I’M SO OLD, I REMEMBER WHEN BIDEN WAS GOING TO RESTORE TATTERED RELATIONS WITH OUR ALLIES: Senior Biden Admin Official Refused To Meet With Israeli Ambassador During 2021 Hamas Conflict, Internal Emails Show.
Samantha Power, the head of the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), was asked to meet with then-Israeli ambassador Gilad Erdan in May 2021, when Hamas and other Palestinian terror groups were attacking Israel with missiles in protest of a court ruling that evicted six Palestinian families from an East Jerusalem neighborhood.
Power declined the meeting, internal government emails show, saying that Israel must first reach a ceasefire with the Palestinian terror groups before being granted a sit-down. The behind-the-scenes diplomatic drama reveals how the United States used back channels to pressure Israel into stopping its siege on Hamas militants—tactics that once again may be in play as the Biden administration pushes Israel into ending its current war on the terror group.
“The Administrator [Power] would like to take the meeting with the Ambassador [Erdan] but wants to hold until there is a ceasefire or resolution to the currently [sic] escalation of the conflict,” a scheduler in Power’s office wrote in a May 18 email to USAID colleagues working in the region, according to a cache of internal documents first obtained by the Center to Advance Security in America (CASA), a government watchdog group.
In recent weeks, the Biden administration has begun to walk back its robust support for Israel’s war against Hamas, with Biden saying on Thursday that the Jewish state’s response to the worst terror attack in its history is “over the top.” The administration has also reportedly considered slowing down arms sales to Israel to pressure the Israeli government into reaching a ceasefire with Hamas.
It’s increasingly clear that the only reason the Biden Cabal hasn’t already put a serious squeeze on Israel was the horrific nature of the Hamas October 7 terror invasion.
But as October 7 fades from public memory, that will change.