Avril Haines, whom Joe Biden announced Tuesday as his pick for Director of National Intelligence, co-signed a letter in May promoted by the radical left-wing J Street group to push the Democratic Party to criticize Israel in its platform.
The letter attacked President Donald Trump’s effort to achieve the “Deal of the Century,” saying that he was undermining a two-state solution for Israel and the Palestinians. (In fact, Trump’s regional peace plan provides for a two-state solution.)
In addition, the letter complained that the Democrats’ past platforms had been “nearly silent on the rights of Palestinians, on Israeli actions that undermine those rights [sic] and the prospects for a two-state solution, and on the need for security for both peoples.” (The party’s 2016 platform declared: “We will continue to work toward a two-state solution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict … Palestinians should be free to govern themselves in their own viable state, in peace and dignity.”)
The letter continued by demanding that the platform demonstrate “clear opposition to ongoing occupation, settlement expansion and any form of unilateral annexation of territory in the West Bank.”
It is not clear what the letter meant by “ongoing occupation,” though the outgoing Obama administration allowed a UN Security Council resolution to pass in 2016 that falsely declared Israel’s presence in Jerusalem’s Old City to be illegal.
The “annexation” referred to the Trump administration’s decision earlier this year to allow Israel to extend its sovereignty to Jewish communities in Judea and Samaria (the “West Bank”) — a decision Trump leveraged to forge peace deals between Israel and several Arab states.
Israel refrained from extending sovereignty to those areas in deference to the wishes of the United Arab Emirates and other Arab states, though it maintains that it still has the right to do so in future, particularly if Palestinians refuse to negotiate.
Haines signed the letter along with controversial figures from previous Democratic administrations, including former ISIS “czar” Rob Malley, who had once met with representatives of Hamas; and former national security aide Ben Rhodes.
As Breitbart News’ Deborah Danan reported Tuesday, Biden’s choice for deputy director of the White House Office of Legislative Affairs, Reema Dodin, once defended Palestinian suicide bombings against Israel in the Second Intifada.
Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News and the host of Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot on Sunday evenings from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET (4 p.m. to 7 p.m. PT). His newest e-book is The Trumpian Virtues: The Lessons and Legacy of Donald Trump’s Presidency. His recent book, RED NOVEMBER, tells the story of the 2020 Democratic presidential primary from a conservative perspective. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.
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