Citizens are becoming inert, as radical ideas take root that our Founders never envisioned.
And:
https://nypost.com/2021/10/04/can-america-survive-progressives-attacks-on-its-origins-and-values/
Can America survive progressives’ attacks on its origins and values?
By Victor Davis Hanson
American icons like President Abraham Lincoln have come under attack from progressives.American icons like President Abraham Lincoln have come under attack from progressives. Photo by Library Of Congress/Getty Images
Over the last two years, progressive critics have casually attacked the origins, nature and values of American society. Is the idea of America so indestructible that it can weather any assault?
The foundational dates of America — the signing in 1776 of the Declaration of Independence and in 1787 of the Constitution — have been attacked. Citizens are now asked to believe that they have no inspirational or historical value.
Statues of the American luminaries have been defaced or toppled. Names on schools and monuments are obliterated.
The Soviet-like erasures do not just involve Confederate generals. Often the Founders, such as George Washington and Thomas Jefferson — along with Civil-War-era luminaries such as Frederick Douglas and Abraham Lincoln — are damned from our memories. Their common crimes are believing in the American ideal.
“Critical Race Theory” argues America can presently discriminate to atone for past discrimination. And it can practice racism to fight prior racism — amid a multiracial democracy of competing tribal interests. In just a few months, our elites have completely jettisoned the centuries-long aspiration — energized by Martin Luther King, Jr. — of a racially blind America.
“Critical Legal Theory” believes that laws are merely the biased constructs of the rich and powerful. They purportedly lack any grounding in the natural law of keeping order and reflecting innately human morality. Spiraling violence in the streets of major American cities is now the offspring of such pop theorizing.
“New monetary theory” recklessly insists that printing money will not cause inflation and expenditures do not have to correlate with revenues. Do such charlatans remember 1930s Germany, 1970s America or contemporary Venezuela?
The US military helter-skelter fled Afghanistan, abandoning thousands of Afghan allies and hundreds of US citizens and green card holders. A military that holds its own soldiers accountable for losing a few bullets left over $80 billion of US weaponry and equipment in the hands of terrorists.
"Critical Race Theory" is one of several tactics used by progressives to attack American values and origins.“Critical Race Theory” is one of several tactics used by progressives to attack American values and origins.REUTERS/Evelyn Hockstein
In 2020 during the aftermath of the death of George Floyd, the country suffered from 120 days of violent protests, rioting and arson, including firebomb attacks on Washington, DC’s historic St. John’s Episcopal Church, a Portland courthouse and a Minneapolis police precinct. On Jan. 6, 2021 protestors stormed into the US Capitol.
During the COVID-19 pandemic, lockdown, and quarantine, unelected bureaucrats usurped the constitutional rights of citizens, often on dubious medical grounds.
Rents for millions were arbitrarily suspended on orders from the Center for Disease Control. Quarantines were routinely violated with exemptions if protestors were deemed woke. And bureaucrats for months lied that naturally acquired immunity from prior infection was inferior to the protection provided by vaccinations.
There are lots of assumptions of all these revisionists, revolutionaries, iconoclasts, name changers, bureaucrats, and establishmentarians. They seem to think citizens should forfeit their history, customs and freedoms to a self-appointed elite.
Somehow Americans have been badgered that the US has to be perfect to be good — as defined by political activists with agendas that would transform America into something unrecognizable.
We seem to forget that citizenship is not history’s norm.
Except for brief parentheses in ancient Greece and Rome, and the Western world after the Renaissance and Enlightenment, since the dawn of civilization some 7,000 years ago most people have been rendered mere tribal residents, or worse, slaves, serfs, and subjects.
The radical American idea that we make our own laws and govern ourselves is a fragile notion. And it depends on a variety of requisites that we are now in danger of destroying.
American citizenship requires a viable middle class, constant civic education, secure borders, a common identity, control over unelected bureaucrats, a featly to the Constitution and some awareness that global norms are often antithetical to an exceptional America.
