Anti-Semites and Israel-Haters in the Biden Presidential Administration

Anti-Semites and Israel-Haters in the Biden Presidential Administration

Overview


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Hady Amr, Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Israel and Palestinian Affairs

In January 2002, Hady Amr wrote: “I was inspired by the Palestinian intifada,” of 1987. He also praised “the uprising’s character of self-imposed relative non-violence” – i.e., “Palestinian stones responding to Israeli tanks and guns.”

In 2002 as well, Amr warned that Arabs “will never, never forget what the Israeli people, the Israeli military and Israeli democracy have done to Palestinian children. And there will be thousands who will seek to avenge these brutal murders of innocents.” In addition, he accused Israel of numerous transgressions, including “ethnic cleansing.”

In recent years, Amr has strongly urged the U.S. and Israel to engage in peace negotiations with Hamas.

Maher Bitar, Senior Director for Intelligence Programs at the National Security Council

As a student at Georgetown University, Maher Bitar was an executive board member of Students for Justice in Palestine, which supports the Hamas-inspired BDS movement. A 2006 photo from that time period shows Bitar wearing a a keffiyah while dancing in front of a banner reading, “Divest from Israel Apartheid.”

At a Palestine Solidarity Movement conference at Georgetown in 2006, Bitar moderated a session that taught the attendees how to demonize Israel as a nation guilty of “colonization,” “occupation,” and “oppression.”

A few years later, Bitar was a presenter at a Sabeel conference featuring Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP) leader Rebecca Vilkomerson, who supported BDS and invited the infamous Arab terrorist Rasmea Odeh to address a JVP meeting in 2017. Also at the Sabeel conference was Richard Falk, who has accused Israel of mistreating the Palestinians on a scale comparable to the Nazi efforts to exterminate the Jews of Europe.

Bitar also worked at one time for the United Nations Relief & Works Agency (UNRWA), known for its close ties to Hamas and its promotion of terrorist ideology and anti-Semitism.

When Bitar received a Master’s Degree from Oxford University, he wrote a thesis about the so-called “Nakba,” or “catastrophe,” of Israel’s creation in 1948.

Anthony Blinken, Secretary of State

In 2017, Anthony Blinken was opposed to designating Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) as a foreign terrorist organization and imposing sanctions on it, even though The Constitution of the Islamic Republic of Iran established the IRGC explicitly to “strike terror into [the hearts of] the enemies of Allah” — meaning most prominently the U.S. and Israel — and to “expan[d] the sovereignty” of Islam across the globe. As the Zionist Organization of America explains: “The IRGC’s terror involvements have included: planning 9-11; murdering hundreds of American troops in Iraq; Iranian nuclear proliferation and weapons delivery systems development; plotting to set off a bomb in a Georgetown restaurant (to murder a Saudi diplomat and innocent American diners); providing weapons, training, funding, and logistical support to Iranian terrorist proxies, including Hezbollah, Hamas, Iraq-based militias, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, and the Taliban; and numerous other major terror attacks, including on the Buenos Aires Jewish Center and U.S. personnel and facilities.”

Pete Buttigieg, Secretary of Transportation

At the annual J Street conference in October 2019, then-presidential candidate Pete Buttigieg said the United States needs to “have mechanisms to … make sure U.S. taxpayer support for Israel doesn’t turn into U.S. taxpayer support for a move like annexation” or for “settlement construction” that would be “incompatible or at best detrimental to what we need to see happen” in the region.

In a June 2020 foreign policy speech, Buttigieg called for the imposition of financial penalties against Israel if the Jewish state were to “annex” Jewish communities in Judea/Samaria.

During the same speech, Buttigieg also said it was “in our national security interest” for the U.S. to rejoin the Iran nuclear deal, which he lauded for being “as close to a true ‘art of the deal’ as it gets.” Buttigieg also said there were “increasingly disturbing signs that the Netanyahu government is turning away from peace,” and he blamed Netanyahu’s policies for Palestinian “suffering” and the “humanitarian crisis in Gaza.”

