Biden’s Zionist A Team is the biggest supporter of Israel’s massacres in Gaza
After receiving an election victory over Republican rival Donald Trump in 2020, US President Joe Biden appointed a controversial and Zionist team for his new administration. Among them are a minyan and a half of the Jews. Indeed, I wonder if there has ever been a more Jewish Biden administration – and as well, a full minyan of strongly liberal Catholics, including Biden himself. Here are the 15 Jews who comprise Biden's Jewish A-team. I strongly believe that a vigorous American presence in world affairs, spearheaded by the Jewish A-team, is in Israel's long-term interest, more than an "America first" administration that made the US largely irrelevant in global affairs.
- World
- Published Date: 01:51 | 14 February 2024
- Modified Date: 03:07 | 14 February 2024
Starting on the very day of the Oct. 7 attacks in Israel, Biden has emotionally expressed his solidarity with Israel and affirmed its need to fight fire with fire. He has expedited military assistance and, most dramatically, he flew to Israel and sat as part of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's war cabinet. While there certainly is a time-honored tradition of a "special relationship" between the U.S. and Israel, Biden has gone where no other U.S. president ever has gone during one of Israel's wars—not only physically but also politically and strategically.
Biden's predecessors have traditionally decided how to handle Arab-Israeli wars by making calculations about geopolitics and American politics. Often they prioritized limiting the impact of these wars on U.S. strategic goals. The domestic political position of each president also shaped his actions. Biden's support for Israel, by contrast, has been more fulsome and less qualified. It's also less clear that he's acting in a way congruent with U.S. strategy and his own political needs.
In the eyes of the world, there is no space between the American president and the Israeli war, and this reality poses strategic and political risks. American efforts to persuade other states that Russia's siege of Ukrainian cities is atrocious may now fall on deaf ears, considering Biden's support for Israel's siege of Gaza, which has killed nearly 30,000 people.
Biden's fervent defense of Israel's war also threatens the president's support among younger, more diverse Americans, who empathize with the Palestinians in a way that Americans of Biden's generation scarcely comprehend. His statements of concern over Palestinian deaths have been belated and unemotional, creating a vivid contrast with his rousing declarations that he, as America's leader, will keep faith with Israel and with Jewish life.
LET'S GET TO KNOW THE ZIONIST MEMBERS OF THE BIDEN CABINET CLOSELY:
Anthony Blinken, secretary of state. Blinken is a veteran career diplomat. His stepfather, Samuel Pisar, was the only Holocaust survivor of some 900 children in his Polish school; he was rescued after fleeing from a Nazi death march and finding refuge in a US armed corps tank – an episode Blinken recounted movingly when Biden introduced him.
David Cohen, deputy CIA director. Cohen returns to this role after filling it from 2015 to 2017. Cohen is the son of a prominent Boston Jewish physician.
Janet Yellen, secretary of the Treasury. She is the first woman to fill this role; previously, she headed the Federal Reserve Board of Governors. A 2016 Trump attack ad featured three Jews, including Yellen, and reflected anti-Semitic tropes. She is a renowned labor economist.
Merrick Garland, attorney-general. Garland was blocked from becoming a Supreme Court Justice by then-Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell, in the last year of the Obama presidency. After being nominated Garland spoke of his grandparents, who fled antisemitism in Europe and moved to the US.
Avril Haines, director of national intelligence. She was deputy director of the CIA under Obama, the first woman to hold this job. Her mother was a well-known Jewish painter, Adrian Rappin (Rappaport) and Haines identifies with Israel; she visited Israel with her non-Jewish father.
Ron Klain, chief of staff. He was Biden's chief of staff in his vice presidential days. Klain speaks of his childhood synagogue in Indianapolis, where he learned multiple Torah portions for his bar mitzvah, and of his commitment to raising Jewish children.
Eric Lander, director, Office of Science & Technology Policy. Lander is a leading geneticist. His position has been elevated to Cabinet level. Lander has spoken of being the subject of antisemitic criticism by James Watson, discoverer of the DNA double helix.
Rachel Levine, deputy secretary, Health and Human Services. Levine grew up in a Conservative Jewish home in Massachusetts. She is the first open transgender person to be nominated for a position requiring Senate confirmation
Alejandro Mayorkas, secretary of Homeland Security. Mayorkas, 60, was the Deputy Secretary of Homeland Security under Obama. He was born in Cuba, to a Cuban Jewish father and Romanian Jewish mother who survived the Shoah. He has worked closely with Jewish groups in the past.
Anne Neuberger, director of cybersecurity, National Security Agency. She is an Orthodox Jew, from Brooklyn, educated through college in Orthodox schools. She helped establish the US Cyber Command and led security efforts in the 2018 midterm elections. Her grandparents are Holocaust survivors and her parents were among the passengers on the Air France flight in 1976, kidnapped to Uganda and rescued in Israel's Entebbe operation. She founded Sister to Sister, an NGO that serves single mothers across the US
Wendy Sherman, deputy secretary of state. She was born in Maryland to a Jewish family. Her father served in the Marines. She will be the first woman to be appointed Deputy Secretary of State. A career diplomat, she was the lead negotiator for the controversial Iran nuclear deal
Jeff Zients, COVID-19 coordinator. He was born in Washington, DC, and was raised in Kensington, Maryland. His family is Jewish. From 2014 through 2017 he was the director of the National Economic Council. He will fill the crucial role of directing and coordinating efforts to overcome the COVID-19 pandemic
Rochelle Walensky, director, Center for Disease Control. She and her husband are members of Temple Emanuel, in Newton, Massachusetts, a prominent Conservative synagogue. She is an expert on AIDS and HIV and served as Chief of Infectious Diseases at Massachusetts General Hospital, and professor at Harvard Medical School.
Jared Bernstein, member, Council of Economic Advisors. Under Obama, Bernstein was the chief economist and economic adviser to Biden.
Douglas Emhoff, second gentleman, husband of US Vice President Kamala Harris. He is the first-ever husband of a US Vice President. He was born in Brooklyn, son of Jewish parents Barbara and Michael Emhoff. He grew up in New Jersey. He is an entertainment lawyer and teaches at Georgetown University Law Center.
This completes the 15 Jews in senior positions in the Biden administration.