America is history’s aberration. Those now trying to tear it down are the same familiar suspects over the last 2,500 years, who despise consensual government and the middle classes who preserve it.
Victor Davis Hanson’s just-released new book is “The Dying Citizen: How Progressive Elites, Tribalism, and Globalization Are Destroying the Idea of America.”
Meanwhile:
Parents are ticked over CRT so now they are deemed terrorists? Is this America?
Biden Will Label Angry Parents as ‘Terrorists’?
(TheRedAlertNews.com) – Almost every American has seen the videos of angry protesters yelling at school board meetings across the United States. At times, the protesters have shut down meetings with threats of violence and even followed school board members to their cars and homes – all the while verbally accosting those members who are often unpaid representatives in their home communities.
There can be little doubt that a significant number of these protests have gone beyond what was considered the normal boundaries of civilized behavior in the not-too-distant past. Many school board members have reported that at times they have feared for their lives and the lives of their families when protesters have shown up at their homes.
Still, the solution being sought by an organization that represents schools boards all across the United States – the National School Boards Association – is just as outrageous as the behavior of some Americans at school board meetings. The association has requested that President Joe Biden and the Biden administration classify the protesters as “domestic terrorists.” Going further, the organization, along with another national school board association, has asked Biden to direct the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the Department of Homeland Security, the Department of Justice, and the Department of Education to initiate an investigation.
In what looks like an almost immediate response to those requests, U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland has ordered the FBI to begin coordinating an investigation into “the rise in criminal conduct directed toward school personnel.”
While the behavior of numerous protesters undoubtedly goes beyond the pale, are we at a point that we want to label angry parents as terrorists?
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If Facebook is allowed to bar the (any) President of The United States to use their system to communicate with American voters/citizens, and is a public company listed on The NYSE, it would seem to me their vast powers of censorship must be curtailed. They should not be allowed special consideration and excluded from being held to a publisher's standard.
The last time he appeared and testified he was evasive and did not follow through as promised:
FEATURE:
Blumenthal calls on Zuckerberg to testify following whistleblower claims
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One more organization that stands for equity rather than equality though it professes to be non-partisan. America needs to be saved from do gooders who do harm.
Biden's Justice Department has authorized the corrupt FBI to intimidate parents who are deemed abusive.
With the passing of each day, Biden's America becomes more like Germany before WW 2.
Exactly who or what is the National School Boards Association?
I’m willing to bet that, before this week, most Americans, including parents whose kids are or were in public school, had never heard of the National School Boards Association (“NSBA”). When its president, though, wrote to Joe Biden suggesting that parents who complain about Critical Race Theory, masks, and transgenderism are domestic terrorists, it popped up on our radar. And when the DOJ promptly agreed with that suggestion by promising to send FBI agents to become involved with local school boards, people started wondering just who or what the NSBA really is.
Here’s how the NSBA describes itself:
The National School Boards Association (NSBA) is a federation of state associations and the U.S. territory of the Virgin Islands that represent locally elected school board officials serving approximately 51 million public school students regardless of their disability, ethnicity, socio-economic status or citizenship. Working with and through our state association members, NSBA advocates for equity and excellence in public education through school board leadership.
The NSBA claims to “represent more than 90,000 local school board members....” Those are big numbers.
There’s more but you get the gist: It’s a do-good lobbying organization for American public-school boards. It’s when you get into the details of exactly what constitutes doing good as far as the NSBA is concerned that you realize that it is a group completely dedicated to leftist policies.
The word “equity” crops up repeatedly. As we’ve learned in the last decade, while the Founders were concerned with equality, which means that all people are entitled to equal treatment under the law, along with a citizen’s right to a voice in representative government, equity is different. Equity is a zero-sum game of winners and losers, with the government determining who wins and who loses. It pits groups against each other, treats individuals based on external, immutable characteristics, glories in victimhood, and generally is antithetical to a free people and a free society.
