not have shared that information with its media folks.
White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki squirmed and squiggled on Friday to answer what appeared to be a relatively softball toss – but apparently, to her at least, turned out not to be.
The reporter asked: “Can you please just give us just a broad sense of what the administration is trying to achieve in the Middle East?
“For example, does the Biden administration “still consider the Saudis and the Israelis important allies?”
Pretty tame, right? The Saudis have been allies for DECADES. The US has military equipment parked there and has been helping Riyadh protect its airport from the Iranian-back Houthi terrorists. As for the Israelis, aren’t they the folks with whom America has an “unbreakable bond” ?
WOW: @PressSec refuses to say that Israel is an American ally.
There is literally no excuse for this. And might explain why Biden hasn’t called Netanyahu yet. pic.twitter.com/EfMJNN9Ssh
— John Cooper (@thejcoop) February 12, 2021
The Press Secretary had a tough time even with the easy toss, however, and did her best to duck the question.
“There are ongoing processes and internal interagency processes, one that we I think confirmed an interagency meeting last week to discuss a range of issues, uh, in the Middle East. Um, we’ve only been here three and a half weeks ah, and I think I’m gonna let those policy processes see themselves through before we give kind of a complete lay-down of what our national security approaches will be to a range of issues,” she said.
So far, President Joe Biden has already made “the call” to at least two dozen heads of state around the world, but so far has not yet seen fit to pick up the phone to say ‘hello’ to Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
Even though both he and Netanyahu have reassured world Jewry “the call” will take place “soon,” the lack of communication between the White House and the Prime Minister’s Residence in Jerusalem is beginning to look more than a little odd, especially when one considers the “unbreakable bond” between our two countries, and the “shared values” so often cited in politicians’ remarks.
And:
What signals is Biden sending about his Middle East policy?
DIPLOMATIC AFFAIRS: Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, as of Thursday, was still waiting to hear from new US President Joe Biden.
“You never get a second chance to make a first impression,” Will Rogers once quipped, a remark as true in diplomatic relations as in personal ones.
Which is why the first weeks and months of a new American administration are so important: they set a tone, they create those first impressions that people take with them, become ingrained and are later difficult – though not impossible – to alter.
The first impressions that former president Barack Obama left on Israel were largely negative, traveling during his first 16 weeks in office to Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Egypt, but pointedly bypassing Israel. That itinerary said much about the administration’s break with the previous one, and how Washington under Obama was readjusting its foreign policy.
The first impression Donald Trump left on Israel was positive: Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was the third call he made to a foreign leader after taking office, a signal that the icy relationship that existed between Netanyahu and the Obama administration was a thing of the past. That set a hopeful tone going forward.
Netanyahu, as of Thursday, was still waiting to hear from new US President Joe Biden.
There may be many good and valid reasons why Biden has called the leaders of a dozen other countries before phoning Netanyahu. This could be because Biden has so much on his plate – the pandemic and racial issues at home, and China and Russia to deal with abroad – that the Mideast is simply not a big priority for his administration. Besides, it is not only Netanyahu who has not received a call yet from the US president; neither has any other leader in the Middle East.
Or it could be that the Biden non-call has to do with the Israeli election campaign, with the new president not wanting to get sucked into the campaign and have a call used by Netanyahu’s camp to help his campaign.
It also could be that Israelis are just overly sensitive about these types of issues, and that it really doesn’t matter all that much – or say anything about the country’s standing in Washington – whether Israel’s prime minister is the third or thirty-third leader called by a newly sworn-in US president.
All that could be true, but the non-call is creating a first impression, and it is not a good one. It gives the impression of an intentional snub, and is being widely interpreted as such both in Israel and abroad. If this is the mood music that will accompany the relationship between Netanyahu and Biden going forward, that music is decidedly downbeat.
BUT THE non-call is only one part of a set of signals that the administration has sent out in its first three weeks in office toward Israel and the region.
Those first three weeks, said Eran Lerman, a former deputy director at the National Security Council and currently vice president of the Jerusalem Institute for Strategy and Security, have been “a mixed bag,” with some of the actions and statements “very worrisome” and others “more positive.”
“This is not an anti-Israeli administration,” Lerman stated. “Not Biden, not [Vice President Kamala] Harris, not [Secretary of State Antony] Blinken, and definitely not [Defense Secretary Lloyd] Austin.”
