Word has it that President Biden will make a belated trip to the Middle East, including Israel , the Palestinian West Bank and Saudi Arabia.
The question being bandied about is…. why at this point? In fact the main reason is to flee the multitude of domestic problems that keep piling up without any leadership to face them. Galloping inflation, an unchecked alien invasion at our southern border, a totally polarized population, a spiraling crime rate out of control, and an uncertain and probably unhappy ending for the Ukraine war. It seems obvious at this point that Russia has the upper hand and as we deplete our stocks of war materiel the uncomfortable reality is that under the present leadership of the West, there is nothing much we can do to reverse the tide of war.
Of course there is the mending fences reason for the trip. The incompetent and unworkable political leadership of Israel, bending at the whims of the Washington political elites, have allowed Israel to put itself in peril at the hands of international organizations with an anti-semitic agenda posing as human rights agencies. Meanwhile the lefties in Israel are hoping that their frequent parades lauding gays, transgenders, etc. featured on I24 American TV, the Leftie Israeli channel, will somehow endear them to the Wokies. Delusion followed by illusion! Biden, as he has almost every other issue of importance, ignores the looming war in Palestine leaving the Middle East to the most inept foreign service American has had in my long memory.
The Lapid-Bennet crew of revolving rulers
The Palestinian issue is mostly one continued by Western leftists, as folks like me who have spent years in the Middle East, know the Palestinian issue is a manufactured issue. Of the many issues that face the Arab world, the “burdens of the Arab world” as I put it in a presentation, Palestine is one of the least. The Middle Eastern rulers use it as distraction from their endemic corruption and ingrained anti semitic prejudices, while the Western “intellectuals” for whom anti – semitism is catnip, use it as a parallelism (read Jean-Francois Revel or better yet Barry Rubin) to their inveterate anti Americanism. Thinking about the Palestinian Issue in its entity, as few of the Middle East scholars do, it is apparent that the UN organizations like UNRWA, the Arab regimes, and Western assorted anti Semites, have colluded to keep the Palestinian refugees holed up in desolate refugee camps as a means to keep the Issue alive. Where are the many millions of other displaced minorities, the Christians, Jews, Armenians, Bahai, etc? Why no world-wide demand that Armenians be allowed to return to their homeland, one which they lived in long before the Turks arrived?
Meanwhile the “woke” generation, mostly a collection of ill-educated spoiled youth, frightened corporate gurus, political charlatans, media moguls, and journalists “wanting to make a difference” wet themselves at the mention of sexism, racism, or other assorted mostly mythical ills of our fractured society, have added Israeli to the lengthening hate list, usually in the form of poorly disguised modern version of the blood libel.
Of course, Saudi Arabian leadership got on the bad side of the Georgetown elite cocktail party circuit by doing away with Jamal Khashoggi, a Washington Post reporter, who led two lives, one as an advocate for the “Arab Spring uprising,” and a favorite among the Georgetown circuit ( whether he drank martinis or grape juice I do not know), and the more important role as a celebrity voice for Islamist supremacy. He was an unabashed proponent of the murderous Muslim Brotherhood. His adoring WDC fans are an example of many western liberals who have an affinity for totalitarian ideologies. ( read Paul Johnson). I applauded the boldness of the Saudi regime in eliminating Khashoggi. It was a welcome change from the usual wimpy Saudi practice of buying off enemies.
even code pink is out there at Jamal way!
In the end this Trip is one of those “GOTTA DO SOMETHING” events that politicians in trouble frequently use. It will of course get rave reviews from the New York Times and the even from the Washington Post despite their lingering hurt over losing their best Muslim, Brotherhood reporter to Saudi malice.
The Saudis will make the appropriate noise but do very little to raise oil production, and whichever Israeli PM for a Day politician greets Biden he will also make effusive lyrics featuring the forever Israeli-American friendship. In the West Bank, the PA president for life, Mahmoud Abbas, will ask for more money to keep his amoral regime in power. To please the Wokies in the US, Biden may re-establish the Palestinian consulate somewhere….another sinecure for an ambitious diplomat. I suspect that Biden with his wit and eloquence will attempt to convince the Israelis and Saudis that they should not fight the JCPOA,( the forever nuc deal) assuring them that John Kerry told him that while the Iranians say mean things, up close they are really swell guys,….And so forth…. wahaluma jarana.
Post note. I see in then news the the leftist Washington fashionistas have named a street after Khashoggi.
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