The NSBA has a whole disquisition on equity. Again, you can feel the Critical Race Theory mindset oozing out through the jargon:
We affirm in our actions that each student can, will, and shall learn. We recognize that based on factors including but not limited to disability, race, ethnicity, and socio-economic status, students are often deprived of equitable educational opportunities. Educational equity is the intentional allocation of resources, instruction, and opportunities according to need, requiring that discriminatory practices, prejudices, and beliefs be identified and eradicated.
There’s even a 26-page booklet for “Reimagining School Board Leadership: Actions for Equity.” Using mangled punctuation, the booklet asks board members to determine whether they are “teaching the truth about American history from multiple perspectives? (slavery, white supremacy, Native American genocide, etc.)?” That doesn’t sound like “multiple perspectives” to me.
As always, this equity doesn’t extend to the Board or the management. While the Board president is Hispanic, and there is a sprinkling of Blacks and Hispanics, the leadership is lily-white.
The NSBA’s recommendations to the Biden/Harris administration could have been drafted by AOC and her Squad, for they include
Having Mrs. Joe Biden lead a task form on “Public School Transformation and Equity.”
Requesting COVID money.
Reversing Trump’s 1776 Advisory Committee because it “would harm efforts by many school districts to offer comprehensive and unbiased subject matter concerning American history.” (That would be the “slavery, white supremacy, Native American genocide, etc.” discussed above.)
Reinstating Obama’s illegal DACA program.
Rescinding Trump’s order ending Critical Race Theory training in schools.
Rescinding Trump’s order enforcing federal law prohibiting immigrants who are a public charge.
Putting pressure on schools to engage in race-based punishment (that is, students of one race cannot be punished more than those of another even if they are misbehaving more).
Opposing vouchers.
Protecting “Dreamers” and promoting amnesty for illegal aliens.
You can wade through the NSBA website yourself. You’ll find yourself hip-deep in Marxist jargon, anti-Americanism, support for illegal immigration, and Critical Race Theory. There’s a reason the Department of Justice instantly acquiesced to the NSBA’s request to use FBI intimidation to silence parental opposition to school boards implementing radical policies. The Biden administration and the NSBA are reading from the same hymnal in the Church of Wokeness.
I have heard through the rumor mill—and have no evidence to support this claim—that public school boards face pressure to join the NSBA. If that’s true, why wouldn’t they? Unless they dig deep or are attuned to the meaning behind apparently anodyne phrases such as “equity” or “anti-racism,” they have no idea what they’re supporting when they sign on.
Now that the NSBA has come out into the open as a radical leftist organization, I hope that school districts all over America immediately drop their affiliation with this body.
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Three soulless men:
Our Woke National Icons Milley, Fauci, and Biden are soulless men who reveal the bankruptcy of our ruling class.
By Victor Davis Hanson
Posted By Ruth King
As we watch events unfold in 2021, obvious questions about the fitness of our national leaders present themselves. Who are these new woke national icons and how did they come to lord it over the rest of us? Here are some observations by way of preliminary explanation.
The Strategist
Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Mark Milley conceded to Congress last week that he has been an anonymous source to controversial “inside” progressive muckrakers detailing the supposed dysfunctions of the prior administration. He strangely characterizes such anonymous, self-serving, behind-the-scenes leaking as some sort of public-service transparency. Evidently, it is now a part of the chairman’s duties to serve the media.
Among the many “background” quotes that Milley provided to meet his journalistic obligations were his various comparisons of his commander-in-chief to Nazis—a violation of Article 88 of the Uniform Code of Military Justice. He reportedly offered further allegations to journalists that news outlets like the Epoch Times and Newsmax were “terrorist” organizations. When pressed on such details the usually punctilious Milley shrugs, in the fashion of James Comey’s under-oath testimonies, that he does “not recall” such specifics. Such is the honor of the nation’s most visible military officer.
Although by statute Milley lacks operational command, he admittedly has intervened in the operational protocols concerning the use of nuclear weapons. At one point, after a conversation with, and on the apparent prompting of, HouseSpeaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), he redirected normal decision-making channels concerning the potential use of nuclear weapons through his own person. That is forbidden by law—despite what his beltway apologists have pleaded.
