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By Jack Wolfsohn
(JULY 13, 2022 / NATIONAL REVIEW) Israeli President Isaac Herzog is slated to give President Joe Biden the Presidential Medal of Honor on Thursday, the second day of Biden’s visit to the Middle East. This seems to be more a diplomatic ploy than a legitimate reflection of how Israelis feel about Biden’s commitment to the Jewish state. (Such a ploy is not unprecedented: Former president Barack Obama, whose policies were often to Israel’s detriment, also received the medal.) But even so, given his administration’s record, Biden does not deserve this or any other medal from Israel.
Let’s start off with Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s decision, four months into Biden’s presidency, to announce that the administration intended to reopen the U.S. consulate in East Jerusalem, which handled diplomacy with the Palestinian Authority (PA) before the Trump administration shut it down in 2019. Biden needs the Israeli government’s approval to reopen the consulate, and it seems unlikely to be given, because, as Axios reported last month, Israel “vehemently opposes” the idea. When the consulate was shut down by Trump, the U.S. diplomats in charge of relations with the PA, who had until then reported directly to Washington, were transferred to a new Palestinian Affairs Unit within the U.S. embassy in Tel Aviv and made to report to the U.S. ambassador. The Biden administration, aware that it would not get Israel’s approval to reopen the consulate, recently did the next best thing: It remade the Palestinian Affairs Unit as the independent Office of Palestinian Affairs, restoring the diplomats’ direct line to Foggy Bottom.
Biden’s substantive policies have been no better for Israel than his diplomatic moves. In 2021, he restored $235 million in funding to the Palestinians that Trump had slashed in 2018, including $75 million for economic and development assistance in Judea, Samaria, and Gaza and $150 million in humanitarian assistance for the UN Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA). This was problematic for three main reasons.
First, the PA should not receive a dime from the U.S. government until it ends its so-called pay-for-slay program, which incentivizes Palestinians to commit terrorism by paying terrorists and their families as a reward for killing Israelis. The PA has thus far compensated over 36,000 terrorists through the program, which accounts for roughly eight percent of its annual budget. This is, needless to say, not the behavior of a government to which millions in U.S. taxpayer money should be flowing.
Second, UNRWA is a corrupt agency that exaggerates the number of Palestinian refugees by millions. It defines every descendant of a male Palestinian refugee who lived in Israel from June 1, 1946, to May 15, 1948, as a Palestinian refugee, creating inflated refugee estimates that are then weaponized by antisemitic groups such as the BDS (boycott, divestment, and sanctions) movement to pressure Israel to allow Palestinians the “right of return,” a move that would destroy Israel’s Jewish identity.
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