President Biden is not a friend of Israel

The PA has significantly escalated its lawfare to delegitimize Israel’s existence in international forums, demonizing Israel and Israel’s Jewish supporters worldwide. And Biden has become complicit in the Palestinian lawfare against Israel. Op-ed.

Dr. Aviel Sheyn-Stevens, INN

Aviel Sheyin -StevensCredit: INN:AS

Joseph Biden, on his first presidential trip to the Middle East, visited Israel; he is not a friend of Israel. Before Biden became US President, the most important job he ever held was as vice president to the most anti-Israel administration in American history.

Back in March 2010, on an official visit to Israel, then Vice President Biden criticized an Israeli plan to build homes for Jews in Jerusalem, the capital of the Jewish state. Prior to his visit, the Obama-Biden regime warned various Israeli government ministers that it viewed construction of housing for Jews in Jerusalem with hostility. But it pressured Israel to permit construction of homes for Arabs in Jerusalem, and harshly opposed all moves by the government to destroy illegal construction in Arab neighborhoods and in Area C.

Under the Obama-Biden regime, US foreign policy had one setback after another, punctuated by disasters. President Barack Obama made the regime’s decision that fundamentally transformed America’s foreign policy, which Biden implemented because he agreed with it.

From its beginning, the Obama-Biden regime indicated its willingness to alienate America’s friends and embolden America’s enemies, and stated its commitment to talk to Iran “without preconditions.”

After the Iranian Revolution of 1979, America imposed sanctions against Iran and expanded them in 1995 to include firms dealing with the Iranian government. The revolution replaced a pro-Western monarchy with an anti-Western authoritarian theocracy. American assets were confiscated. 52 American diplomats and citizens were held hostage for 444 days.

The Obama-Biden regime ignored those US property claims against Iran, and Iran’s funding, providing equipment, weapons, training and giving sanctuary to terrorists. The administration offered Iran economic inducements “without preconditions,” and a pledge not to seek “regime change.” The preconditions were not whimsical excuses to avoid talks. They were unanimous resolutions of the UN Security Council, agreed upon after the International Atomic Energy Agency reported that Iran was in violation of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty.

The Obama-Biden regime’s years-long negotiations with Iran allowed time to multiply, disperse, and fortify Iran’s nuclear facilities.

The Obama-Biden’s leakage of Israel’s secret agreement with Azerbaijan sabotaged Israeli preemptive attempts to destroy Iranian nuclear facilities. Azerbaijan would have allowed Israeli warplanes to refuel during attacks on the nuclear facilities.

Iran’s goal is the destruction of America, yet the Obama-Biden’s solution was to appease Iran by letting Iran increase its destructive might, get nuclear weapons capability and get the ayatollahs $150 billion.

In October 2017, then President Donald Trump overruled his-then Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, Secretary of Defense James Mattis and National Security Advisor H.R. McMaster, and declined to certify to Congress that Iran was in compliance with the nuclear deal, when the Iranians were breaching the deal.

In May 2018, Trump announced America’s withdrawal from the Iran deal, and imposed crippling sanctions on the ayatollahs.

In January 2020, Trump ordered a lethal strike against Qasem Soleimani, commander of the Quds Force of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps; a designated terrorist organization. Soleimani was considered the second most powerful person in Iran, subordinate to Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei.

Now, Biden has reportedly invited Russians to adjudicate a new deal, which will likely lead to an Iranian nuclear weapon. In 2012, Obama invited Russians into the Middle East after a 40-year absence, as a prelude to the disastrous 2015 Treaty of Catastrophe. Biden will trump that disaster by enabling Vladimir Putin to become the nuclear protector of the old Obama goal of an Iran-Hezbollah-Muslim Brotherhood Middle East.

Biden’s scheme includes a radical transformation of the region, in favor of the ayatollahs, to make Iran the regional superpower in the Middle East; disfavoring America’s traditional allies: Israel, Saudi Arabia and the other Sunni Arab monarchies.

In December 2017, against fierce opposition from Democrats, President Trump recognized Jerusalem as Israel’s capital. On May 14, 2018, coinciding with the 70th anniversary of the establishment of the State of Israel, Trump effected the 1995 Act of Congress to move the US embassy to Jerusalem, which he described as the “eternal capital of the Jewish people.” As Trump stated, “Israel has made its capital in the city of Jerusalem, the capital the Jewish people established in ancient times.”

