Ilan Goldenberg had previously advocated for a deal in which ‘Hamas would retain some of its military capabilities.’

By Daniel Greenfield, Frontpage Magazine

“Pressure is building in Congress for Biden to do more to halt Israel’s assault on Gaza,” he was asked in a 2021 interview as fighting raged to stop Hamas assaults on Israel.

“Hopefully he can use it as leverage to get the Israelis to stop,” Ilan Goldenberg, Kamala’s future Middle East advisor and new ‘liaison’ to the Jewish community, answered.

Could a Kamala administration be any worse for the Jews than the Obama administration?

An early answer arrived with the announcement that the Harris-Walz campaign had picked Ilan Goldenberg as its ‘liaison’ to the Jewish community.

Freedom Center Investigates had previously profiled Goldenberg when he was serving as Kamala’s Middle East advisor.

A member of the Kerry team under Obama, whose biased attacks on Israel and support for Iran and Islamic terrorists in Israel helped lead to the current regional crisis, Goldenberg had spent the years leading up to Oct 7 doing everything possible to make the Hamas attack happen.

And the time afterward serving as a Kamala adviser and imposing sanctions on Israelis.

Ilan Goldenberg had previously advocated for a deal in which “Hamas would retain some of its military capabilities” and argued that “half the root causes are Israeli actions, in terms of — especially just focusing on Gaza, on the blockade. And the other half is Hamas’ choice to use violence and arm itself in response.”

He had urged that more money should go into the Hamas territory and argued that Israel should in allow workers from Gaza. “You used to have 25,000, 100,000 Gazans working inside Israel. That needs to happen again.” That led to Oct 7.

Kamala’s new Jewish ‘liasion’ opposed every single pro-Israel move by both Republicans and Democrats, whether it was moving the embassy to Jerusalem, recognizing the Golan Heights or even cutting off aid to the ‘pay-to’slay’ program of the Palestinian Authority.

Instead, he urged anti-Israel moves including a unilateral recognition of a ‘Palestinian’ state on Israel’s territory.

Ilan Goldenberg had been a vocal proponent of the Iran Deal, and attended an event by NIAC: the Iran Lobby. He had argued that “In the aftermath of a successful nuclear deal, U.S. relations with Iran should shift from that of an adversary to that of a competitor.”

And Ilan Goldenberg had been part of the team that was responsible for and had defended the Obama administration’s opposition to Israel at the UN.

A recent Tablet article by Michael Doran of the Center for Peace and Security in the Middle East had described Goldenberg as playing a “very enthusiastic role” in the Biden administration’s program to sanction Jews in Israel.

So far those sanctions have targeted an Israeli goat farm, an Israeli baker who shot a terrorist, and an Israeli mother of 8, who worked with survivors of sexual assault and led protests against the Biden policies that rewarded Hamas.

Rather than being associated with the Jewish community, Goldenberg was tied to anti-Israel groups including J Street, Peace Now and the Israel Policy Forum: which hailed the pick.

Goldenberg had a scant history with Jewish groups, but he had attended an event for NIAC, the Iran Lobby, and had been a vigorous champion of the deal that empowered Iran’s terrorism.

But all of that may not even be the most disturbing part of the move by VP Kamala Harris.

Previous Jewish liaisons were usually involved with Jewish communal life and could speak to a variety of issues. Ilan Goldenberg is simply an anti-Israel activist whose only issues are empowering Iran and Hamas.

Kamala just reduced the Jewish community to support for her anti-Israel program without even any acknowledgement that there are American Jews.

A Kamala aide stated that Goldenberg would be “the campaign’s main liaison with Jewish community leaders and stakeholders and advise the campaign on issues related to the U.S.-Israel relationship, the war in Gaza and the broader Middle East.”

There’s no mention of anything American Jews might be interested in inside America.

American Jews are not the Israeli government or an arm of it. And yet to Kamala, that is all they are. Kamala’s aide couldn’t think of American Jews except in terms of foreign policy.

Kamala’s mouthpieces in the Jewish community claimed that because her husband is of Jewish ancestry, that she understands Jews. If anything, American Jews are apparently alien to her.

Instead of selecting someone from the Jewish community or any of her political aides, Kamala chose someone whose sole function will be to justify her anti-Israel policies to the Jewish community, and who will filter any efforts by the Jewish community to push back against them.

What can American Jews expect from Ilan Goldenberg and by extent from Kamala Harris?

During the 2021 battles with Hamas, Goldenberg explained why Biden was only pretending to support Israel. “What Biden has decided to do for the moment is privately tell the Israelis to stop or to stop soon while publicly continuing to support them. This helps him build political support… but when there does come a moment, hopefully soon… where Biden says, ‘OK, enough is enough, you must stop or our public position is going to start to shift. Our position at the UN Security Council where we’ve been defending you is going to start to shift. You need to make this end.’”

