Biden Sells (Out) Israel for Michigan

It might be possible to be more venal than this, but offhand I don't know how.

The New York Times gets right to the point.

President Biden sharply escalated his criticism of Israel’s approach to the war against Hamas on Thursday, calling military operations in Gaza “over the top” and saying that the suffering of innocent people has “got to stop.”

Mr. Biden, who has strongly supported Israel’s right to retaliate for the Oct. 7 terrorist attack by Hamas that killed an estimated 1,200 people, exhibited growing impatience with the scale and duration of Israel’s response….

It’s all true, Joe. When you’re fighting for your existence against a kind of hatred and savagery seldom seen since Buchenwald, the “scale and duration” of your efforts are likely to be considerable.

Mr. Biden’s comments revealed his increasing frustration with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel…making public what has been clear in private for weeks. Mr. Biden has pressed the Israeli leader to take greater care to avoid civilian casualties in Gaza, where more than 27,000 people have been killed, according to health authorities in the strip run by Hamas, and to consider creation of a Palestinian state once the war is over.

And what are these “health authorities” doing with their “health facilities”?

Israel says it has uncovered a Hamas tunnel network under the headquarters of the embattled UN Palestinian refugee agency in Gaza City — and that the secret system siphoned electricity directly from the site.

Footage uploaded to X on Saturday shows a sprawling tunnel system under the HQs for the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees that ran nearly 60 feet deep and a half-mile long, with one of 10 entrances found near a UNRWA school, according to the Israel Defense Forces.

Like the piano player in the house of ill-repute, the UN fellow in charge knows nothing about nothing. As the New York Post writes:

UNRWA Commissioner-General Philippe Lazzarini said in a statement that the relief agency had no knowledge of the Hamas facilities underground but noted that the findings merit an “independent inquiry.”

Lazzarini added that the headquarters had been inspected in September and showed no signs of being tampered by Hamas.

“UNRWA is a human development and humanitarian organization that does not have the military and security expertise nor the capacity to undertake military inspections of what is or might be under its premises,” Lazzarini wrote about the allegations on X.

Of course it was this same UNRWA that had at least a dozen of its employees involved in the bloodthirsty murder festival Hamas launched against Israel on October 7. So someone at UNRWA had the “military and security expertise” to help set in motion a sophisticated and highly effective, if grotesque, mass murder, but the agency does not have the expertise to know what’s going on in its own basement.

And, so far as I can tell, our State Department pretends to believe this. (The only worse scenario would be if it actually does believe it).

The double-game Biden has been playing with Israel isn’t new; Paul and most other intelligent observers were on to it weeks ago. But since Biden’s electoral fortunes at home have continued to sag as his dilapidation becomes harder to hide, a new and even uglier side of the double-game has hoved into view. Legal Insurrection spills the beans in a story titled “Team Biden Turning Against Israel To Win Michigan”.

At about the time Biden was holding forth with his “over the top” criticism of Israel’s fight for its life, so Legal Insurrection reports, he (emphasis added)

…had sent senior members of his administration to Dearborn, Michigan to meet with Muslim leaders including one who has praised and defended both Hamas and Hezbollah:

A Thursday meeting between several senior Biden administration officials and Muslim leaders in Michigan drew scrutiny from leaders in the Jewish community over the inclusion of Osama Siblani, a Dearborn political activist and newspaper publisher who has in the past praised Hamas and Hezbollah, and claimed the U.S. government was “bought” by the “Zionist lobby.”

The meeting was part of the White House’s efforts to mend ties with Arab Americans who are displeased with President Joe Biden’s handling of the Israel-Hamas war, particularly in Michigan, a key battleground state. Siblani has pledged not to vote for Biden this year. Those in attendance from the Biden administration included USAID Administrator Samantha Power, Principal Deputy National Security Advisor Jon Finer and Steve Benjamin, director of the White House Office of Public Engagement.

And there’s the key. Why is this meeting being held in Michigan (in the middle of February) rather than in Washington? Because Michigan is indeed “a key battleground state.” If Trump carries everything he did last time, plus Georgia, Arizona and Nevada (in all of which which Real Clear Politics has him comfortably ahead), he has but to win Michigan in order to claim the White House. Right now, Biden is five points behind in Michigan, due in significant part to the fact that the large Arab community there, centered in Dearborn, resents any aid at all he gives Israel and has vowed retribution at the polls. So the sausage factory where Biden’s foreign policy gets made is now coming out with what you see below (coming out to the “right” audience, that is):

The Biden aide, Jon Finer, a deputy national security adviser, offered some of the administration’s clearest expressions of regret for what he called “missteps” it had made from the beginning of the violence, and he pledged that it would do better.

During the meeting on Thursday with Arab American political leaders in Dearborn, Mich., Mr. Finer said, “We are very well aware that we have missteps in the course of responding to this crisis since Oct. 7,” according to a recording of the gathering obtained by The New York Times. A National Security Council official confirmed the recording was authentic.

Mr. Finer added: “We have left a very damaging impression based on what has been a wholly inadequate public accounting for how much the president, the administration and the country values the lives of Palestinians. And that began, frankly, pretty early in the conflict.”

In other words, strictly to buy political favor, Biden sends his lackeys to apologize to people who have sympathized with murderers for helping Israel defend itself against even more murder.

Remember this, please, the next time the MSM goes on about how it’s Donald Trump who’s a moral cretin.

And, amazingly, it gets worse:

A day prior to the Michigan meeting and Biden’s “over the top” statement, Secretary of State Antony Blinken gave a speech in Tel Aviv essentially accusing Israel, without evidence, of “dehumanizing” the people of Gaza:

In a stinging rebuke of Jerusalem’s prosecution of its war against Hamas in Gaza, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken on Wednesday warned Israel that it does not have “a license to dehumanize others.”

“Israelis were dehumanized in the most horrific way on October 7, ”said Blinken in prepared remarks at a Tel Aviv press conference. “The hostages have been dehumanized every day since. But that cannot be a license to dehumanize others.”

The extent of false moral equivalence here is enough to short-circuit your brain.

I guess the only thing I can ask of the Administration’s spokesmen is to see if they can, just for a moment, put aside the Woke jibberish about “dehumanizing.” What happened to the Israeli village on October 7 was not a speech supporting some conservative idea (which is the Woke version of “dehumanizing”). What happened was that Hamas barbarians, in hours of brutality that would make Adolph Eichmann vomit, murdered, raped, tortured and mutilated old men, women and children.

That’s what Israel is facing, Mr. Biden — although admittedly it doesn’t have to worry about carrying Michigan.