Less than two weeks after Hamas terrorists undertook the greatest single-day slaughter of Jews since the Holocaust, President Joe Biden stood in Tel Aviv and declared, “As long as the United States stands—and we will stand forever—we will not let you ever be alone.” He deplored Hamas terror and stood unequivocally with Israel. “You are a Jewish state,” he said, “but you’re also a democracy. And like the United States, you don’t live by the rules of terrorists.”
Seven months later, the White House draws moral equivalence between Israel and Hamas. As both Israeli and American hostages remain captive in Hamas’ underground tunnels, the Biden administration embargoes the weaponry Israel needs to locate and rescue them. The reason for the betrayal is both political and personal. The change in White House attitude towards Israel came after Biden’s campaign aides received polls showing Biden losing ground in both Michigan and perhaps Minnesota, both US states with large Muslim minorities. Biden might speak with moral clarity, but his sincerity only extends to the next poll.
Personal animosity plays an even greater role. Biden has always let personal trump policy. Then-Senator Barack Obama’s running mate, Biden, fiercely criticised Afghanistan President Hamid Karzai. Biden’s goal may have been to criticise President George W Bush’s management of Afghan reconstruction, but Karzai never forgave the incident and, months later, stormed out of a meeting with then-Vice President Biden. The poor relationship between Biden and Karzai played out on the diplomatic stage and undercut US (and Indian) national security interests in Afghanistan.
Biden’s animosity towards Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is even more pronounced. Even Netanyahu’s friends consider him a difficult man, and Ron Dermer, his gatekeeper, is just as arrogant. Many progressives caricature Netanyahu as an extremist and fail to understand that he represents the Israeli mainstream on security issues. They blame him, for example, for the Israeli security barrier between the West Bank and Israel and do not realise that the “wall” was the idea of the late Israeli Prime Minister and Nobel Peace Prize winner Yitzhak Rabin, who fell along the left wing of the Israeli political spectrum. They also resent Netanyahu’s failure to subordinate himself to their political whims and Netanyahu’s insistence that a two-state solution means one state will remain Jewish.
President Barack Obama taunted Netanyahu as “chickensh*t” in an interview with Atlantic editor Jeffrey Goldberg. Obama administration alumni populate the current administration. National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan and Secretary of State Antony Blinken obliquely criticise Netanyahu. Their aides smear Netanyahu anonymously with vitriol.
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer took Netanyahu’s derangement to a new level when he called for new elections in Israel to oust the Israeli prime minister. Not only did this misjudge Israel—Netanyahu shot up in the polls as Israelis rejected outside interference—but it ignored that Israel was the only democracy in a region of dictatorships. Palestinian Chairman Mahmoud Abbas, for example, is currently serving the 20th year of his four-year presidential term. That is akin to criticising Indian democracy while ignoring China’s one-party dictatorship and Pakistan’s history of military coups.
The Biden team’s disparagement of Netanyahu for cheap political reasons should raise alarm in New Delhi because, to American progressives, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi is as much a political lightning rod.
True, when Biden welcomed Modi to the White House just a year ago, he was effusive. “The relationship between the United States and India… will be one of the defining relationships of the 21st century,” he declared. Increasingly, though, it seems Biden’s aides risk giving Modi the Netanyahu treatment.
American progressives disparage Modi for the same reason they dislike Netanyahu. Modi is unabashedly nationalist. He does not subordinate India’s interests to the political whims of the White House. He is proudly religious at a time when many American progressives look down on faith.
When Israeli voters repeatedly reject progressive parties at the polls, the failed politicians instead seek to cultivate American congressmen to impose from outside what they cannot achieve inside. The same pattern now repeats in India, where activists who fail to attract a constituency inside India instead seek to turn to non-governmental organisations and self-described human rights groups to push agendas Indian voters reject.