Reema Dodin, Deputy Director of the White House Office of Legislative Affairs

In her student days at UC Berkeley, Reema Dodin was a campus radical who organized a number of anti-Israel rallies. Among other things, she was a leader of the Muslim Students Association, which grew out of the Muslim Brotherhood, an Islamic supremacist organization whose credo is: “God is our objective, the Koran is our Constitution, the Prophet is our leader, struggle [jihad] is our way, and death for the sake of God is the highest of our aspirations.”

Dodin described the 9/11 attacks as an understandable response to U.S. support for Israel, which was “angering” Muslims worldwide. Drawing a parallel between the 9/11 hijackers and Palestinian jihadists, she said: “[N]ow you have three generations of Palestinians born under occupation. Maybe if you start to look at Palestinians as human beings, you will stop the suicide bombers.”

In a 2002 speech in California, Dodin justified suicide bombing as “the last resort of a desperate people.”

In their 2016 book, “Muslim Mafia: Inside the Secret Underworld That’s Conspiring to Islamize America,” co-authors P. David Gaubatz and Paul Sperry write that Dodin is “in regular contact” with the Hamas-affiliated Council on Islamic-American Relations (CAIR).

Deb Haaland, Interior Secretary

In February 2019, then-congresswoman Deb Haaland refused to acknowledge the anti-Semitic intent of Rep. Ilhan Omar’s infamous tweet which stated, “It’s all about the Benjamins [$100 bills], baby” – a slogan designed to suggest that the pro-Israel lobby organization AIPAC was guilty of paying U.S. politicians to take positions favorable to Israel.

In April 2020, Haaland and several fellow Democrats signed a letter demanding that Israel refrain from engaging in the “annexation” of land in Judea and Samaria.

In June 2020, Haaland joined fellow Democrats like Ilhan Omar and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez in signing a letter that falsely accused Israeli settlers in the West Bank of perpetrating violence against Palestinians.

Avril Haines, Director of National Intelligence

In May 2020, Avril Haines was a signatory to a J Street letter arguing that the Democratic Party platform should incorporate additional criticism of Israel. The letter also drew a moral equivalence between Palestinian terrorists and Israeli Jews by employing the phrase “violence, terrorism, and incitement from ALL sides.” Further, the letter rejected the notion of Israeli and Jewish sovereign rights in the historically Jewish lands of Judea and Samaria, and it accused Israel of perpetrating an “occupation” of Palestinian land.

Kamala Harris, Vice President

In December 2015, a husband-and-wife pair of Islamic terrorists shot up a Christmas party in San Bernardino, California, killing 14 and wounding 22. About three weeks earlier in France, another Islamic terror attack had killed 137 and wounded more than 400. Soon after the San Bernardino atrocity, Harris, who was then the Attorney General of California, convened a session on “Islamophobia” that included the Council on American-Islamic Relations, the Muslim Public Affairs Council , and the Muslim Students Association — all of which had previously defended Islamic terrorists. Even after “the recent attacks in Paris and San Bernardino,” she explained, it was wrong “to stoke fear and cast aspersions against an entire faith and the millions of law-abiding American Muslims.”

In June 2016, an Islamic terrorist gunman killed 49 people at a nightclub in Florida. Harris, who was running for the U.S. Senate at the time, mentioned this attack among others, including those in San Bernardino and Paris, and blamed them on “mental illness and violent extremism.” She also lamented that Muslims were suffering from a rash of “Islamophobia” caused by hate.

In July 2016, Harris appeared at a Ramadan event at the Islamic Center of Southern California (ICSC), which spun off the Muslim Public Affairs Council, and whose founders had expressed support for Islamic terrorism. At this ICSC event, Harris passionately denounced “Islamophobia.”

