President Joe Biden neglected to mention Israel or the recent peace and normalization agreements in the Middle East in his first address to a joint session of Congress on Wednesday evening.
It is almost customary for American presidents to discuss Middle East policy in their annual speeches to Congress. Even Biden’s former boss, President Barack Obama, regularly did so, stressing the importance of peace between Israelis and Palestinians.
But Biden said nothing about either, despite the recent flurry of agreements between Israel and Arab states under the Abraham Accords, the breakthrough achieved by former President Donald Trump last September. The peace efforts have continued: earlier this month, for example, Sudan announced that it had canceled a decades-old boycott of trade with Israel.
Biden mentioned his plans to withdraw U.S. troops from Afghanistan, and his plans to revive a nuclear deal with Iran: “On Iran and North Korea’s nuclear programs that present a serious threat to America’s security and world security – we will be working closely with our allies to address the threats posed by both of these countries through diplomacy and stern deterrence,” he said.
He did not mention peace, except in a general sense, in the opening of his address: “Throughout our history, Presidents have come to this chamber to speak to the Congress, to the nation, and to the world. To declare war. To celebrate peace. To announce new plans and possibilities.”
The momentum toward peace in the Middle East is apparently not high on his agenda.
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). He is the author of the recent e-book, Neither Free nor Fair: The 2020 U.S. Presidential Election. 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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