Weekly Commentary: Mr. Blinken Don’t Be A Condescending Jerk
Dr. Aaron Lerner March 25, 2022

Mr. Blinken, don’t be a condescending jerk.

Pretty extreme words but well earned.

Condescending because he joins his equally condescending jerk, Ambassador
Nides, in telling us what to do in Israeli Palestinian relations based on
the presumption that he knows so so much better than we do as to both what
our interests are and what is realistically viable.

When we meet with someone who talks on and on about the “two state solution”
with a sovereign Palestinian state we smile and politely decline to explain
why they are clueless ideologues.

Basically we relate to this talk as we would to someone talking about their
odd religious beliefs or a child discussing the tooth they left for the
Tooth Fairy under their pillow.

If this did not impinge on policy it wouldn’t matter.

But your State Department is now offering almost a million dollars to NGOs
to engage in lawfare against us.

And you are planning to push us to forfeit any semblance of rights on the
Temple Mount – for the period of Ramadan and onwards (after Ramadan arguing
that resumption of Jewish visits would only make trouble).

And to make many other concessions.

These are magnitudes less in importance than your efforts to screw us and
our Sunni allies with the deal with Iran.

Nor, for that matter, the disturbing remark by CENTCOM Commander Gen. Frank
McKenzie that while “Iran [is] dedicated to the destruction of Israel” that
“I worry about exchanges between Iran and Israel because many times, our
forces are at risk”. As if we should not act against a country dedicated to
destroying us?

We are not alone in being subject to this condescending jerk approach. The
Saudis have suffered from being subject to an incredibly selective moral
standard exploited to raise into question the American supply of critical
equipment along with an American refusal to recognize the Houthis for the
terrorists that they are. This as the Houthis engage in round after round
of attacks against Saudi Arabia.

Mr. Blinken, we are on the right side of history. Get on the right side of history.
________________________________________
IMRA – Independent Media Review and Analysis
Since 1992 providing news and analysis on the Middle East with a focus on
Arab-Israeli relations
Website: www.imra.org.il

SOURCEIMRA - Independent Media Review and Analysis

1 COMMENT

  1. Influence of US State Dept on American Israel Policy
    “Why is the United States – Israel’s “greatest ally “ – so obsessed with a nuclear deal if it is not effective, cannot be monitored and will ultimately hurt Israel and others in the region? Israel Kasnett, JNS, 28 February, 2022.

    It does seem a little hard to understand why President Joe Biden is and former President Barack Obama was determined to do a nuke deal with Iran. The deal appears to involve puzzling concessions to Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei and his regime. The regime has made clear its hatred and contempt for America. The chant “Allah is Greater, Death to America, Death to Israel, Curse on the Jews, Victory to Islam “ leaves little doubt that Jews and the Jewish state are prime targets.

    Might this be the influence of the US State Dept, out to strengthen a deadly enemy of the world’s only Jewish nation?

    A grant notice posted in February 2022 stated that $987,654 will be provided by the State Department’s Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights and Labour to an NGO to charge Israel with human rights abuses.

    The current American Secretary of State Anthony Blinken understands what is expected of him. He made public via Twitter public discussions in November 2021 with Ken Roth of Human Rights Watch and Agnes Calla of Amnesty, organizations Blinken referred to as “human rights defenders.” Both organizations in fact dedicated and outspoken foes of the Jewish state.

    In March 2022, U S Ambassador Thomas Nides, a former
    U S State Department official, left little doubt that the key item on his diplomatic agenda was assisting the Palestinians.

    2.

    There is a history.

    A few weeks after Krtistallnacht in November 1938 FDR asked the Undersecretary of State Sumner Welles about finding a place for Jews. The response: British Guyana! Which is to say as far away from the Jewish Homeland as possible.

    In 1947 the US State Dept along with Great Britain and the Arabs convinced the UN to reduce the dimensions of the proposed Jewish state as recommended by UNSCOP. One has the impression that in the past and currently State is the source of much US administration-Israel friction.

    In March 1948 Arab violence had succeeded in amplifying the doubt within State about Partition. Questions had emerged within State in January. It had produced a document claiming partition was unworkable and moreover a Jewish state was contrary to American interests. A supporter of partition Truman had begun to waver. The American UN representative Warren Austin said that the Security Council ought not to force Partition on the Arabs. That same month the US considered suspending Partition, a notion that came from George Marshall the Secretary of State. The Arabs, it was observed, were jubilant.
    3.
    No secret that State played a key role in driving the Shah out of Iran to be replaced by the Ayatollah Khomein.

    Perhaps not the end but the beginning of the end of the Cold War might have occurred on 16 January 1979, the day Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi, the Shah of Iran, boarded a plane bound for Egypt.

    A couple of weeks later the Grand Ayatollah Sayyid Ruhollah Mūsavi Khomeini was back in Tehran. Iranians voted by national referendum to become an Islamic Republic with Khomeini as Supreme Leader.

    The Ayatollah owed his remarkable political success to the US State Department. State’s unremitting hostility to the Shah apparently dated from the tenure of Henry Kissinger in the mid-1970s. Said Zbigniew Brzezinski, Jimmy Carter’s National Security Advisor: “…the power echelons at State, notably the head of the Iran Desk, were motivated by doctrine dislike of the Shah and simply wanted him out of power altogether.” This despite the fact that the Shah was a strong opponent of Soviet ambitions in the region. Was the Shah’s friendly attitude to Israel the problem? Persian Jews were much indebted to the Pahlavis, father and son. Under the Pahlavis, the Jews of Persia were allowed equality before the law, much freedom and opportunities that had been denied them. State, on the other hand, understood that life under the
    4.
    Shah was no picnic, that faced with a choice between Savak, his secret police and the mullahs the people would likely turn to the mullahs. It was said that James Earl

    “Jimmy“ Carter, no great fan of the State of Israel, was pretty sure that if one made nice with the Grand Ayatollah he would respond with good will and tolerance and, as someone put it, become Jimmy’s best pal. How to explain? There are hypotheses having to do with oil and opium.

    A few years ago Carter’s Secretary of Agriculture Robert Bergland told me that at the time of the 1979-1980 Tehran hostage crisis Carter’s single-minded priority was to get the hostages released and bring them home. The military strategist Edward Luttwak thought that that was entirely mistaken, that America needed to act decisively, that Carter’s failure to do so has been paid for in blood.

    From Gabriel Noronha, former State Department Iran specialist, we get a picture of what the Biden Iran deal will look like.

    – Iran’s Revolutionary Guards Corp delisted from the State Department’s list of Foreign Terror Organizations;

    – Termination of sanctions on Iran’s senior terror chiefs;

    5.
    – Termination of sanctions on bodies and individuals associated with Supreme Leader Ali Khameni;

    -Termination of sanctions on those involved in the torture and murder of Iranian citizens;

    – Sanctions relief will provide Iran with a cash infusion of $90 billion and an additional $50-55 billion in oil and gas revenues that will enable Iran to expand its hostility to Israel and to its Sunni Arab neighbours;

    – Iran will be able to move forward on the development of advanced centrifuges;

    – Largely unenforceable limitations on the nuclear program will be removed;

    Iran will become a nuclear armed state.

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