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The State Department’s systematic failure in the Middle East

The US State Department has assumed that generous diplomatic and financial gestures could induce the violently volatile Middle East to abandon anti-Western fanatic ideologies and adopt Western values, such as peaceful coexistence, good faith negotiation, democracy and human rights.  However, the State Department’s well-intentioned policy has fueled Middle East violence, generating tailwinds to rogue entities and headwinds to the US and its Arab allies.

For example:

*The State Department welcomed the turbulence on the Arab Street – which erupted in 2010 and is still raging from the Persian Gulf to northwest Africa –as “the Arab Spring,” “Facebook and youth revolution” and a “March for peace and democracy.” However, as evidenced by Middle East reality, it has been another tectonic Arab Tsunami, not an Arab Spring.

*The State Department’s policy on Iran has featured – since 1979 – the diplomatic option, assuming that a financial and diplomatic bonanza could entice the Ayatollahs to be good-faith negotiators, amenable to peaceful-coexistence with their Arab Sunni neighbors, desist from their anti-US regional and global proliferation of terrorism and drug trafficking, and abandon their repressive, fanatical and megalomaniacal 1,400-year-old ideology. However, the well-intentioned policy has bolstered the Ayatollahs’ anti-US rogue strategy, reinforcing their collaboration with anti-US governments, terror organizations and drug traffickers in Latin America, posing a lethal threat to every pro-US Arab regime, and letting down most Iranians, who aspire for a regime-change in Tehran.  

*The State Department was a key engine behind the US-led NATO military offensive, which toppled Libya’s Qaddafi in 2011, notwithstanding his dismantling of Libya’s nuclear and chemical warfare infrastructure and fervent war on Islamic terrorism. However, the toppling of Qaddafi transformed Libya into an uncontrollable platform of civil wars and anti-US global Islamic terrorism.

*Until the eruption of the civil war in Syria, the State Department considered the ruthless anti-US Bashar Assad a potential reformer due to his background as an ophthalmologist in London, a President of the Syrian Internet Association and married to a British-born woman.  However, the civil war has claimed a toll of over 500,000 casualties, 7 million refugees and a similar number of domestically displace people.

*The State Department has embraced the anti-US Muslim Brotherhood – the largest Sunni Islamic terror organization with welfare, political and religious branches – while pressuring the pro-US Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Egypt because of their war on Muslim Brotherhood terrorism. However, the pro-US Arab regimes are aware that the Muslim Brotherhood aims to topple all national Islamic governments, establish a universal despotic Islamic society, promote martyrdom in the service of Allah, and bring the Western “infidel” – and especially the US – to submission.  This State Department policy is pushing pro-US Arab regimes closer to China and Russia.

*From 1993-2000, the State Department extended the red carpet treatment to the anti-US Arafat as a messenger of peace, worthy of the Nobel Prize for Peace and annual US foreign aid, ignoring his intra-Arab terroristic and treacherous track record, and annihilationist vision, as reflected by his hate-education and 1959 and 1964 Fatah and PLO charters. Meanwhile, all pro-US Arab regimes extended to Arafat the shabby doormat treatment.

*From 1980-1990, the US collaborated with the anti-US Saddam Hussein, assuming that “the enemy of my enemy is my friend.”  However, this policy was perceived by Saddam as a green light for the invasion of Kuwait, which led to the First and Second Gulf wars, an ongoing civil war in Iraq with 9 million refugees and domestically-displaced people.  It transformed Iraq into a major Iranian platform of anti-US regional and global terrorism.

*In 1978/79, the State Department embraced the anti-US, fanatic Ayatollah Khomeini, suggesting that he was anti-Communist, surrounded by moderate advisors, preoccupied with bringing liberty to Iran – a Gandhi-like Iranian.

*During the 1950s, the State Department courted the pro-Soviet, anti-US Egyptian President Nasser, who strove to topple pro-US oil-producing Arab regimes at a time when the US was heavily dependent upon Persian Gulf oil.

*All of the US State Department’s Israel-Arab peace proposals were Palestinian-centered, and therefore were frustrated by Middle Eastern reality, which has never perceived the Palestinian issue to be of a primary concern, considering Palestinians as a role-model of intra-Arab subversion, terrorism and ingratitude.

*In 1948, the State Department led the opposition to the establishment of Israel, contending that it would be pro-Soviet, overrun by the expected Arab military invasion, destabilize the Middle East and threaten the supply of Arab oil.

*In 2022, exposing the State Department’s detachment from Middle East reality, Israel constitutes the largest US aircraft carrier with no need for US servicemen, sparing the US the need to deploy to the Mediterranean and the Indian Ocean a few more real aircraft carriers and additional ground divisions.

*Vital US interests require the State Department to base its policy on Middle East reality, as complex and frustrating as it may be, and learn from its own track record by avoiding – rather than repeating – critical past mistakes.

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President Biden’s pressure and Israel’s Judiciary Reform

Israel’s proposed Judiciary Reform ranks very low on President Biden’s order of priorities, far below scores of pressing domestic, foreign and national security threats and challenges.

