Opinion | Tensions Between Bibi Netanyahu and Kamala Harris
S E E D E D C O N T E N T
When Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu addresses a joint session of Congress Wednesday, Vice President Kamala Harris won’t be there. Despite having become the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, she decided that an earlier commitment to the Zeta Phi Beta sorority’s convention in Indianapolis mattered more than a speech by the leader of one of America’s closest allies at a time of conflict and crisis in a region involving vital U.S. interests.
Ms. Harris is expected to meet Mr. Netanyahu during his visit to Washington, but the snub is unmistakable. It is fueling rumors of a rift between the Harris and Biden approaches to the Middle East. On March 4, NBC News reported that National Security Council officials “toned down” a draft of remarks Ms. Harris was to give on the humanitarian situation in Gaza. This week the Journal reported that other fissures could appear. Observers will focus on any signs of Biden-Harris tension as the election approaches.
This scrutiny comes at an awkward moment. Some ugly truths are beginning to make themselves felt in Washington. The danger of American involvement in a wider war across the Middle East is dangerously high. Iran has never been closer to a nuclear weapon than it is today, and American officials worry that Vladimir Putin, as part of his anti-Western campaign, might help Iran across the nuclear finish line faster than U.S. or Israeli officials thought possible.
Despite repeated American warnings, Iran hasn’t reined in its Houthi protégés in Yemen, and Washington’s patience is wearing thin. The closing months of the Biden administration could see U.S. forces engaged in direct attacks on Iranian naval vessels or against Iran itself. People in government, former officials and informed observers tell me that the pressure inside the U.S. government for military strikes against Iran is building, and further Houthi provocations are likely to prompt a dramatically stronger response.
Team Biden’s approach to the Middle East hasn’t satisfied many Republican critics, but it represents a significant evolution from former President Barack Obama’s approach. In the Obama years, the goal of American Middle East policy was to achieve regional stability through détente with Iran. Iran optimists hoped that the nuclear deal would be the first of a series of agreements that would gradually ease hostilities between Washington and Tehran and reduce conflict across the region.
Team Biden no longer sees this as viable. Iran’s rejection of President Biden’s offer to re-enter the nuclear deal was sobering. Iran’s expansion of support for proxies and terrorists across the region hammered the message home. Iran wants a hostile relationship with both the U.S. and Israel. However often Charlie Brown takes a run at the football, Lucy is going to snatch it away.
That realization led Team Biden to re-examine its attitudes toward both Saudi Arabia and Israel. If Iran is irreconcilable, the only route to stability in the Middle East involves a partnership between Israel and conservative Arab states like Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. Embarrassing as it might be for Bidenites to follow a policy akin to Donald Trump’s Abraham Accords, the U.S. needed to work with the regional players who agreed with us on the basics. Promoting strategic reconciliation between Israel and Saudi Arabia and enshrining that cooperation in a security treaty between Washington and Riyadh became the principal goal of Biden-era Middle East policy.
The day before Hamas’s terror attack on Israel, Team Biden believed that goal was within reach. Since then, the administration’s objective in the region has been to insulate progress on a new security architecture from the political fallout of the Gaza war. While many pro-Israel observers wish that Mr. Biden’s support for our embattled ally had gone further, the effort to safeguard the Saudi negotiation has been largely successful. Key Arab states believe that their own economic and security interests depend on strategic alignment with both Israel and the U.S. As one senior Saudi observed to an American interlocutor, even a coalition of all the other countries in the world couldn’t offer Saudis the economic, technological and security benefits they can gain through deep cooperation with the U.S.
The chief political obstacles to this realignment aren’t in the Middle East. They are in America. A loose coalition of pro-Palestinian activists, Muslim Brotherhood supporters, Iran sympathizers, Arab democracy advocates, proponents of Obama-style “Iran First” Middle East policy and isolationists oppose the U.S.-Saudi security treaty that would anchor the alignment. Since treaties require a two-thirds majority in the Senate for ratification, minority opposition must be taken seriously. Without the president’s strong support, no U.S.-Saudi treaty would pass.
The stakes couldn’t be higher. Disrupting the U.S.-Arab-Israeli entente is Iran’s objective and also is important to Russia and China. All the revisionist powers loathe the idea of a U.S.-led alliance system stabilizing the Middle East. A long-term partnership of the Gulf Arabs and their financial muscle with American and Israeli capitalism and technology would tilt the global balance of power against the revisionists.
