Why is the FBI investigating Israel?
Shireen Abu Akleh, a Palestinian-American journalist, was killed in May while covering an Israeli military raid in the West Bank city of Jenin. The Israeli Defense Force (IDF) investigated the shooting. In doing so, it cooperated with the U.S. Departments of Defense and State. The IDF concluded that the shooting very likely was accidental.
But now, not long after the Israelis voted to return Benjamin Netanyahu to power, the Biden administration, in an highly unusual move, has unleashed the FBI on Israel. According to whistleblowers, the FBI has pulled agents off of child sex abuse and human trafficking cases to deal with January 6 cases. Yet, it will devote resources to investigating a shooting in a faraway land and, in doing so, will investigate the military of one of our key allies — and a besieged one, at that.
Israel has announced that it will not cooperate, and rightly so. The FBI has no business overseeing the Israeli government’s response to domestic disturbances. It should devote its resources to keeping Americans safe from runaway crime here in the U.S.
The Israeli military poses no threat to Americans. Given the turmoil on the West Bank, it’s always possible that an American citizen might randomly be injured or killed there, whether by the IMF or the Palestinians, but that shouldn’t be the FBI’s concern.
Without Israeli cooperation, it’s difficult to see how the FBI can reach a reasonable conclusion as to whether the shooting of the journalist was accidental or intentional. But I doubt the FBI is interested in reaching a reasonable conclusion about this.
What is it interested in? Appeasing congressional Democrats, for one thing. They have been clamoring for this investigation.
But the real motive, I suspect, is animus towards Israel and especially Netanyahu, its once-and-future leader. Ted Cruz put it this way:
Joe Biden and his administration view Israel and Prime Minister-elect Benjamin Netanyahu as political enemies, and so they are responding to them the way they respond to all their political enemies: by unleashing the FBI.
Our Israeli allies have, since the very beginning, cooperated closely with the United States in investigating this incident, and the State Department and Defense Departments had already drawn their conclusions
I doubt the decision to investigate Israel originated with FBI Director Christopher Wray. But even if it did, Attorney General Merrick Garland surely had to sign off on it.
Garland, who’s Jewish, is as likely as a great many liberal American Jews to hate Netanyahu and sympathize with Palestinians. And he’s not one to stand up to pressure to stick it to Israel. For a certain kind of American Jew, religious affiliation actually reduces the likelihood of being willing to take the heat that comes with standing up for the Jewish state.
A decision to investigate a close American ally almost certainly would not be left to the sole discretion of the Justice Department. Given its implications for foreign policy, the State Department surely would be consulted, and sign-off would have to come from the White House.
The State Department has usually been anti-Israel, going all the way back to the beginning, when George Marshall bitterly opposed the creation of the Jewish state. And while Biden claims to be a great friend of Israel, he prides himself on playing the tough guy who is willing to stand up to Israeli leaders. This posturing goes back to Biden’s embarrassing confrontation with Menachem Begin early in his Senate career.
The FBI’s investigation won’t add to our knowledge about the shooting of the Palestinian-American journalist. What it will do is set the stage for the Biden administration as it tries to undermine Netanyahu.
It can add Israel’s refusal to cooperate, which Team Biden surely anticipated, to its list of grievances against Netanyahu’s government. (Never mind that it’s the current Israeli prime minister, from the opposing party, who announced the refusal, as he had to do as the leader of a sovereign nation.) These grievances can be used in an attempt to force concessions from Israel to Palestinians, to justify active interference in Israeli politics, or both.
And the Biden administration can do all of this at no political cost. American Jews will continue to vote en masse for Democrats. Indeed, even as Ron DeSantis was piling up landslide numbers in Florida and winning a majority of Hispanic voters in the process, I’m told that the Jewish vote went decisively against him.
I’m not worried about Netanyahu, though. He fended off Barack Obama for eight years. He can certainly handle Joe Biden.
Nonetheless, the spectacle of the Garland DOJ and the Wray FBI investigating an ally for one unfortunate incident on the West Bank sickens me.