But, he added, many Israelis consider Rob Malley, the veteran diplomat Biden picked as his point man on Iran, “to be problematic.”
The reason, said former Foreign Ministry director-general Dore Gold, head of the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs, is that Malley “has always been a person who has explored America expanding its relations with more radical elements, including Islamists.”
New York Times columnist and former Jerusalem Post editor-in-chief Bret Stephens said in a Jewish Council for Public Affairs webinar this week that people who have followed Malley’s career “know that he is highly intelligent, highly well versed in the region, but someone whose judgments – for instance, his counsel to Obama, in the last four years of the Obama administration, to essentially go soft on [Syrian President] Bashar Assad – proved to be both a strategic and humanitarian disaster with repercussions that have extended for some time.”
Stephens, who stressed that he was in no way questioning Malley’s allegiance, said he hopes that the new point man on Iran understands his new position is to represent America’s interests, “not trying to represent Iran’s interests to America.”
Gold said that Malley’s appointment, alongside those of more traditional democrats like Blinken, indicates that the Democratic Party has a lot of different and competing streams within it, and that this is being reflected in the individuals Biden has selected to shape his administration’s foreign policy.
Blinken is more of a “mainstream” voice inside the party, “and not wild progressive,” Gold said.
But Lerman said that one comment this week coming from even the mainstream Blinken was cause for concern: specifically, his answer to a question posed in a CNN interview regarding whether the administration will continue to see the Golan Heights as part of Israel.
Blinken equivocated, saying that while he did not want to go into the “legalities’’ of the issue, “as long as Assad is in power in Syria, as long as Iran is present in Syria, militia groups backed by Iran... the control of the Golan in that situation I think remains of real importance to Israel’s security. Legal questions are something else. And over time, if the situation were to change in Syria, that’s something we’d look at. But we are nowhere near as that.”
Lerman said that Blinken’s response was “out of touch with reality,” because since no one has any solution to the Syrian problem, “it doesn’t look good” to even address the Golan issue at this point.
Gold applauded Netanyahu for the way he dealt with the matter, not opening up a “diplomatic front with the Biden administration” over the issue, but just stating very clearly that Israel will never leave the territory.
“As far as I am concerned, the Golan Heights will remain forever part of the State of Israel, a sovereign part,” Netanyahu said less than 24 hours after Blinken’s comments. “Should we return it to Syria? Should we return the Golan to a situation where mass slaughter is a danger?”
Gold said that Netanyahu was not getting into politics or a confrontation with the new administration, merely stating Israeli policy.
In the beginning of the new administration, Gold said, it is incumbent upon Israel – both privately and in public – to “articulate its most vital national security positions. It is important that Israel reassert the idea that it has the right, at the end of day, to have defensible borders.”
The most worrisome step the new administration has taken in relation to the Mideast, according to Lerman, was the decision to reverse Mike Pompeo’s decision on the final day of Trump’s term to designate the Houthis in Yemen as a terrorist organization.
“The Houthis are a bunch of murderous Iranian proxies with the most overtly antisemitic ideology,” he said. “We have reasons to be worried about this decision and the sense of abandonment the Saudis may be feeling.”
Two days after this policy reversal, the Houthis took responsibility for a drone attack on a Saudi airport.
Even with that misstep, Lerman said, the first days of the administration do not represent “darkness descending upon us. It is not a straight repeat of the Obama administration, and Biden would do well not to throw away the baby with the bathwater in terms of abandoning aspects of Trump’s legacy that are positive,” foremost among those being the Abraham Accords.
Lerman said that regarding the Palestinian issue, the administration’s initial decisions – staying away from comments about any specific peace plan, not talking about putting together negotiations or demanding a settlement freeze – show a positive understanding that “at this stage, against the background of Israeli and Palestinian dynamics, we are looking at conflict management, maybe improved conflict management, but there is not much else to be done in the immediate and intermediate future.”
And:
Another reason to reject the New York Times.
What has the New York Times got against Ayaan Hirsi Ali?
Ayaan Hirsi Ali is not an easy person to cancel. She has survived the brutal murder of her colleague Theo van Gogh, lived through more than two decades of serious threats to her life and fled more countries than many people have visited. Perhaps it is for these reasons, rather than in spite of them, that she generates such hatred from what used to be called ‘liberal’ quarters.
