The Biden Administration has Quietly Targeted Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu

The Biden Administration has Quietly Targeted Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu

The Obama administration was terrible to Netanyahu. Somehow, Joe Biden has managed to be even worse.

From Tablet Magazine:

The Anti-Israel Sanctions Machine

President Biden recently achieved a historic first for which he has received no credit. He is the first president to form an interagency team dedicated to imposing sanctions on an ally, namely, Israel.

To be sure, the United States sanctioned allies on many occasions. Recent examples of this kind include sanctions designed to prevent Germany from completing the Nord Stream 2 natural gas pipeline, and sanctions on Turkish defense industries to penalize Ankara for its procurement of the Russian S-400 surface-to-air missile system. These sanctions resulted from a specific action by an allied government that Washington sought to reverse.

But the sanctions against Israel are of a qualitatively different kind. The Biden administration has assembled an interagency team of targeteers tasked with finding individuals and groups to sanction—not to reverse a specific policy, but to weaken if not topple the government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

The existence of this machine has been hiding in plain sight since last February, when Biden issued an executive order claiming that violence by Israeli settlers in the West Bank was threatening the stability of the entire Middle East. The order laid out the justification for the interagency team of targeteers and provided it with the necessary legal authorities to generate sanctions packages.

The press has reported on the executive order and has taken note of the sanctions the administration has generated, but it has also failed to ask some basic questions, which I put to contacts in the government. Here is what I gleaned.

The White House has established an interagency initiative to produce sanctions against Israeli entities and individuals. The International Economics Directorate at the National Security Council (NSC) leads the effort. Ilan Goldenberg, who until April worked for Vice President Kamala Harris and has now moved to the Strategic Planning Directorate in the NSC, also plays a very enthusiastic role. In the State Department, the Office of Economic Sanctions Policy has the lead. It works closely with the Office of Foreign Assets Control at Treasury. Together they prepare evidentiary packages.

Donations tax deductible
to the full extent allowed by law.