Is anyone still pretending that Joe Biden supports Israel? I’ve never actually believed Biden was ever really on Israel’s side. From the earliest moments after the October 7 terrorist attack by Hamas, Biden’s actions have spoken louder than words.
For example, the Biden administration repeatedly claimed that Iran wasn’t involved in the planning or financing of the Hamas terror attack—something we knew to be false because they had just unfrozen $6 billion in Iranian assets a month before the terror attack. The administration reportedly tried to cover up that they knew about the planned assault on Israel, and repeatedly sought to get Israel to postpone its ground assault in Gaza, even forcing a delay by not having adequate defenses in place at U.S. military installations in the area.
And now the Biden administration is moving forward with plans for new policy that Israel has described anti-Israel and discriminatory.
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“The Biden administration is drawing up plans to require goods produced in Jewish settlements in the occupied West Bank to be clearly labelled as coming from there, according to US officials, another sign of White House unhappiness with the government of Benjamin Netanyahu,” the Financial Times reported.
The final go-ahead for the move, and its timing, have not been decided but it is intended to increase pressure on Israel over rising settler violence against Palestinians in the West Bank, and comes amid US frustration with the Jewish state’s conduct of the war in Gaza.
The move would reverse a policy introduced by the Donald Trump administration in 2020 that required goods produced in the West Bank to be labelled as “Made in Israel”.
The Biden administration was close to announcing the step last month, after Israel’s far-right finance minister Bezalel Smotrich, himself a settler, announced the largest West Bank land seizure in decades. Smotrich’s announcement came during a visit to Israel by US secretary of state Antony Blinken, infuriating the administration.
Two days later the US abstained from a ceasefire resolution at the UN, allowing it to pass, and officials did not want to unveil the labelling requirement at the same time.
In addition to the United States, several other nations are adopting similar labeling practices for products originating from these settlements. In 2019, the European Union’s highest court mandated that goods from Jewish settlements in the West Bank be labeled as produced in occupied territory, explicitly rejecting any suggestion that they originated from Israel.
This action by the Biden administration is similar to the yellow stars imposed on Jews in Nazi-occupied Europe. Labeling products from Jewish West Bank settlements will enable American consumers—namely antisemitic Democrats—to easily identify and avoid them. This move by Biden is a reversal of a Trump-era policy.
Until Trump changed it in 2020, US policy had for years required products made in the West Bank to be labelled as such, and the Barack Obama administration in 2016 warned labelling them as “made in Israel” could lead to fines.
The US has stepped up criticism of the Netanyahu government recently for the civilian cost of its war against Hamas, with the UN warning hundreds of thousands of Gazans face imminent famine.
The US also opposes Netanyahu’s plan to launch an offensive in Rafah, where more than 1mn displaced Gazans have sought sanctuary.
“How many more uncommitted votes before Jews are asked to wear a yellow star?” asked Jon Levine of the New York Post.