Furthermore, Trump’s decision to remove the US from the antisemitic UN Human Rights Council, which the Obama-Biden regime joined despite its open bigotry against Jews; Trump’s ending of funding to the genocidal, antisemitic UN Refugee Works Agency for the Palestinians, which the Obama-Biden regime expanded; Trump’s decision to cut funding to the terrorist-financing Palestinian Authority; which the Obama-Biden regime increased; Trump’s closing the PLO Diplomatic Mission in Washington, which the Obama-Biden regime upgraded; etc.; were moves of historic significance in the fight against antisemitism and for Jewish rights.

Previously, the Obama-Biden regime not only refused to transfer the US Embassy to Jerusalem, it rejected even symbolic acceptance of Israeli sovereignty in Jerusalem. The Obama-Biden State Department erased all the captions on archival photos of US dignitaries in Jerusalem that referred to the location as Jerusalem, Israel; demonstrating a deep-seated hostility and bigotry to the history of the Jewish people.

During the 2020 US election campaign, Biden pledged to reopen the PLO Diplomatic Mission in Washington, restore US funding to the terrorist-financing Palestinian Authority and open a consulate for the Palestinian Arabs in Israel’s capital city.

In June 2022, The Washington Free Beacon reported the Biden regime has decided to separate the Palestinian Affairs Unit from the US embassy to Israel in Jerusalem. The head of the “unit” will be directly appointed by, and be subordinated to, the Secretary of State, which is unlawful under US law. The Jerusalem Embassy Act of 1995 makes the head of the Palestinian section of the US embassy in Jerusalem the subordinate of the US ambassador to Israel. Biden’s plan is also unlawful under international law, unless it is approved by Israel. Under international law, a foreign government that wants to open a diplomatic office in one nation’s capital to a different nation, must first receive the permission of the nation’s government. But Israel strongly opposes the plan; it contravenes Israeli sovereignty in Jerusalem.

During negotiations of the peace process in the 1990s, Israel and the Palestinians agreed that territories Israel transferred to Palestinian Arab control would be governed by an autonomous Palestinian governing authority called the Palestinian Authority (PA). Both sides stipulated in their signed agreements that the PA would not be a state, and would not operate against Israel in international organizations or apply for membership in international organizations as a state.

In 2011, PA chairman Mahmoud Abbas, in material breach of the agreements he signed, launched a campaign to have “Palestine” accepted as a member-state in international institutions; escalating Palestinians’ lawfare against Israel. In a New York Times op-ed, he stated: “Palestine’s admission to the United Nations would pave the way for the internationalization of the conflict as a legal matter, not only a political one. It would also pave the way for us to pursue claims against Israel at the United Nations, human rights treaty bodies and the International Court of Justice.” This is lawfare!

Lawfare is generally defined as the abuse of international institutions and the language of law to pursue strategic aims. The Palestinian Arabs and their allies have long used lawfare to supplement terrorism in their war to destroy Israel.

In 2018, four months after then-President Donald Trump, in accordance with US and international law, opened the US embassy in Israel’s capital, Jerusalem, the Palestinian Arabs turned their lawfare campaign against the US. The PA, acting as the nonexistent “State of Palestine,” sued the US in the International Court of Justice (ICJ). In the lawsuit, the Palestinians ask the ICJ to compel the US to remove its embassy from Israel’s capital.

The case is still pending before the ICJ. Biden should have suspended all US financial support and diplomatic contacts with the PA until it ends its lawfare against the US.

Biden’s plan to separate the Palestinian Affairs Unit from the US embassy, in a bid to open a distinct consulate for the Palestinian Arabs in Jerusalem, aggrandizes the Palestinians’ spurious claims against Israel and the US, and encourages other US adversaries to resort to international institutions to erode the authority of US and international law, and undermine Israeli sovereignty.

The PA has significantly escalated its lawfare to delegitimize Israel’s existence in international forums, and to demonize Israel and Israel’s Jewish supporters worldwide. And Biden has become complicit in the Palestinian lawfare against Israel.

President Biden is not a friend of Israel. His presidency is the third Obama term, as far as Israel is concerned.

Dr. Sheyin-Stevens is a Registered Patent Attorney based in Florida, USA. He earned his Doctorate in Law from the University of Miami.