A president who undermines Israel and Jews who support him

by Matthew M. Hausman, J.D.

The adage “Hanlon’s Razor” states that one should “never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity” and aims to eliminate improbable explanations for human behavior. The term “useful idiots” describes those who should know better than to support causes that threaten their natural interests but do so anyway (the phrase was famously applied to western progressives who shilled for the Soviet Union despite its totalitarian contempt for western freedoms). Hanlon’s Razor never assumes ill-intent, while useful idiocy suggests a degree of willfulness; but both presuppose the inevitability of bad acts. Thus, negative conduct is the one constant, whether motivated by animus or ignorance.

And either term can be used to describe those who – irrespective of intent – continue to support an administration pushing policies that disregard Jewish historical rights, reward terrorism, interfere with Israeli domestic politics, seek appeasement with Iran, and threaten Israel’s safety and security

As has been widely reported, the Biden administration recently reinstituted an Obama-era prohibition against the use of American tax-dollars to subsidize joint US-Israeli research and development projects at institutions in Judea and Samaria. This ban was suspended during the Trump administration because it effectively constituted an anti-Israel boycott and falsely presumed the illegality of Israel’s possession of Judea and Samaria, though Israeli control of these territories does not constitute unlawful “occupation” as defined under the customary international laws of war or Fourth Geneva Convention.

The Biden administration also reinstituted funding to the Palestinian Authority, which before its suspension was partly used to pay terrorists or the families of terrorists who attacked Israelis and Americans in what was dubbed “pay-for-slay.” During the Obama years, the PA routinely diverted American funds to pay terrorists – until the flow of cash was halted in 2020 by the Taylor Act under former President Trump. After Biden resumed transferring funds to PA-controlled NGOs and programs claimed to be beyond the scope of the Taylor Act, enraged terror victims filed suit in federal court to stop him and Secretary of State Anthony Blinken from bypassing the law and financially enabling terrorism…

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