The Arabs are coming after us and Biden is bringing Palestinians here because their own reject them.
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Get ready for more ‘hard landings’ in the Middle East
By Michael Rubin
Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi perished in what Iranian media initially labeled a “hard landing.” That Iranians celebrated with fireworks in Raisi’s hometown Mashhad reflects the hatred with which Iranians view the regime that oppresses them. This should be a warning to the regime: Raisi is one thing, but when 85-year-old Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei has his hard landing, it will kick-start Iranians’ active quest for regime change.
For the European Union to send condolences upon the Butcher of Tehran’s death shows the moral blindness at the heart of European policy; it is equivalent to sending condolences upon the 1942 death of Reinhard Heydrich, the German Reich’s acting governor of Bohemia and Moravia.
While the White House, State Department, and CIA scramble to figure out who might permanently replace Raisi (think former Revolutionary Guards head and current speaker of the Parliament Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf), constantly playing catch-up undercuts U.S. effectiveness in the long run. A more productive approach might be to consider what other hard landings loom in the near future, adjust U.S. strategy, and recognize when Washington has invested too much in one man.
Some transitions are so certain that investing time in current leaders is foolish. Khamenei is partially paralyzed and has openly battled cancer. To assume the ailing ayatollah will be an anchor for stability is foolish. To prioritize rapprochement with his regime over strengthening traditional alliances with countries such as Israel, Egypt, or Saudi Arabia is malpractice.
Then, there is Mahmoud Abbas, the 88-year-old leader of the Palestinian Authority who is currently serving the 20th year of his four-year term. The only difference between Abbas and his predecessor Yasser Arafat is that Arafat appointed a successor and Abbas refuses to. Had the Obama, Trump, and Biden administrations not treated Abbas’s illegitimacy with a shrug, the question of a Palestinian Authority role in future Gaza governance would not be such a nonstarter.
Despite President Joe Biden’s initial reticence about Turkish counterpart Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the White House has become increasingly friendly and solicitous of the Turkish dictator. The most generous read would be Biden wants to keep friends close and frenemies closer.
The 70-year-old Erdogan may be a spring chicken next to Biden, but his health is no better. He once accidentally locked himself in his armored limousine during a seizure, and, during his reelection campaign, he had a heart “incident” on camera; rumors swirl he has also faced colon cancer.
Whatever kills Erdogan, the vacuum Turkey will face following his near quarter-century reign will destabilize the country. Like Abbas, Erdogan leaves no clear successor, and so his son-in-law Bilal and Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan will battle it out as those marginalized by previous purges plot their own comebacks.
Khamenei, Abbas, and Erdogan may be obvious candidates for a “hard landing,” but what would happen should Jordan’s King Abdullah II or Egypt’s President Abdel Fattah el Sisi suddenly find themselves on the wrong side of mortality? Could either pillar of stability crack? The Egyptian military would likely ensure stability, but while Jordan has a crown prince ready to take the helm, its entire ruling family continues to hemorrhage legitimacy and popularity between corruption and mismanagement. A flipped Jordan would be a nightmare scenario.
Likewise, while progressives in Congress bash Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman due to his alleged role in former Saudi intelligence and Muslim Brotherhood operative-turned-dissident writer Jamal Khashoggi’s death, what might happen if his ailing and Alzheimer’s-ridden father suddenly shuffles the deck to put a traditionalist in charge? What might it mean for Washington if a new Saudi leader turns entirely to Moscow or Beijing, fed up with Washington’s gratuitous insults?
Ironically, the only transition Biden truly wants may be the most inconsequential. Biden despises Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, with the same resentment that the salutatorian of a community college class might look at a Rhodes scholar. But Israel is a democracy, and it delivers whom its people want.
Israelis want security. Iranians want freedom. A better American strategy would be to pursue both.
Michael Rubin is a contributor to the Washington Examiner’s Beltway Confidential blog. He is director of policy analysis at the Middle East Forum and senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute.
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On May 9, President Joe Biden threatened to withhold from Israel key weapons if the Jewish state proceeded with a major invasion of Gaza’s southernmost city, Rafah, where Hamas retains several intact battalions.
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Clinton vs. Van Hollen on Israel
Hillary Clinton stands firm on campus antisemitism, while Chris Van Hollen submits to the anti-Semites’ supposed “truth.”
By Eric Levine
Think what you want about Hillary Clinton, but she has been nothing short of spectacular on the Israel-Hamas war. Her support for Israel has been unwavering. Her condemnation of Hamas has been unequivocal. Perhaps most importantly, she has steadfastly rebuked the anti-Israel protestors on college campuses.
Who would have thought Hillary Clinton would be the Democratic Party’s voice of moral clarity?
But just when you thought decency, common sense and an understanding of the difference between good vs. evil and right vs. wrong were ascendant, in step Democratic leaders like Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.) to say: Not so fast, there is always room for anti-Semitism and moral equivalence in my Democratic Party.
When Hillary said that she had spoken to numerous young people and discovered that they did not “know very much about the history of the Middle East,” Van Hollen took exception. In a recent interview with CBS News, he stated, “Well, I thought … that Secretary Clinton’s comments in that regard were quite dismissive of students’ concerns about the awful humanitarian crisis and high civilian death toll in Gaza.”
Of course, Van Hollen threw in the obligatory denunciation of “anti-Semitism.” Heaven forbid someone might wonder where he stands on that issue.
Once again, a progressive Democrat defaulted to the importance of “concerns” and “feelings” rather than an understanding of facts and history. Let’s not let facts and history interfere with the feelings of our young people. They might intrude on their “safe space” and upset them.
To folks like Van Hollen, it’s all about narratives and speaking one’s subjective “truth.” To them, those chanting some of the vilest anti-Semitic tropes and calling for the destruction of the Jewish state and the extermination of Jews everywhere are merely speaking “their truth.”
The fact that these “truths” are demonstrably false appears to be irrelevant to him. It seems not to have dawned on Van Hollen that these students might feel differently if they understood the facts and the history.
But why should we expect anything different from a progressive senator from Maryland when the Jewish Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) says nothing?
Chuck knows the truth. He understands the facts and the history. He is just too gutless and morally bankrupt to speak them.
This is a man who, if you told him there was a hot dog stand opening in Brooklyn this weekend and an old lady with a camera was coming, would show up with an entourage. But when outside agitators and college students show up in New York City on the campuses of Columbia, New York University, the City University of New York and Cooper Union chanting “death to America” and “death to Israel” and calling for the extermination of the Jews, Chuckie is AWOL.
This leaves a vacuum in the Democratic Party that is being filled by ignorant and hateful progressives like Van Hollen. Not surprisingly, he is among a large and growing coterie of congressional Democrats who openly advocate for curtailing aid to Israel and are working assiduously to save Hamas.
To them, Oct. 7 is old news. Time to move on. We have “mourned” the dead Jews. Now we must stop the living ones from defending themselves.
That is the current state of the Democratic Party and in large part explains President Joe Biden’s disgraceful betrayal of Israel.
I never thought I would say this: Hillary, I miss you.
The opinions and facts presented in this article are those of the author, and neither JNS nor its partners assume any responsibility for them.
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Bibi succumbs, whatever that means?
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