Hirsi Ali has a new book out this week. ‘Prey’ is a forensically detailed, careful and brave analysis of (as the subtitle says) ‘immigration, Islam and the erosion of women’s rights'. It looks at questions that most people turn away from: horrors that result from the mass immigration into Europe of recent decades. Horrors like the one which Britain euphemistically describes as the ‘grooming gangs’ problem.
Prey is a clear-sighted book, filled with what data is able to be gathered from numerous Western countries which have been careful to do anything other than collect data on such questions. Hirsi Ali’s conclusions are far from outrageous. They are moderate, detailed and in line with what sensible public opinion would agree with in almost every country.
Unfortunately sensible public opinion is rarely aired because a small group of left-wing boundary-beaters have spent the last twenty years trying to ensure that none of the news, data or debate around this is ever had out. For the last twenty years all Western European countries have circled around the consequences that mass immigration from Muslim societies can bring. But thanks to these would-be censors many people, including politicians who might make a difference, find that the price of entering the debate is off-puttingly high.
A pattern has emerged in which whenever somebody raises the issue of whether or not there are any consequences that result from importing large numbers of mainly male migrants from culturally – ahem – different cultures, the person raising the question is accused of being ‘far-right’ or bigoted. If they are white they are called ‘racist’. If they are black they are called the same thing and more.
Occasionally there is talk of needing to at some point address these questions in a ‘responsible’ fashion. But the long-awaited day never comes, and in the meantime whenever anybody attempts to address these questions ‘responsibly’ the same routine applies. A small coterie of left-wing and Islamist activist boundary-beaters pop-up to ensure that the discussion is suppressed once more.
In recent days, this formula has again been employed against Ayaan Hirsi Ali. As soon as her book came out, The New York Times published a characteristically inaccurate hit-piece to try to kill it at birth. Speaking engagements – even virtual ones – involving Hirsi Ali came under sustained pressure to cancel. The Council on American-Islamic Relations and other Muslim groups started to campaign against the book. And figures like an obscure communist activist called Maryam Namazie, who claims to campaign against Islamism, found common cause with the Islamists in trying to take-out Hirsi Ali. In the latter case, Hirsi Ali was berated for having views that are ‘regressive’, as though one must have ‘progressive’ communist views or have no views at all.
But in the scheme of things, it is the New York Times whose campaign against the book will register with the most. And so it is worth showing just how false and agenda-laden that piece – written by one Jill Filipovic – actually is.
Throughout her review, Filipovic seems intent on using Hirsi Ali’s personal story against her. For instance, she calls Hirsi Ali ‘an asylee who calls for an end to asylum as we know it.’ It is a strange weapon to use against Hirsi Ali, as though the author of ‘Prey’ has tried to cover-over her own story. Far from it, here is Hirsi Ali in the book under review:
In recent times, the New York Times has had a terrible problem
‘As an immigrant and former asylum seeker of Somali origin, I am for immigration. I have no objection to people packing up their possessions and leaving their homes to try to improve their circumstances. I completely understand why they would wish to do so because I did it myself. My concern is with the attitudes some bring with them, with the behaviors that these attitudes generate in a minority of migrants, and with the seeming inability of Western countries to understand how to cope with the resulting problems. In fact, the West is failing migrants by refusing to prepare young men for the culture clash they will experience and then by refusing to hold them accountable for their lack of self-control.’
Did Filipovic not make it to page 162 of the book she was paid to review? Or did it just not fit her own – and her employer’s – desire to dismiss Hirsi Ali?
Similar errors occur throughout Filipovic’s slurry little effort. For example, she writes of Hirsi Ali:
‘Her proposed solutions include ramping up policing, harsher criminal penalties and intrusions into personal privacy. Even as she says she has “thought deeply about the seeming paradox of using illiberal means to achieve liberal ends,” she ultimately decides that the ends indeed justify the means – even 'privacy-obsessed Germans,' she posits, could be persuaded to accept the use of video surveillance, artificial intelligence and facial recognition technology in 'troubled neighborhoods.'