More interestingly, though, Milley took it upon himself to call up the major military leaders of Communist China, and to apprise them that (in his opinion) the United States was in crisis (“messy”). No worries, though: the freelancing Milley assured the People’s Liberation Army heads that they should not worry about any preemptive attack or aggression, since Milley himself apparently was in de facto charge of such strategic decision-making and would warn them in advance if his country seemed dangerously aggressive. Thus far in the imbroglio, the Pentagon and the retired military apparently seem comfortable with such a radically new role for the chairman of the Joint Chiefs.
Milley ignored that Trump was the first president in memory who did not initiate a major new military engagement. And when pressed under oath, Milley himself later confessed that he did not think Trump was likely to start a war against anyone—which raises the question of why he even made such a peremptory call to our adversaries? Much of what Milley has testified to under oath before Congress is flatly contradicted by transcripts of his phone call with Pelosi, is in utter conflict with statements made by President Biden and the State Department and cannot be reconciled with his own frequent prior disclosures to journalists.
In sum, America’s highest-ranking honorific military officer has violated the Uniform Code of Military Justice, has violated the law concerning his own advisory role as chairman of the Joint Chiefs, and has either serially not told the truth, or assumes that Nancy Pelosi, Joe Biden, several journalists (and various earlier incarnations of himself) are all not telling the truth.
Milley has set a new precedent for the leadership of the Joint Chiefs of Staff: it is now permissible to be overtly political, to leak confidential conversations to progressive book-writing journalists, to freelance and warn likely enemies if and when the U.S. military might take action against them, and to pick and choose when to exercise (illegally) operational command, and when (legally) to refrain, or at least to remain “only” an advisor, when culpability for a disaster, like the one in Afghanistan, is determined.
Historians will later ponder why this officer has not resigned and what his continued tenure says about the status of the current U.S. military.
The Health Wizard
Our pandemic czar, Anthony Fauci, early on in the COVID-19 crisis praised the efforts of China to work with the world in containing the virus. Yet the Chinese did not disclose accurate information about the nature, origins, and spread of the virus. Indeed, Beijing had locked down the ground-zero Wuhan metropolis from all internal travel, while allowing its possibly infectious residents to fly freely to the United States and Europe.
China then criticized Western travel bans as xenophobic and warped the World Health Organization to the point that its director initially assured the United States that COVID-19 was not a global threat and would be contained.
Fauci himself insisted that the virus’s most likely origins were natural, to be found in animals sold in a Wuhan “wet” market. He also still cannot quite concede that the “science” favors the idea that naturally acquired COVID-19 immunity is comparable or superior to the protection provided by vaccinations. And thus, Fauci cannot adequately explain why someone with antibodies from a prior infection must be vaccinated—other than the assumption of his past use of the “noble lie,” or the idea that grandees must sometimes not tell the truth in a public-spirited effort to prevent ignorant American citizens from doing something not approved by our elites—such as some with natural antibodies not wishing to be vaccinated after recovering from COVID-19.
Fauci has dismissed increasing scientific objections that the virus bore evidence of being engineered, that there were dissident reports from Chinese sources that the virus most likely was released, if accidentally, from the Wuhan top-security virology research lab, and that the Chinese military and government went to great efforts to silence any Chinese scientist or medical professional who connected the Wuhan creation of the SARS-CoV-2 virus to the nearby government lab.
Fauci adamantly denied under congressional oath that he had funded any “gain-of-function” viral research in Wuhan. Yet he admitted that his National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, along with the National Institute of Health, had given several hundred thousand dollars for Wuhan virology research, apparently much of it focused on alterations of viruses (in grantese: “further altering the mutant viruses”) to discover levels of infectiousness and transmissibility. And he had routed much of such aid to the Chinese Wuhan lab through the EcoHealth Alliance, an organization run by Dr. Peter Daszak.
Daszak himself headed a “global” medical investigation that strangely enough found no human role in the outbreak of the new SARS-CoV-2 virus. Yet he was later recused from his investigatory leadership, apparently due to failure to disclose his own conflicts of interest in Chinese-Western viral research. Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?
