Israel vs. the United Progressives of America

The decolonization and self-determination movements they champion only matter for minority, persecuted groups not named “the Jews.”

Progressives whine about “cultural misappropriation” while disgustingly misappropriating Jewish history, like the Holocaust.

Please consider supporting our mission to help everyone better understand and become smarter about the Jewish world. A gift of any amount helps keep our platform free and zero-advertising for all.

---

You can also listen to the podcast version of this essay on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, and Spotify.

---

Just when Israel thought it had its hands full with Iranian proxies on four of its borders, and another across the Red Sea, the Israelis now have another enemy: the United Progressives of America.

Last week, U.S. President Joe Biden issued a memorandum requiring allies who receive American military aid to provide “credible and reliable written assurances” of their adherence to international law.

The move was a result of pressure from progressive lawmakers demanding conditions on aid to Israel amid fears that American weapons were being used in the killing of civilians in Gaza, despite military experts agreeing that the Jewish state has taken extraordinary measures to protect civilians. Surely, it makes sense to punish Israel for protecting civilians, while rewarding Palestinian terror groups for using them as human shields.

Biden also had an interesting choice of words last Friday, saying: “I’ve been pushing really hard, really hard, to get humanitarian assistance into Gaza. There are a lot of innocent people who are starving, a lot of innocent people who are in trouble and dying, and it’s gotta stop.”

But Biden is lying through his two front teeth, or pandering to the progressive extremists in his party, because there is plenty of aid going into Gaza. Amounts of aid and entry are not the problems. It is what happens after the products have entered. One of the United Nations’ agencies, the World Food Programme, confirmed that 12 of the 13 aid bottlenecks depend on the UN.¹

To add insult to injury, Hamas attacks civilians waiting to receive humanitarian aid, and blocks the way for those trying to move to humanitarian zones. Yet it is the Jews who are to blame for problems that have nothing to do with them. There is a word for this: antisemitism.

Then, during a meeting last week between one of Biden’s top advisors and Arab American leaders in Michigan, the advisor was quoted as saying he does not have “any confidence” in the current Israeli government, specifically regarding its readiness to take “meaningful steps” toward the creation of a Palestinian state.

Yet for the time being, to talk of a two-state solution, beyond the fact that it is unrestrained illusion, is to effectively reward the Palestinians for what Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad unleashed on October 7th. Jewish blood was not shed so that the Palestinians could receive a reward, and acting in such a way would only further encourage them to murder more Jews.

Even Palestinian leadership is opposed to statehood for all intents and purposes. And I am not just referring to the genocidal, fascist, Islamic fundamentalist ideology of Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad.

The Palestinian Authority, which governs Palestinians in the West Bank, has been an incredibly corrupt organization since it was created in the 1990s. So is its dominant party, Fatah. Together they form a motley crew of elites solely seeking to maintain power and willing to do whatever it takes to ensure their positions remain intact.

Of course, none of this is of relevance to the United Progressives of America. To them the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is about feelings, not facts. If they scream something loud enough, it must be true. The decolonization and self-determination movements they champion only matter for minority, persecuted groups not named “the Jews.”

But we can no longer take the United Progressives of America lightly. They are a dangerous bunch, as proven by their ability to influence U.S. policy during this Israel-Hamas war, and by their invasion of institutions which they have poisoned with their intellectually dishonest, divisive ideology.

The New York Times, for example, faults Israel for killing journalists in Gaza, claiming that the Israelis are inhibiting the world from seeing what is happening in the strip. Naturally, the newspaper fails to hold Hamas accountable for its role in impeding journalism. And it also strangely omits the evidence that at least some of the Gazans portraying themselves as journalists are also members of terrorist organizations.

Universities have become battle zones, featuring a hazardous dose of micro-aggressions, fear-mongering, bullying, and harassment. Harvard, for example, is refusing to send information that the U.S. Congress requested about instances of antisemitism on its campus, while majorities of Jewish students are uncomfortable with their campus communities knowing they are Jewish, and afraid of a backlash if they report an antisemitic issue.

The U.S. government has also been infected by the United Progressives of America plague. In a twisted moral equivalency between Hamas and sporadic Jewish attacks, Biden recently signed an “executive order” to sanction four Israeli citizens. Israel now fears that sanctions could hit its ministers and parliamentarians — a sort of backdoor channel to meddle in Israeli politics if the United Progressives of America so choose.

