US Policy Based on Ignorance: For Example, Janet Yellen

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US Treasury Secretary Yellen’s recent plea to Israel to encourage entry of Palestinian Authority workers is another well-intentioned but pathetic attempt by American governmental officials who create foreign policy based on ignorance of reality.

Yellen is a brilliant economist who has received a slew of honorary degrees and fellowships, none of which qualify her for being an expert on Israel. However, like hundreds of other politicians, professionals, entertainers and journalists living comfortably in their homes in the United States, she knows what is best for Israel.

The Secretary of Treasury stated to reporters that in a letter she wrote to Prime Minister Netanyahu, she criticized him for not allowing Palestinian Authority workers into Jewish areas. She told Reuters that re-opening the gates, which were closed for security reasons since Hamas’ October 7 massacre, is “not good for Israel’s economy, or the West Bank’s economy.”

Indeed, she is right. Palestinian Authority residents who work in Israel and on Jewish communities in Judea and Samaria, aka West Bank, earn at least double the wages they can make at home. Israel’s economy also has suffered. Construction, especially in Judea and Samaria, has come to a standstill.

Yellen’s advice is simple and plain common sense if you are looking at Israel through a narrow American cultural lens that ignores reality.

Yellen apparently does not have a clue how Hamas was able to carry out its monstrous attacks with pinpoint accuracy.  Before October 7, Jewish communities near the Gaza employed thousands of Arabs from Gaza, almost all of whom carried work permits and security clearance. Many of them worked for years and built friendships with their Jewish employers who trusted them.

Are all Palestinian Authority workers spies for terrorists? Of course not. Are many of them good people who could care less about “two states” and simply want a decent salary and raise a family in peace and quiet? Of course.

The same goes for some of the Arabs in Gaza.

But many of those “trusted workers” from Gaza were spies. They returned home every day and turned over to Hamas information with every detail on the location of family homes, community centers, synagogues and bomb shelters.

The IDF captured documents that showed that “Hamas had been systematically gathering intelligence on each kibbutz bordering Gaza and creating specific plans of attack for each village that included the intentional targeting of women and children,” according to NBC News. “The dental office, the supermarket, the dining hall,” an IDF officer told NBC. “The level of specificity would cause anyone in the intelligence field’s jaw to drop.”

In other words, Israelis paid Gaza Arabs to spy on them so terrorists could torture, rape and kill them.

This is not breaking news. This was known since almost immediately after October 7. Apparently, Secretary Yellen is not aware of this basic information. If she were, would she even think that Israel must open the doors for Palestinian Authority workers, unless the economy is more important than our lives?

Yellen’s narrow focus is an unfortunate common trait among people outside of Israel who are sure they know what is best for us. They talk with a mindset that does not allow them to listen.

Take Senator Bernie Sanders, for example. “I know Israel. I lived on a kibbutz for a year,” he once said. That is like my saying, “I know New York City. I lived in Greenwich Village for a year in the hippy-dippy 1960s.”

The State Department and their spokespersons, as I wrote last month, are more sad examples of ignorance. The fact that Secretary of State Tony Blinken, Senator Sanders and Yellen all are Jewish only makes it worse because it gives them false credentials for knowing what is best for Israel.

United States governments are totally misguided not only about Israel. Politicians and journalists’ agendas failed the United States during World II when they ignored Nazi genocide. During the 1960s nearly 60,000 American soldiers died in the Vietnam War on the precept that a Communist takeover of the country was a direct threat to America.

Add to the list the American “victory” over Iraq, the war in Afghanistan and the suicidal appeasement of Iran.

The Obama administration applauded the “Arab Spring” revolutions that, through its American eyes, incorrectly envisioned as a triumph of democracy over tyranny in Egypt, Libya and Yemen, where little has changed for the better.

Secretary Yellen’s advice is the latest addition to the list compiled by American foreign policy advisors, who do not know the difference between survival and suicidal in Israel.