After Rep. Ilhan Omar’s widely publicized, anti-Semitic “Benjamins” comment in February 2019, Harris, who was then a senator, defended Omar, touting the threat of “Islamophobia” and expressing concern that “the spotlight being put on Congresswoman Omar may put her at risk.”

During a 2021 appearance at George Mason University, Vice President Harris nodded along as a student ranted that American funding for Israel’s anti-missile defense system, the Iron Dome, “hurts my heart because it’s an ethnic genocide.” Harris then assured the student that “your voice, your perspective, your experience, your truth, should not be suppressed.”

Speaking at a March 3, 2024 commemoration ceremony for the historically significant Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Alabama, Vice President Harris, as she stepped to the microphone, stated:

“[B]efore I begin today, I must address the humanitarian crisis in Gaza [in the aftermath of the October 7, 2023 Hamas terrorist attacks against Israel]. What we are seeing every day in Gaza is devastating.  We have seen reports of families eating leaves or animal feed, women giving birth to malnourished babies with little or no medical care, and children dying from malnutrition and dehydration.

“As I have said many times, too many innocent Palestinians have been killed.  And just a few days ago, we saw hungry, desperate people approach aid trucks, simply trying to secure food for their families after weeks of nearly no aid reaching Northern Gaza.  And they were met with gunfire and chaos.

“Our hearts break for the victims of that horrific tragedy and for all the innocent people in Gaza who are suffering from what is clearly a humanitarian catastrophe.  People in Gaza are starving.  The conditions are inhumane.  And our common humanity compels us to act.

“As President Joe Biden said on Friday, the United States is committed to urgently get more lifesaving assistance to innocent Palestinians in need. Yesterday, the Department of Defense carried out its first airdrop of humanitarian assistance, and the United States will continue these airdrops.  And we will work on a new route by sea to deliver aid.

“And the Israeli government must do more to significantly increase the flow of aid.  No excuses.  They must open new border crossings.  They must not impose any unnecessary restrictions on the delivery of aid.  They must ensure humanitarian personnel, sites, and convoys are not targeted.  And they must work to restore basic services and promote order in Gaza so more food, water, and fuel can reach those in need.”

On March 10, 2024, Harris issued the following statement to mark the beginning of the Islamic holy month of Ramadan, a statement focusing heavily on the “pain” and “suffering” that Palestinians in Gaza were experiencing as a result of Israel’s military operations against Hamas in that region: “I know that there is great pain in the community. What we are seeing every day in Gaza is devastating. We pray that the blessings, reflections, and community of this month offer some solace. President Biden and I will continue to work to ease the suffering in Gaza and support the right of the Palestinian people to dignity, freedom, and self-determination.”

Karine Jean-Pierre, White House Press Secretary

At approximately 8:15 pm local time on January 27, 2023, a Palestinian gunman got into his car and began shooting a pistol randomly at Jews who were gathered near a synagogue on Neve Yaakov Street in Jerusalem. The attack killed 7 and wounded 3 others.

At a White House press briefing that took place shortly after the shootings, a reporter asked White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre: “We just heard that there are at least seven people who have been killed in an attack on a synagogue in Jerusalem. I don’t know if you’ve heard or not. Do you have any comments?” Jean-Pierre replied: “No, I have not heard of that, but — but clearly, we have been asking both sides to de-escalate and we’ll continue to do that.”

At another point in the press briefing, a reporter said to Jean-Pierre: “The other question I have, Karine, is what’s happening in the Middle East and in Israel and the Palestinian Territory.  We saw what happened in Jenin yesterday.  We’re hearing that five people were killed in a synagogue in Jerusalem today. I know that the Secretary of State, Blinken, is going — is the area.  There’s a commitment to the two-state solution that’s going to be reaffirmed.  But is the President — does the President intend to do anything concrete towards the solution this year towards this?”

