A senior aide to President Joe Biden told Arab- and Muslim-Americans in Dearborn, Michigan, this week that the administration had no “confidence” in Israel’s government to agree to a Palestinian state, and that the U.S. had regrets about the war in Gaza.
Dearborn has been a hotbed of radicalism and open support for the Hamas terrorists who launched the war with a brutal attack October 7 that killed roughly 1,200 Israelis. But Arab- and Muslim-American votes are important in the swing state of Michigan.
Therefore the Biden campaign and the Biden administration — blurring the line between partisan politics and foreign policy that it pretends to uphold elsewhere — have tried to appease Arab and Muslim voters in Michigan with increasingly anti-Israel stances.
The New York Times reported Friday that Jon Finer, the Deputy National Security Advisor to President Biden, was sent to meet leaders in Dearborn.
Meet the Press – Pictured: — Deputy National Security Adviser Jon Finer appears on Meet the Press in Washington, D.C., April 24, 2022. (Photo by: William B. Plowman/NBC/NBCU Photo Bank via Getty Images)
He expressed regrets for “missteps” in the administration’s support for Israel, whose leaders he trashed:
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.
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Mr. Finer and several other senior Biden administration officials, including Samantha Power, the administrator of the United States Agency for International Development, traveled to Dearborn on Thursday for a series of meetings, including the one in which Mr. Finer’s comments were recorded.
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“We will have to do things for Saudi Arabia that will be very unpopular in this country and in our Congress,” Mr. Finer said. “Will Israel be willing to do the hard thing that’s going to be required of them, which is meaningful steps for the Palestinians on the question of two states? I don’t know if the answer to that is yes. I do not have any confidence in this current government of Israel.”
The Biden administration sought to undermine Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu from the moment he was elected in 2022, largely because of Netanyahu’s steadfast opposition to President Barack Obama and Biden in their efforts to appease Iran.
Biden repaired relations with Netanyahu in mid-2023 because he wanted to encourage a Saudi-Israeli peace deal, which had been stalled by Biden’s 2020 election, as he headed into a 2024 reelection campaign without any real foreign policy accomplishments.
In the weeks aftet the October 7 attack, Biden showed solidarity with Israel, and sold arms and ammunition to Israel to resupply Israeli forces. He also sent two U.S. aircraft carriers to the eastern Mediterranean to discourage Iran from widening the war.
But as Biden has faced a backlash from Arab- and Muslim-American voters, as well as young and “progressive” voters who are pushing an anti-Israel agenda within the Democratic Party, Biden has become more openly critical of Israel, and hostile at times.
The Biden administration is pushing for a Palestinian state as an outcome of the war — a stance that would reward Hamas terror, and that alarms Israelis, who have shifted dramatically from supporting a Palestinian state ten years ago to opposing one today.
Israelis have also been shocked by recent criticism from Biden and Secretary of State Antony Blinken. Biden said Thursday that Israel’s response to Hamas had been “over the top,” and Blinken said Wednesday Israel had been “dehumaniz[ing]” Palestinians.
The Biden administration has been reluctant to tell Arab- and Muslim-American voters that their support for Hamas against Israel is contrary to American interests and values, and that it helps to prolong the conflict by encouraging Palestinian terror.
There is no evidence that Biden’s effort at appeasing these voters is encouraging them to renew their support for him — but the policies and rhetoric now being pushed by the White House could do real damage to Israel’s security as it fights for its survival.
Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News and the host of Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot on Sunday evenings from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET (4 p.m. to 7 p.m. PT). He is the author of the recent book, “The Zionist Conspiracy (and how to join it),” now available on Audible. He is also the author of the e-book, Neither Free nor Fair: The 2020 U.S. Presidential Election. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.