Just as Schumer dismissed the results of Israeli democracy, many progressive American politicians belittle Indian democracy because they do not like its results. Hence, prominent US Senators Chris Van Hollen, Richard Blumenthal, Elizabeth Warren, and Bernie Sanders all signed a letter calling on Biden to chide Modi’s human rights record during his 2023 state visit. Other congressmen promoted the calumny that the Modi administration is intolerant. This charge may be common in Western capitals, but it rests on amplifying local ethnic conflict to suggest falsely broader religious hatred. Just because Americans may see conflict through the lens of religion does not mean Indians always do.
There is an adage in American politics: ‘Personnel is policy’. A new president seeks to staff his administration with supporters. It can be difficult enough to ensure political appointees remain disciplined, but career diplomats and civil servants too often seek to advance their own personal views and block those with which they disagree. This often takes the form of slowing or blocking diplomatic processes and leaking information anonymously to the press to demonise democrats or derail policy initiatives.
The Washington Post and New York Times regularly print poorly sourced news designed to undercut Netanyahu or promote his opponents, and correspondents write ‘analysis’ that substitutes opinion for fact. Often, their cherry-picked reports lose their lustre in the spotlight of context. The same now happens with Modi.
Khalistani separatists, many with blood on their hands due to their personal involvement or financing of terror inside India, find refuge in Canada and California, where they also serve as anchors to sponsor further immigration. Impugning India and feigning oppression helps asylum applications. Sikh militants cloak themselves in the rhetoric of democracy and freedom while seeking to undercut it in pursuit of a violent movement that has no domestic support, even among the Sikh community in Punjab. In essence, Khalistani activism in the West has become a cover to legitimise organised crime, extortion, and gang warfare that often escalates into murder.
Canadian Premier Justin Trudeau may find it convenient to blame India for the assassination in British Columbia, but the evidence he cited was neither clear nor conclusive. The same holds true for a Washington Post expose based on what the authors purport is the ongoing investigation into an attempted assassination of a Khalistani activist in California. What is the basis of the evidence? Mapping of connections that suggest links and anonymous statements that senior officials in New Delhi likely knew. This is amateur stuff. Six degrees of separation link almost all people on earth; after a career of studying the Middle East, I am no more than two degrees of separation from kings, princes, presidents, and terrorist masterminds; that does not mean they would recognise me on the street or take my phone call.
Occam’s razor suggests a simpler explanation. A century ago, mafia warfare in Chicago led to internecine struggle as different families and crime leaders struggled for primacy. That is the world in which Khalistanis exist. To accuse India of transnational repression is to deflect from the real issue: The United States and Canada allowed fake dissidents under false pretences and then let them sponsor terrorism from US and Canadian soil.
That the Biden administration tolerates its diplomats and intelligence officials leaking to undermine the Indian government is not the action of a trusted ally; instead, it is a warning that India should not trust their American counterparts. To tolerate such leaks is to be two-faced. Instead, Blinken and Director of Central Intelligence Bill Burns should investigate the leaker, who prioritises their own animosity towards Modi above the partnership between the world’s two largest democracies. If Blinken and Burns are unable to determine the guilty party—assuming they themselves are not responsible for the leaks—then they should clean house and rotate everyone off their respective India desks who had access to the investigation. It is time to polygraph American diplomats.
Modi should also demand Biden forcefully defend Indian democracy, especially to members of his own party who seek to score cheap points for activist groups that prioritise their own anti-Hindu biases over truth. The world does not need another Justin Trudeau, nor can the US-India partnership thrive when an American bureaucracy seeks to tear it down.
In the meantime, India must be realistic. If the White House undercuts Israel’s legitimate counterterror efforts because Blinken, Sullivan, or Deputy National Security Advisor Jon Finer irrationally hate Netanyahu, then can New Delhi ever be sure that the United States will truly have India’s back when Pakistan-backed terrorists again sponsor terrorism in Kashmir, Punjab, or even Mumbai?
source : american enterprise institute