This is where the vice president’s fealty to Zeta Phi Beta matters. Rightly or wrongly, key Arab leaders may interpret her snub of Mr. Netanyahu as evidence that Ms. Harris sympathizes with the opponents of a Saudi treaty and that her Middle East policy will differ significantly from Mr. Biden’s. That in turn would make it harder for Biden negotiators to get to yes, either about a Gaza cease-fire or on the final details of the Saudi deal. It may also encourage the Iranians, sensing weakness and division within the administration, to turn up the heat on Mr. Biden, increasing the chance of a shooting war in the Gulf.
What vice presidents do doesn’t normally matter much, but Kamala Harris is playing in the big leagues now. The whole world is watching, and she needs to get it right.
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The pro-Palestinian wing of the democrat party is expected to protest the Netanyahu address to congress.
They dont look like Democrats to me.
Biden is meeting with Bebe at the White House. That is about as official as it gets.
Netanyahu has been no friend to the Democrats over the years . Why should they observe every little nicety for him?
Indeed... Bibi is the biggest terrorist in the ME.
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Do you think those two teenage girls are Democrats ?
I don’t know that I would assume a Party preference from teenagers, but if I did, it would be Dem.
why assume any political party affiliation ?
Democrats are bending to their base.
Obama tried to undermine Netanyahu.
Does everyone see that. That should go right into the next Trump campaign ad.
Because they told us, thus there is no assuming.
They look like they were trained and indoctrinated with ani-semitic hate by liberal parents.
There doesn't seem to be all that much difference between democrats/leftists/progressives/liberals/Marxists, etc
You do know that the vast majority of Jewish Americans vote Democrat, right?
Do you have a link?
Shit no
Absolutely..
You said that they don’t look Dem 1.1
they don't
Can I straighten out any of your other misconceptions out for you Vic?
I do:
In the 2018 midterms, Jews were again the most Democratic group as designated by religious identity, with 79% voting for the Democrats while 17% voted for the Republicans.
Wow, higher than I thought. Thanks!
Only 68% in 2022. That's a big drop over four years.
Arvo...looks like they missed asking the family cat who it votes for..pretty well covered everything else..
Very good.
79% voted for democrats. That percentage does not surprise me, nor do I think it surprises anyone else. What would surprise all of us is if that trend were to continue in the next election after all that has happened within the democrat party.
"Many of the people who have expressed these sentiments in America aren’t neo-Nazis, or card-carrying Klan members, or Islamist extremists. They are in many cases people that most liberal Jewish Americans felt previously were their ideological fellow travelers." ...Senator Chuck Schumer.
No John, it isn't just a criticism of Israeli policies.
In a 45-minute speech on the Senate floor, Majority Leader Chuck Schumer said Jewish Americans are “alone” and took some of his political allies to task for rising antisemitism on the left following Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack on Israel.
“Jewish Americans are left alone at least in our eyes to ponder what this all means, and where it could lead,” Schumer, the Jewish New York Democrat, said in opening Wednesday’s Senate session. “Can you understand why the Jewish people feel isolated when we hear some praise Hamas and chant its vicious slogan?”
The slogan he was referring to, “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free,” is one embraced by a member of his own party, Michigan Rep. Rashida Tlaib , a Palestinian-American who advocates for a single Israeli-Palestinian state. She is also among a growing group of progressive lawmakers calling for a permanent ceasefire in the war between Israel and Hamas in Gaza.
‘Ultimately, we are alone’: Schumer calls out antisemitism on the left in a speech on the Senate floor | JTA | clevelandjewishnews.com
So we will see if American Jews continue to stand with those who have targeted Jewish students at our universities.
They seem to think that proving American Jews are more liberal than they are Jewish is somehow an excuse for the antisemitism on the left.
I don't have any.
The idea that many on the left are simply criticizing Israeli policies has been disproven this past school year.
besides Kamala deserting her responsibilities as vp to attend a sorority meeting, a number of democrats are joining with her and snubbing the leader of one of our closest allies.
Somehow, democrats continue to make trump look more measured, diplomatic and necessary to restore relations with our allies.
Well she has to draw that antisemitic far left vote in....
Trump was hated by our allies... Feel free to look it up.
[ deleted. here ] [ ✘ ] ya go...