US Secretary of State Antony Blinken was excoriated by Republican politicians following his announcement on Friday that he is reversing the decision made by his predecessor Mike Pompeo during the presidency of Donald Trump regarding Israeli yishuvim in Yehudah and Shomron.
During his term, Pompeo revoked the long-standing policy of the US State Department that Israeli “settlements” in Yehudah and Shomron are “illegal” – in what became known as the “Pompeo Doctrine.”
Responding to a question about Israel’s announcement that it is approving 3,000 new homes in Yehudah and Shomron in response to the deadly terror attack in Ma’ale Adumim on Thursday, Blinken said that he was “disappointed” over the announcement and that new “settlements” are counterproductive to reaching an enduring peace. He added: “They’re also inconsistent with international law. Our administration maintains a firm opposition to settlement expansion, and in our judgment, this only weakens, doesn’t strengthen Israel’s security.”
Pompeo responded to the decision by stating: “Judea and Samaria are rightful parts of the Jewish homeland, and Israelis have a right to live there. President Biden’s decision to overturn our policy and call Israeli ‘settlements’ illegal will not further the cause of peace. It rewards Hamas for its brutal attacks on October 7th and punishes Israel instead. These Israeli communities are not standing in the way of peace; militant Palestinian terrorism is.”
Former US Ambassador to Israel David Friedman stated: “Blinken is 100% wrong. I researched this for over a year with many State Department lawyers. There is nothing illegal about Jews living in their biblical homeland. Indeed, Undersecretary of State Eugene Rostow, also the Dean of the Yale Law School (who negotiated UNSCR 242), stated that Israel has the best legal claim to Judea and Samaria.”
“For Blinken to announce this in the middle of a war and when the Jewish Sabbath already has begun in Israel is unconscionable,” Friedman asserted.
House Speaker Mike Johnson retweeted Friedman’s post, adding: “Ambassador David Friedman is absolutely correct. This is a shameful decision. The Jewish people have a historic and legal right to live in the land of Israel including in Judea and Samaria – the biblical heartland. It is an absolute disgrace the Biden administration would issue this decision, especially as Israel fights terrorists on multiple fronts that seek Israel’s destruction and as more than 130 hostages remain in Gaza.”
“The Biden Administration must stop undermining Israel and facilitating efforts to delegitimize Israel. It is misguided and unconscionable.”
Senator Tom Cotton (R-AR) responded: “The Pompeo doctrine simply recognized reality: Judea and Samaria are the homeland of the Jewish people. It’s shameful that the Biden Administration reversed this and rewarded terrorists—all to help Biden’s poll numbers in Michigan.”
Senator Bill Hagerty (R-TN) also retweeted Friedman’s post, commenting: “Ambassador Friedman is correct. The Biden Admin’s disgraceful reversal undermines a close friend while rewarding the genocidal terrorists they are fighting. It is not a legal assessment. It is a political calculation meant to appease the pro-Hamas radical left. Shameful.”
(YWN Israel Desk – Jerusalem)
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7 Responses
It’s a year of election. Trying to curry favor for votes. Politics as usual
1. What do you expect? The US is a democracy and almost half of the Democrats support Hamas. Biden offers support to Israel when attacked by the Iranians through various proxies (e.g. Hamas, Houthi, etc.) which keeps part of his base (especially secular Jews) happy, and then withdraws recognition of Israeli rights in the West Bank and Jerusalem to make the rest of his “base” happy. In any event, the US is so disunited that it is unlikely to be able to engage in serious military action (you can’t win a war if most of the population will not support the war, and right now there is very little support for any foreign wars among Americans). While it is unlikely unless the Progressive Wing of the Democrats gets control (though in all fairness, MAGA isolationists in 2016 were just a small faction of the Republicans and now they are the majority), Israel needs to understand that they may at some point be subject to the same sorts of sanctions from the United States that are currently applied to countries such as Iran, North Korea, Russia, Cuba, etc. (e.g. you raise money to support yeshivos in Jerusalem, and the US seizes the money and sends it to Hamas).
2. Also the bulk of the Republican party now supports “America First” meaning the long term meaningful US involvement is the Middle East is serious in doubt. Isolationism means, as it did in the 1930s, that the bad guys can do what they want in Europe and Asia as long as they leave the United States alone.
3. It appears the Israelis made a fatal mistake in allowing themselves to be dependent on the Americans for military support and equipment. While it would require giving up the “first world” standard of living, if the zionists wish to survive they need to devote all their resources towards self-sufficiency, and the only way to pay for this would be to go back to the standard of living they had in the 1950s and 1960s (e.g. few private cars, no central heat, no foreign vacations, smaller numbers in kollel and a lot more working in factories).
Meanwhile trump stopped Palestinian funding, stopped ISIS, recognized Jerusalem as the Jewish capitol, made deals between Israel and Arab countries, unlike Biden who made every world issue worse. Biden made the Ukraine situation worse for all Europeans. Biden emboldened Iran and the Palestinians. Worst administration ever.
Thank you Blinken for assisting Trump’s campaighn to win the white house. You will learn In Nov how helpful you were to Trump’s re-election.
Keep up your good work. Look at ALL polls in which Trump is sourng higher and higher since biden Is annoying and attemptin to restrain Israel in their war of existince.
I actually took the original Hansell memorandum from 1978 that reached the conclusion that “settlements” are illegal – you can easily find it on line by googling “Hansell memorandum”. The memo is a poorly-reasoned and badly-crafted political hatchet job masquerading as a legal analysis, rife with baseless assertions and leaps of (il)logic, with a conclusion that was designed to support the position of the Carter administration.
The fact that it is now being resurrected once again is an assault on logic, irrespective of anything else. I strongly suggest that anyone who is comfortable reading legal analysis take a read through it – it makes it much easier to dispute the positions taken by those who blindly claim that Israeli towns in Yosh are illegal.
an Israeli Yid
You can’t be “America First” and give Israel anything more than moral support. In all fairness, most of the western countries said they opposed the holocaust, and gave moral support to the Jews (and they also gave the Chinese much moral support when the Japanese were busy massacring them). Then as now, what is needed is a strong United States with a muscular interventionist policy providing a lot more than moral support.
Nice to hear them now and better late than never… but where were all these Republicans when Biden was claiming Israel was “bombing indiscriminately”, that Israel’s response in Gaza was “over the top and has got to stop'”, that they are looking into recognising a Palestinian State… etc etc etc??