Who is Responsible for the latest Middle East conflagration ?

So those horrible, apartheid-stained Israelis are making life miserable for the aggrieved Palestinians and it’s entirely understandable that the oppressed have risen up against their oppressors.  That’s the ‘woke’ narrative and if you don’t agree with this interpretation of recent events, you are obviously an unrepentant racist, patriarchy-supporting, colonizing white supremacist.

The truth isn’t quite so uni-dimensional.  Yes, the Israelis were about to ‘seize’ a few homes from their Arab occupants but those homes were owned by Jews prior to Jordan’s illegal seizure of that area in 1949, and even after Israel recaptured the territory in 1967, the new Arab tenants refused to return the properties to their rightful owners or even to pay rent.

The riots at Temple Mount/Al-Aqsa mosque?  There was never any action or desire by Israel to hinder Arab worship at their holy site, but there was certainly incitement to violence by Palestinian leadership, motivated by their usual Jew-hatred and an effort to divert attention away from their delayed elections.

Jewish gangs assaulting innocent Arabs in mixed neighborhoods?  Some Jewish Israelis did indeed engage in unjustifiable acts of violence, but there were exponentially more cases of Arab attacks on Jewish civilians.  And when Jewish Israelis acted unlawfully, the public, the government, the judiciary and the media all condemned the unacceptable behavior.  Arab leadership, on the other hand, called on their people to slash the throats of Jews.

Given, therefore, that Israeli provocations were highly exaggerated, why then is the area erupting in paroxysms of violence not seen in a decade?  The answer is glaringly transparent to anyone who is not a Democratic Party apologist: President Joe Biden’s incoherence and weakness.

President Biden managed to create a crisis on America’s southern border through his politically-motivated reversal of Donald Trump’s very effective border controls and by signaling his willingness to welcome whoever wished to enter the U.S.  Next, he made it clear to Russia and China that he would not respond in any meaningful way to their threats against their neighbors or to the cyber attacks that have dealt a major blow to the U.S. energy infrastructure.

And in the Middle East, Biden decided that reverting to Obama’s ill-advised and terrorist-rewarding policies is the best path forward.  Instead of continuing Donald Trump’s paradigm-shifting containment of Iran’s nuclear ambitions and refusing to reward Palestinian leadership for their ongoing corruption and incitement, Joe Biden believed that giving truck-loads of money to Iran and the Palestinians was somehow going to bring about the Middle East peace that has eluded all his predecessors.  Oh wait.  There was a growing rapprochement between Israel and many of her Arab neighbors and Iran’s economy was essentially crippled by Donald Trump’s policies so maybe peace wasn’t eluding that particular predecessor?  Donald Trump may have had his character flaws, but he clearly understood that the malevolent forces in the Middle East would never alter their behavior unless they were confronted by American strength and determination, attributes that are totally absent in Joe Biden.

Palestinian leadership may be other-worldly corrupt but they are not stupid.  They witnessed Joe Biden’s weakness on numerous foreign policy fronts and they saw their coffers being replenished by the U.S. despite any evidence of their willingness to negotiate with Israel so they concluded (not without justification) that they could ratchet up the violence and extract even more concessions from the U.S., not to mention extort more millions to buy Paris apartments.  With Joe Biden in charge, they’re probably not wrong.  The shame is that people on both sides are dying for the failures of American foreign policy and the unhelpful actions and signals of the Biden administration.