In the end, we are left with the fact that the controversial, media-obsessed, and highly visible Dr. Anthony Fauci praised Chinese cooperation in containing the virus. He has admitted that a federal agency under his direction had channeled viral research grants to the likely source of the outbreak in a Wuhan virology lab. And yet he has denied the lab itself was either engaged in gain-of-function research or received U.S. dollars to pursue such research, although much of the scientific community now disagrees with his flat-out definition that American subsidized research at Wuhan could not possibly be seen as artificially enhancing the lethality or transmissibility of natural viruses.
The Moral Leader
In the past week, Joe Biden did what he now seems to do every week: He told a series of untruths that the media simply ignored or reported as true. Within the space of a few days, he lied when he said his own border patrol agents whipped illegal aliens trying to enter the United States illegally. He lied when he said only 4 million had been vaccinated when he entered office—although that was not quite as bold a lie as when he earlier entered office claiming that no one had been vaccinated (it was 17 million actually). And he lied about “trillionaires” (none exist) not paying their fair share.
Collate Biden’s accounts of the advice he says he got from the chairman of the Joint Chiefs and the defense secretary with what the latter two swore to under oath, and either Biden or his military advisors or both are simply not telling the truth.
Biden says that as vice president and as a candidate for president, he never knew of, much less participated in, or profited from, his son Hunter’s various multimillion-dollar shakedowns of foreign governments.
Hunter’s schemes included Ukraine (the Burisma rip-off) and China (his “real estate” partnership bankrolled by $1.5 billion in Chinese investment money). Despite earlier promises, Hunter apparently still has not disposed of his 10-percent stake in an investment company related to the Chinese Communist government that has ties to companies sanctioned by the U.S. government.
Most recently the younger Biden dreamed up a fraudulent art con to hock his paintings to anonymous buyers, who are more interested in buying his father’s clout than investing in Hunter’s lack of artistic ability. Hunter, remember, has no business talent to speak of, other than his name and leveraging his father’s influence on behalf of foreign interests. But he does have a long history of serial drug use, reckless, anti-social behavior, and general unethical conduct.
Joe Biden, remember, flew on Air Force Two with Hunter, just two weeks before the huge deal with Hunter’s Chinese partners was announced. The statement by Joe Biden that he knew nothing of Hunter’s quid pro quo imbroglios is belied by his son’s trips with him on government flights, by photos of Joe Biden with Hunter’s foreign associates, by references in emails to Joe’s cut, and by testimony from Hunter’s own associate Tony Bobulinski that Biden was fully involved in and knowledgeable of his son’s grifting
Indeed, from his son’s own emails, we know that Joe Biden was referred to by Hunter’s grifting associates as “the Big Guy,” with a reference to a 10 percent cut (e.g., “10 held by H for the big guy?”). So, from Hunter’s own associate we hear that Joe received monies for the use of his name and position to leverage foreign connections. We also know from Joe’s own braggadocio that he leveraged Ukraine officials to stop investigating the very firm that his son was so assiduously milking for money. And we know that Joe has used Hunter’s profits for his own personal expenses. In sum, without Joe Biden’s complicity, the Bidens’ corrupt empire would never have existed.
None of this apparently matters. Few worry over Joe Biden’s inability to tell the truth, his reliance on the fusion media to disguise his serial mendacity, his overt refusal to be questioned regularly by the press, and his disastrous and unpopular policies concerning Afghanistan, the border, inflation and deficits, and reduced oil and gas development.
Why?
In a strange way, Biden’s cognitive dysfunction and age-related befuddlement serve as prophylactics. The understood contextualization of his serial fantasies and lies goes something like, “Well, you might lie too, or get confused, if you were 78, given a president’s schedule and past serious brain operations.”
Or perhaps a cruder form of apologetics is intended: “Damned right he lies constantly and of course he seems addled. So, what exactly are you going to do about it—replace him with Kamala Harris?”