Jean Pierre responded: “So, as you know, we’re aware of the reports yesterday.  You just mentioned Secretary Blinken’s travel. So we — look, we recognize the very real security challenges facing Israel and the Palestinian Authority.  That is something that we recognize and condemn: terrorist groups planning and carrying out attacks against innocent civilians.  And that is something that you will continue to hear from us, and we will be consistent on that. We also regret the loss of innocent lives and injury — and injuries to civilians, and are deeply concerned by the escalating cycle of violence in the West Bank. Over the past few days, our administration has been closely engaged with the Israeli and Palestinian Authority on the recent violence and to urge de-escalation.  We underscore the urgent need for all parties to de-escalate, to prevent further loss of civilian life, and work together to improve the security situation in the West Bank. Palestinians and Israelis equally deserve to live safely and securely — securely — securely.  And you’ll hear that from, clearly, Secretary Blinken, as you just mentioned — his commitment that the President has to a two-state solution.  And we will continue to call on de-escalation in the region.”

Colin Kahl, Undersecretary of Defense

Colin Kahl co-drafted the language that attempted – ultimately without success – to omit from the 2012 Democratic Party platform any reference to Jerusalem as the capital of Israel.

In an August 2012 op-ed in Foreign Policy magazine, Kahl praised President Obama’s call to push Israel’s borders back to the 1949 Armistice lines (with swaps); to accept the creation of a Palestinian state governed by terrorist organizations like Hamas; and to reject the notion of Jerusalem as Israel’s undisputed capital. In the same article, Kahl blamed the poor living conditions of Palestinians on the “economically debilitating effects of Israeli occupation” – rather than on the Palestinian leaders’ massive corruption and ongoing commitment to terrorism.

In his role as national security advisor to then-Vice President Joe Biden, Kahl was part of the team that negotiated the Iran nuclear deal of 2015 – an accord with devastating implications for Israel’s national security. Indeed, Kahl met more than 30 times with pro-Iran lobbyists, including the president of the National Iranian American Council, a front group for the theocratic terrorist regime in Tehran.

In 2017, Kahl co-authored an op-ed condemning a bipartisan bill that called for the imposition of sanctions against anyone involved with Iran’s ballistic missile program, its WMD program, or the terrorism-related activities of its Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps.

John Kerry, Special Presidential Envoy for Climate

At a Trilateral Commission meeting on April 25, 2014, John Kerry told a room full of influential world leaders that if no two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict could be negotiated soon, Israel risked becoming “an apartheid state.” He also warned that if the latest round of Arab-Israeli peace talks were to fail, another wave of Palestinian violence against Israeli citizens might result. “People grow so frustrated with their lot in life that they begin to take other choices and go to dark places they’ve been before, which forces confrontation,” he said.

On July 25, 2014, Israeli government ministers unanimously rejected a ceasefire plan that Kerry had proposed in order to stop the warfare between the Jewish state and Hamas. The Times of Israel revealed some of the details of Kerry’s plan: “To the ‘horror’ of the Israeli ministers, the Kerry proposal accepted Hamas’s demands for the opening of border crossings into Gaza — where Israel and Egypt fear the import of weaponry; the construction of a seaport; and the creation of a post-conflict funding channel for Hamas from Qatar and other countries…. The proposal, meanwhile, did not even provide for Israel to continue demolishing the Hamas network of ‘terror tunnels’ dug under the Israeli border.”

Kerry was a key force behind the signing of the 2015 Iran nuclear deal, which Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu described  as a “bad mistake of historic proportions” that would enable Iran to “continue to pursue its aggression and terror in the region.”

Robert Malley, Special U.S. Envoy for Iran

Since 2001, Robert Malley has written numerous controversial articles—some of which were co-authored with Hussein Agha, a former advisor to Yasser Arafat—blaming Israel and exonerating Arafat for the failure of the peace talks at Camp David. Malley’s account of the Camp David negotiations is entirely inconsistent with the recollections of the key figures who participated in those talks — most notably, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak, U.S. President Bill Clinton, and U.S. Ambassador Dennis Ross (Clinton’s Middle East envoy).