Therefore, he has not studied the various articles of the reform, but leverages the explosive Israeli domestic controversy as a means to intensify pressure on Israel, in order to:

*Gradually, force Israel back to the 1967 ceasefire lines;
*End Jewish construction and proliferate Arab construction in Judea and Samaria (the West Bank);
*Advance the establishment of a Palestinian state on the mountain ridges of Judea and Samaria, which overpower the coastal sliver of pre-1967 Israel;
*Re-divide Jerusalem;
*Prevent game-changing Israeli military actions against Palestinian terrorists and Iran’s Ayatollahs.

Israel’s Judiciary Reform and US democracy

If the President and his advisors had studied the proposed reform, they would have noticed the Israeli attempt to adopt key features of the US democratic system, which would end the current situation of Israel’s Judiciary as Israel’s supreme branch of government. The reform aims to provide Israel’s Legislature and Executive branches with the effective authority (currently infringed by the Judiciary) to exercise the responsibility accorded to them by the constituency.

For example:

*Israeli Supreme Court Justices should not be appointed – as they are today – by a committee, which is controlled by Justices (who possess a veto power) and lawyers, but rather by a committee, dominated by legislators;

*The Attorney General and the Legal Advisors of Cabinet Departments should be appointed (and fired) by – and subordinated to – the Executive, not the Judiciary. Their role should be to advise, and not to approve or veto policy matters, as it is today. Their advice should not be binding, as it is today.

*Supreme Court Justices should not be empowered to overturn Basic Laws (Israel’s mini-Constitution).

*Supreme Court Justices should have a limited power to nullify and overturn legislation.

*Supreme Court Justices should decide cases according to the Basic Laws and existing legislation, and not resort to the reasonableness of the legislation (which is utterly subjective), as is the case today.

*The Supreme Court should not be able to overturn legislation by three – out of fifteen – Justices, as is the case today.

*The Supreme Court should be supreme to lower level courts, not to the Legislature and Executive, as it is today.

President Biden’s pressuring Israel

*President Biden’s pressuring Israel reflects the return of the US State Department to the center-stage of policy-making. The State Department opposed Israel’s establishment in 1948, has been a systematic critic of Israel since then, and has been consistently wrong on crucial Middle East issues.

*This pressure on Israel represents the multilateral and cosmopolitan worldview of the State Department establishment, in general, and Secretary Blinken and National Security Advisor Sullivan, in particular. This worldview espouses a common ideological and strategic denominator with the UN, International Organizations and Europe, rather than the unilateral US action of foreign policy and US national security. It examines the Middle East through Western lenses, assuming that dramatic financial and diplomatic gestures would convince Iran’s Ayatollahs and Palestinian terrorists to abandon deeply-rooted, fanatic ideologies in favor of peaceful-coexistence, enhanced standard of living and good-faith negotiation.  Middle East reality has proven such assumptions to be wrong.

*President Biden’s pressure mirrors the routine of presidential pressure on Israel since 1948 (except 2017-2020), which has always resulted in short-term tension/friction and occasional punishment, such as a suspension of delivery of military systems and not vetoing UN condemnations of Israel.

*However, since 1948, simultaneously with presidential pressure on Israel, there has been a dramatic enhancement of mutually-beneficial defense and commercial cooperation, as determined by vital US interests, recognizing Israel’s unique technological and military capabilities and growing role as a leading force and dollar multiplier for the US. Israel’s unique contribution to the US defense and aerospace industries, high tech sector, armed forces and intelligence has transcended US foreign aid to Israel, and has eclipsed US-Israel friction over less critical issues (e.g., the Palestinian issue).

*The current bilateral friction is very moderate compared to prior frictions, such as the Obama-Netanyahu tension over the 2015 nuclear accord with Iran; the US’ brutal opposition to Israel’s bombing of Iraq’s and Syria’s nuclear reactors; the US’ ferocious resentment of Israel’s application of its law to the Golan Heights; the US’ determined opposition to the reunification of Jerusalem, and the renewal of Jewish construction in Judea and Samaria, the Golan Heights and Greater Jerusalem; and the US’ strong-handed pressure for Israel to withdraw to the suicidal 1947 Partition lines; etc.

*In hindsight, the US pressure on Israel was based on erroneous assumptions, which could have undermined vital US interests, if not for Israel’s defiance of pressure.  For example, Israel’s refraining from bombing Iraq’s and Syria’s nuclear reactors in 1981 and 2007 would have confronted the US and the world at-large with a potential nuclear confrontation in 1991 and a potential Syrian nuclearized civil war since 2011.

*Rogue Middle East regimes consider US pressure on Israel as an erosion of Israel’s posture of deterrence, and therefore an inducement to the intensified threat of terrorism and war, which gravely destabilize the region and undermine US interests (while advancing the interests of China, Russia and Iran’s Ayatollahs), threatening the survival of pro-US vulnerable oil-producing Arab regimes.

*Most Israeli Prime Ministers – especially from Ben Gurion through Shamir – defied presidential pressure, which yielded short-term friction and erosion in popularity, but accorded Israel long-term enhanced strategic respect. On a rainy day, the US prefers allies, which stand up to pressure, and are driven by clear principles and national security requirements.

*Succumbing to – and accommodating – US presidential pressure ignores precedents, overlooks Israel’s base of support in the co-equal, co-determining US Legislature, undermines Israel’s posture of deterrence, whets the appetite of anti-US and anti-Israel rogue regimes, and adds fuel to the Middle East fire at the expense of Israel’s and US’ national security and economic interests.

Support Appreciated

 

 

 




Videos

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