How do these people continue to exercise such power and influence? There are at least four likely reasons:
1) D.C. Deference Culture. As creatures of government and Washington, they, and legions like them, understand that there are zero consequences for not telling the truth. When trapped in “misstatements” and “I don’t recall” fibs, they tend to resort to an argument from authority, whether that be leveraged by the initials following their name, their titles, or their ribbons and medallions. They have enjoyed life-long impressive government remuneration and their obsequious fealty understandably seems to be first toward the permanent beltway corporate, media, and government class that protects and abets them.
2) Careerism. They understand America’s academic, cultural, and corporate institutions—the media, Wall Street, academia, Silicon Valley, the federal bureaucracy, Hollywood, and now professional sports—are monopolized by leftists. And so, they make the necessary adjustments to ingratiate themselves with such centers of power, often virtue signaling their anger against the supposedly Neanderthal and deplorable Right.
Thus, Hollywood’s heartthrob Fauci’s constant sermonizing about the unvaccinated (that carefully avoids any allusion to the least vaccinated of all demographics, African Americans, and illegal aliens). Thus, Milley mounts a crusade not against the Taliban, but against “white rage.” Thus, Joe Biden’s invective against “chumps,” “dregs,” the “fat,” and “lying dog-faced pony soldier(s).”
3) China. As good globalists, they have a surreal, if not dangerously familiar, relationship with their communist Chinese counterparts, whether in the highest echelons of the People’s Liberation Army, the military-affiliated researchers at the Wuhan lab, or the government-controlled companies that have invested in the Biden family’s various grifts.
4) The Shadow of Trump. All three of these careerists came to greater prominence as progressive anti-Trump mascots, as part of their acquiring woke insurance.
Once Milley apologized to the nation for appearing next to Trump, it was but a short devolution to assuring Michelle Obama that he too was delighted that Trump lost the election or making sure that Washington insider journalists knew that he too considered Trump a Hitlerian figure. That was a wise career move for Milley, since legions of Washington grandees and reporters are now lining up in his defense. And likely greater rewards await Milley upon retirement: what the public sees as embarrassing behavior, corporate defense contractors likely will welcome as properly positioned assets.
Likewise, it did not take Fauci too long to see he would be damaged goods if he continued as an advisor to the hated Trump Administration. So in back channels, he made his own odium known and began appearing exclusively on left-wing television to erase the earlier stain of appearing next to Trump in his supposedly nonpartisan role as COVID-19 advisor.
Again, that hedge was smart. As a result, the now angelic St. Fauci became a veritable deity on the Left—in the manner it had once briefly canonized a Ruth Bader Ginsburg or Robert Mueller, before inevitably turning on both as disappointments.
Finally, Joe Biden had little to recommend him as president, as his past two failed campaigns, and his early dismal 2020 effort attested. But once Biden rebooted himself as having no ideas or policies other than hating Trump and being the only “centrist” leftist who could beat him, he too was consecrated.
All his racist slurs and looney statements were forgiven—at least as long as he seems to offer some utility before abdicating to Kamala Harris.
Victor Davis Hanson is a distinguished fellow of the Center for American Greatness and the Martin and Illie Anderson Senior Fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution. He is an American military historian, columnist, a former classics professor, and scholar of ancient warfare. He has been a visiting professor at Hillsdale College since 2004. Hanson was awarded the National Humanities Medal in 2007 by President George W. Bush. Hanson is also a farmer (growing raisin grapes on a family farm in Selma, California) and a critic of social trends related to farming and agrarianism. He is the author most recently of The Second World Wars: How the
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Biden spokesperson suggests diplomacy to Israel:
Diplomacy is ‘best path’ to thwart Iran nukes, Biden aide tells Israelis
In meeting with Israeli counterpart in DC, US national security adviser reiterates that Washington is prepared to consider other options if talks to revive JCPOA fail
By Jacob Magid
US National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan speaks with reporters in the James Brady Press Briefing Room at the White House, on March 12, 2021, in Washington, DC. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)
United States National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan reiterated the Biden administration’s preference for diplomatic efforts to revive the Iran nuclear agreement over military action against the Islamic Republic’s nuclear program, during a meeting with his Israeli counterpart in Washington on Tuesday.