In January 2008, a U.S. security official stated that Malley, who was then a policy director with the International Crisis Group (ICG),“has expressed sympathy to Hamas and Hezbollah and [has] offered accounts of Israeli-Palestinian negotiations that don’t jibe with the facts.”

On May 9, 2008, the Barack Obama presidential campaign was forced to sever its ties with Malley after the latter told the Times of London that he secretly had been in regular contact with Hamas as part of his work for ICG.

At a Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing in 2010, Malley called for the U.S. “to unveil a set of parameters” that included the creation of a Palestinian state along the “1967 borders,” which would have been a suicidal move for Israel. He also advocated the deployment of third-party armed forces in Judea-Samaria, and the forced relocation of hundreds of thousands of Jews from their homes in that region. And he said that Israel should relinquish control of the Golan Heights to Syria, on the premise that Syria was “unlikely to sponsor militant groups … [or] destabilize the region … once an agreement has been reached.”

Malley helped negotiate the Iran nuclear deal of 2015, and he subsequently opposed the Trump administration’s “maximum pressure” sanctions against Iran.

In January 2020, Malley condemned the Trump administration’s targeted killing of IRGC terrorist leader Qassem Soleimani, who was actively planning additional attacks against U.S. interests in the Middle East. Malley claimed that the killing of Soleimani made it “more likely” that global tensions would eventually “drag the country into another Middle East war.”

Ten months later, Malley condemned the Trump administration’s targeted killing of Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, a designated terrorist and a leading Iranian IRGC nuclear scientist, on grounds that his assassination would “make it all the more difficult for [President Trump’s] successor to resume diplomacy with Iran.”

Denis McDonough, Secretary of Veterans Affairs

At a J Street event in March 2015, Denis McDonough said: “An occupation that has lasted for almost 50 years must end, and the Palestinian people must have the right to live in and govern themselves in their own sovereign state…. Israel cannot maintain military control of another people indefinitely.”

Samantha Power, Administrator of USAID

In 2001 Samantha Power attended the United Nations’ World Conference Against Racism (in Durban, South Africa), even after the U.S. had withdrawn most of its diplomatic participation once it became apparent that the gathering was devolving into an anti-American, anti-Israel, anti-Semitic hate-fest.

During a 2002 interview a few months later, Power said that even if it meant “alienating a domestic constituency of tremendous political and financial import” (i.e., Jewish Americans), the United States should stop investing “billions of dollars” in “servicing Israel’s military,” and should invest that money instead “in the new state of Palestine.” Also during that time period, Power accused Israel of perpetrating “major human-rights abuses” and “war crimes.”

During a February 2016 UN Security Council debate on the Middle East, Power equated Palestinian Arab acts of terrorism targeting Jews, with virtually non-existent “settler violence” by Jews in the West Bank. She also falsely portrayed the Palestinian Authority (PA) as an entity that was “pressing for calm,” when in fact, as the Zionist Organization of America points out, the PA not only “pays Arabs huge sums of money to murder Jews,” but also “incites violence against innocent Jews in the PA’s speeches, official newspapers, social media, textbooks, schools, clubs, government-controlled mosques, government-controlled television specials, and government-controlled ceremonies honoring terrorists.”

On December 24, 2016, Power supported and enabled the Obama-Biden administration’s aforementioned decision to abstain from voting on UN Security Council Resolution 2334.

Susan Rice, Director of the United States Domestic Policy Council

In February 2011, Susan Rice said: “We reject in the strongest terms the legitimacy of continued Israeli settlement activity,” which she described as a major source of “corroded hopes” for peace in the Middle East.