As it happens, this summary doesn’t remotely fit the contents of the book in question. Because it is inconvenient to the task in hand, Filipovic once again conveniently omits Hirsi Ali’s constant criticisms and questions of tools including surveillance technology. So Filipovic moves around Hirsi Ali’s quotes in order to misrepresent her arguments. On page 264 of Prey, Hirsi Ali writes:
‘It is not only authoritarian governments such as China's that can use CCTV, facial recognition technology, and artificial intelligence to monitor their populations. To a remarkable extent, security in the United Kingdom, as well as in Israel, already depends on such camera-based surveillance. Such solutions may seem unpalatable to privacy-obsessed Germans, but a case for their limited use in troubled neighborhoods can surely be made. When citizens in Tübingen were asked by the metropolitan government whether they were willing to accept video surveillance and increased policing in exchange for greater safety, they overwhelmingly agreed. Technology has a role to play. But there is no substitute for humans with expertise. National and regional police forces need special units dedicated to the protection of women and girls, not to mention Jewish communities, LGBTQ communities, and the dissidents of Islam.’
Again, did Filipovic not make it this far? Does the NYT fee not include any insistence that the reviewer hired to perform the hit-job actually reads to the end of the book in question? Apparently not.
Elsewhere, Filipovic writes:
‘Hirsi Ali suggests scrapping the current asylum program, which offers safe harbor to those facing persecution.’
Whereas Hirsi Ali does no such thing. On page 209 of Prey the reader can read of her desire for a reformation of ‘migration and integration policies… set up to fail’.
And on page 256 she writes:
‘I have been a beneficiary of the asylum system and of a successful integration program. I have emigrated twice in my life. I would be a monstrous hypocrite if I lent support to the proponents of deportation and immigration restriction. What I want to see is many others like me enjoying the same opportunities that I enjoyed and contributing, as I believe I have, to the health of the West's open societies. But without drastic reforms of Europe's immigration and integration systems, that is not going to happen.’
On page 258 Hirsi Ali says:
‘The global asylum and refugee system is no longer fit for its stated purpose. As a beneficiary of that system, I do not make such a statement lightly. But the reality is that this outdated asylum system can no longer cope with the challenges posed by mass violence and global migration today.’
Most mainstream politicians across Europe (from the political left and right) would agree with this statement. Only a far-off and out-of-touch observer at the NYT, unbothered by any of these real-life problems, would pretend that such issues do not exist apart from in the imagination of the author she has been hired to smear.
Again, on page 259:
‘As someone who has been through the asylum system and translated for dozens of other asylum seekers, I understand the appeal of using asylum as a legal basis for migration. But what is wrong with being an economic migrant in search of a better life? It is clear that we need to change the artificial classification that differentiates between asylum seekers, refugees, and economic migrants.’
Very occasionally, Filipovic tries to pretend that her own view of Hirsi Ali is fair and balanced. At one point she grudgingly describes her as ‘a steely woman of great intelligence’. Once she even concedes that Hirsi Ali might be onto something:
‘Even a reader like myself – a reader who delights in a little happy blasphemy, yearns for greater secularism and unapologetic atheism, and welcomes the skewering of misogynist fundamentalists of any religion.’
But of course the reviewer finds a way to let herself off the hook, by attempting to stand equidistant between Hirsi Ali and the fundamentalists who she is critiquing. Filipovic writes:
‘Like the fundamentalist religious views she and I both detest, Prey is too absolutist to be credible.’
All of which leaves a number of questions to this reader. Not just why Filipovic seems to have read a different book from the one she was hired to review, but what exactly people like Filipovic think the answer to the problems described by Hirsi Ali actually are. Do they exist? If so what is one to do about them, other than shut down people who speak about them? The reviewer claims to dislike fundamentalist religious views, but she dislikes even more anybody who criticises such views.
I wonder what the explanation could be? But here I will take a leaf out of the NYT’s book, and look for the simplest and most hostile explanation possible. In this fashion, one possibility does spring to mind. A possibility produced by the organ that Filipovic is writing for.
In recent times, the NYT has had a terrible problem – more so than any other mainstream publication – of racism among its staff. The publication has hired writers who make overtly racist comments (Sarah Jeong) and fired other people for allegedly using racist terminology.
I don’t know why the NYT can’t get through a month without an internal racism scandal, but I begin to desire to take it by its own lights and simply accept that the paper in question has a racism problem. And I suppose that a piece like Filipovic’s must be read in this light.
Filipovic seems to think that because Ayaan Hirsi Ali is a black immigrant of Muslim origin she must say only one set of things. When she says a different set of things she must have words put in her mouth by America’s former paper of record. That paper must then muffle the woman’s opinions, defame her and otherwise unvoice her. These have all been tropes in the history of racism. And I suppose that the history of racism is alive, well and continuing at the New York Times. Under the guise of ‘anti-racism’, obviously.
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