Sullivan “explained that this administration believes diplomacy is the best path to achieve that goal [ensuring Iran never obtains nuclear weapons], while also noting that the president has made clear that if diplomacy fails, the United States is prepared to turn to other options,” a White House readout said.
Israel opposes the revival of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), which former US president Barack Obama signed in 2015, and his successor Donald Trump withdrew from in 2018. However, Prime Minister Naftali Bennett has told current US President Joe Biden that he would not publicly campaign against the JCPOA the way his predecessor Benjamin Netanyahu did.
Washington says that the new government in Iran has projected interest, through intermediaries, in returning to negotiations that took place in Vienna aimed at reviving the JCPOA but have remained idle since June. However, the Biden administration has also clarified that its patience is running out.
“We still believe very strongly that the diplomatic path remains the best path for resolving this issue,” a senior US official told reporters during a Monday briefing. “Since we came in we have not lifted any sanctions, we are not going to pay upfront, and we’ve made that very clear.”
Sullivan hosted an Israeli delegation, led by National Security Council chairman Eyal Hulata, for a meeting on Tuesday of the US-Israel Strategic Consultative Group (SRG), an inter-agency bilateral forum established in March for discussing Iran and other regional security issues.
TV cameras in front of the ‘Grand Hotel Vienna’ where closed-door nuclear talks take place in Vienna, Austria, on June 20, 2021. (Florian Schroetter/AP)
The SRG includes representatives from the military, diplomatic and intelligence communities in both Israel and the US. The forum has met several times in recent months, but the Tuesday morning session was the first time it was convened in person.
“The two sides exchanged views on the most pressing challenges impacting the security and stability of the region, and expressed their shared determination to address the threats facing Israel and regional partners,” the White House readout said.
“Sullivan emphasized President Biden’s fundamental commitment to Israel’s security and to ensuring that Iran never gets a nuclear weapon,” it added.
Tuesday’s session was the third time Sullivan has hosted Hulata for talks in Washington, after doing so twice in August.
“We’ve been engaged in regular contact with the Bennett administration on the many threats posed by Iran, including its nuclear program, its destabilizing regional activities, its ballistic missile program, support for terrorism, [and the] Iranian-backed UAV network,” the senior official said.
The official added that there is an agreement between the sides “of the extent to which Iran’s nuclear program has dramatically broken out of the box since the previous administration left the Iran nuclear deal.”
“We’re very closely aligned on how we see the bigger picture. We don’t see eye-to-eye on every single issue, but there’s a great deal of alignment both on how we see the challenges presented by Iran and how to ensure that we are effectively utilizing the full range of tools at our disposal,” he said.
In addition to the SRG meeting, Sullivan and Hulata will hold a separate session to discuss other issues relating to the US-Israel bilateral relationship. This will include US security assistance to Israel, along with the strengthening and expansion of the Abraham Accords.
The Biden administration has repeatedly emphasized its commitment to the Abraham Accords, an initiative launched by Trump, but has yet to make headway on the issue, as its foreign policy priorities are largely focused elsewhere. The agreements have thus far seen the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Morocco, and Sudan agree to normalize ties with Israel.
“We’ll also raise the current situation with the Palestinians, including the importance of ensuring calm in Gaza, which was a key topic in [Sullivan’s] meetings in Cairo a week ago, and more broadly the importance of efforts to dampen potential flash-points in the West Bank and Gaza and take steps to improve the lives of Palestinians,” the senior official said.
Sullivan met with Egyptian security officials last week during a regional tour and discussed Cairo’s efforts to broker a long-term ceasefire between Israel and Gaza-ruling Hamas.
Asked whether the US planned to pressure Israel on its plans to further settlement growth in the West Bank, the senior official did not comment directly on the matter, instead saying that the Biden administration opposes unilateral steps by Israelis and Palestinians and wants to see equal levels of freedom and prosperity for both.
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