On September 26, 2012, Rice attended a speech that Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad delivered to the United Nations General Assembly, in which he: (a) referred to Israelis as “uncivilized Zionists”; (b) denied the historical reality of the Holocaust; and (c) repeatedly called for the annihilation of Israel. But the very next day, Rice opted not to attend the UN speech of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

In 2015, Rice publicly lauded the Iran nuclear deal as the “most comprehensive and effective” anti-nuclear agreement ever devised. She has continued to support the deal ever since. When President Trump withdrew the U.S. from the deal in 2018, for instance, Rice falsely stated that “Iran has fully complied with its obligations,” and that the inspections authorized by the deal were “the most intrusive international inspection and monitoring regime in history.

In December 2016, Rice, while serving as national security adviser to then-president Obama, instructed the U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations, Samantha Power, to abstain from voting against UN Security Council Resolution 2334, which: (a) condemned the existence and expansion of Israeli settlements in the West Bank, and (b) declared that all of eastern Jerusalem – including Judaism’s most sacred site, the Temple Mount – was “Palestinian territory” that was being “occupied” by Israel in “a flagrant violation under international law.” This abstention allowed  this resolution to pass, prompting Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu to condemn the Obama administration’s “shameful betrayal.”

In 2018, Rice was one of seven former American ambassadors to the UN to sign a letter calling for the Trump administration to restore funding to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA), despite clear evidence of that agency’s close ties to Hamas and its promotion of terrorist ideology and anti-Semitism.

Symone Sanders, Senior Advisor and Chief Spokesperson to the Vice President

Symone Sanders was one of the 2020 Biden presidential campaign’s three senior advisers who apologized to radical Islamic organizations after Biden staffer Andrew Bates had tried to distance Biden from Linda Sarsour, a notorious Jew-hater who, despite supporting the Hamas-inspired Boycott, Divestment & Sanctions (BDS) movement and having ties to numerous Islamic terrorist organizations, was a featured speaker at the 2020 Democratic National Convention. In addition to her apology, Sanders also retweeted a tweet by Emgage, a radical Islamist group, saying that Sarsour “has dedicated her career to fighting for justice.”

Wendy Sherman, Deputy Secretary of State Nominee

In 2018, Wendy Sherman benignly referred to the late PLO leader Yasser Arafat, the world’s most prolific Jew-killer since Hitler, as “the leader of a resistance movement.” She also minimized the moral horrors of Palestinian suicide bombings against innocent Israeli civilians as “nagging disruptions from the Palestinian side.”

In her 2018 book, Not for the Faint of Heart, Sherman claimed that the Iran nuclear deal, which she helped to negotiate on behalf of the U.S., “was anchored” by: (a) “a common wish to make peace,” and (b) additional “higher principles” that would help facilitate a “reimagining of the world” whereby Americans might “see our adversaries not as eternal enemies, or dispensable ones, but as virtual partners.” Moreover, Sherman falsely claimed that the Iran deal would allow for “intrusive” and “scrupulous” inspections of Iranian nuclear sites.

In a July 2020 article in Foreign Policy magazine, Sherman disparaged President Trump’s historic “Vision for Peace, Prosperity, and a Brighter Future for Israel and the Palestinian People” as a “so-called peace plan” that would destabilize the Middle East by authorizing Israel’s “annexation” of parts of Judea/Samaria.

Uzra Zeya, Under Secretary of State for Civilian Security, Democracy, and Human Rights

Uzra Zeya is a former staffer at the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, a notoriously anti-Israel publication, where she compiled research for a book claiming that “the Israel lobby” had established a secret network of PACs that bribed and extorted congressional candidates into adopting positions favorable to Israel, thereby “subvert[ing] the American political process to take control of U.S. Middle East policy.”

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Additional Resources:


The Biden White House: A Diversity of Racists and Anti-Semites
By David Horowitz and John Perazzo
April 14, 2021

Biden’s Team of Israel-Haters
By Robert Spencer
April 26, 2021

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