Certainly, though, Biden’s administration is squeaky clean, despite several senior Biden administration officials meeting last week with Osama Siblani, a Michigan newspaper publisher who has praised Hamas and Hezbollah, and claimed the U.S. government was “bought” by the “Zionist lobby.”

Many members of Biden’s administration are, in fact, deeply hostile toward Israel. Even worse, some of them have had ties with the Islamic Republic of Iran. Thousands of leaked emails showed that the Iranians infiltrated the Obama administration, with Biden as its vice president.²

More specifically, three Iran experts who have worked closely with Robert Malley, the Biden administration’s special envoy on Iran, were members of an influence network formed and guided by Tehran. The leak also revealed that more than 10 Iranian analysts in western think tanks were part of an influence network called the Iran Experts Initiative, formed and guided by Tehran.

During the Obama administration, one of these think tanks, the International Crisis Group, formed a secret alliance with Iran, which used it to lobby the U.S. government throughout the negotiations in the run-up to the 2015 nuclear deal.³

“Anti-Israel protests against Biden have given the impression that his administration is on Israel’s side,” said British journalist Melanie Phillips. “America’s Jewish leaders need to start telling the American people that ‘Genocide Joe’ is putting the United States and the West at ever greater risk and is actually helping those who intend the genocide of the Jews.”⁴

For Biden’s administration, though, it is clear that they care about one thing and one thing only — the presidential election in November — even if this means catering to Israel’s greatest enemies in America, no matter how vital Israel is to U.S. interests.

Last week, one of Biden’s top advisors reportedly met with Abdullah Hammoud, the mayor of Dearborn, Michigan who called Dearborn “the city of resistance” and Benjamin Netanyahu a “terrorist” at a rally last November. Thousands of Dearborn residents have marched in support of Hamas, Hezbollah, and Iran. Protesters shout “Intifada! Intifada!” and “America is a terrorist state.” Local imams give fiery antisemitic sermons.

Almost immediately after October 7th, and long before Israel began its ground response in Gaza, people were celebrating the horrific events of that day in pro-Hamas rallies and marches throughout Dearborn. A local headline describing an October 10th event read: “Michigan rally cheers Hamas attack.” Imam Imran Salha of Dearborn’s Islamic Center of Detroit told the crowd that Israel’s past actions have put “fire in our hearts that will burn that state” — Israel — “until its demise.”

In May 2023, Salha urged his congregation to say “amen” in agreement with his prayer that Allah “eradicate from existence” the “sick, disgusting Zionist regime.” Seven months prior, his organization reportedly received $150,000 in funding from the U.S. Homeland Security Department, as part of a program to help nonprofit groups protect against terrorist attacks⁵ — despite deploying rhetoric that could fuel the sorts of hate and terrorist attacks the grants seemingly aim to prevent.

It is important to note that Michigan is a “swing state” in the upcoming election, and Biden won it in 2020 with a margin of less than three percent. Dearborn has America’s highest per-capita population of Arab Americans. The city is represented in Washington, D.C. by Rashida Tlaib, the first Palestinian-American elected to Congress, a prominent face of the United Progressives of America, and easily its biggest Jew-hater.

Late last year, Tlaib was seen wearing a shirt that says, “Palestine is a feminist, queer, refugee, racial justice issue” — even though Palestine does not exist, Palestinian culture is inherently misogynistic and homophobic, and the last time some Palestinians became refugees was in 1967.

Tlaib was also one of two U.S. politicians who just voted against a bill barring participants in the October 7th Palestinian terror attacks from entering the United States.

Thus, as Biden’s administration desperately aligns themselves with people and groups deeply hostile to one of America’s greatest allies, Israel ought to ignore the United Progressives of America and stay focused on dismantling Palestinian terror in Gaza. Our duty is to prevent another October 7th, not to help the U.S. president in Michigan.

---

1. COGAT on X

2. “Inside Tehran’s Soft War.” Iran International.

3. “Covert Ties Between Iran And The International Crisis Group.” Iran International.

4. “Israel’s American frenemy.” Substack.

5. “These Mosques Pray for the Annihilation of Jews. They Also Receive Money From the Biden Administration.” Washington Free Beacon.