“But if he had just started by publicly criticizing, I think that the belief, at least in the Biden administration, is that it might have actually been a moment for Prime Minister Netanyahu to stand up to the United States and say we don’t take our orders from the United States. We have to do what’s best for our security and kind of use the disagreement with the U.S. as a political rallying cry for himself at home. And so I think this is one of the reasons why the Biden administration chose to, at least at the beginning, publicly support Israel.”

Lies, deceit and manipulation with the aim of empowering Hamas and destroying Israel.

Every single ‘rabbi’ featured on the ‘Jewish Americans for Kamala Harris’ virtually rally organized by Haile Sofer, Kamala’s former adviser, and her Jewish Democratic Council of America, was an anti-Israel activist.

Sofer and the JDCA, who had formerly hailed Sen. Schumer’s demand that Israel stop fighting Hamas, celebrated Goldenberg’s appointment.

The Kamala campaign and her political allies are leading a fundamental break with Israel, even before the election, while disguising it with happy talk for the benefit of some of their donors.

The appointment of one of the most persistently hostile foreign policy figures as a ‘liaison’ to the Jewish community sends a powerful message that this administration will be as anti-Israel as him and that Kamala will reconfigure her relationship with American Jews around her anti-Israel policies.

Not even Obama went that far. What does it say that Kamala is already doing it now?

The post Kamala picks terror supporter as ‘liaison’ to American Jews appeared first on World Israel News.

Philip Gordon and Ilan Goldenberg are two anti-Israel figures from the Obama administration whose fingerprints are all over the policies that empowered Iran.

By Daniel Greenfield, Frontpage Magazine

“The idea that terrorists attack because they hate freedom, however, is misguided,” Philip Gordon wrote in ‘Winning the Right War’. “Even most of the Muslims who support terrorism and trust Osama bin Laden favor elected government” and “personal liberty.”

Gordon, Obama’s future Middle East coordinator, explained in his book that Muslim terrorists weren’t “born evil” or “hate our freedoms”, but rather they feel “shame” over the state of “a once great Islamic civilization” surpassed by other cultures including “the local upstart, Israel.”

America was “creating conditions” that “generate” Islamic terrorism by detaining Al Qaeda terrorists, failing to punish American soldiers, and “justifying any Israeli military action”.

Gordon urged the White House to assure Iran that we have “no intention of using military force against Iran or fomenting internal dissent” because “Iran’s concerns about such issues are legitimate”

Published in 2007 by an imprint of the New York Times, Gordon’s book was a blueprint of the policies that the Obama administration would adopt, including blaming America and Israel, appeasing Iran and Islamists, and making Muslims feel better about themselves.

These are the building blocks of the policies that led us to Oct 7 and an Iranian war across the region.

Today, Gordon is Kamala’s National Security Advisor, and possible future Secretary of State.

Gordon’s hostility toward Israel and sympathy for Islamic terrorists is a longstanding matter.

Even before joining the Biden administration, he had co-written an article with Iran lobby figure Robert Malley, under FBI investigation for mishandling classified documents, urging Biden to reverse Trump’s possible recognition of Israel territory, and to cut political and economic support for Israel to punish it for its diplomatic successes under the Trump administration.

Recently, Gordon urged Israel to stop seeking victory against Hamas and accept a hostage deal that would allow the Islamic terrorist group to hang on in Gaza and free thousands of terrorists.

In his book, Gordon had claimed that “though Hamas refuses to recognize Israel today, it is not hard to imagine an eventual change in that position”.

And in 2014, he had argued that a reconciliation deal between the PLO and Hamas “isn’t necessarily a bad thing”.

In 2016, Gordon, speaking on behalf of the Clinton campaign, appeared at a conference by National Iranian American Council (NIAC) widely regarded as the Iran Lobby, and promised that Hillary Clinton would veto new sanctions on Iran.

He was described as assuring the Iran Lobby of the “potential for collaboration with Iran”. The New York Times even appeared to list him as a “tour guide” on its Iran trips.

And Gordon is not the only terror booster on Kamala’s team.

Ilan Goldenberg, a key member of the Kerry team who played vital roles in the Obama administration’s campaigns against Israel and for Iran, serves as her Middle East adviser, and would have a more prominent role in any administration.

Goldenberg complained that the Trump administration had taken Israel’s side during the Hamas border riots that served as a prep for Oct 7, objected that moving the embassy to Jerusalem had not been packaged with similar concessions to the terrorists.

He also co-authored a paper with Hady Amr, who acts as Biden’s point man to the terrorists and had threatened Israel with violence after the assassination of a Hamas leader, urging a deal with Hamas.

The paper proposed that “the United States, UNSCO, and Egypt should work quietly in concert, engaging with Israel, the PA, Hamas and a “long-term ceasefire” between Israel and Hamas, with Israel accepting that “Hamas would retain some of its military capabilities”.

At one session Goldenberg urged, “you used to have 25,000, 100,000 Gazans working inside Israel. That needs to happen again. The Israelis know who these guys are. They can start with a few thousand work permits. And there’s a lot of support for that in all of the Israeli communities around Gaza.”

That became policy. Gazans flooded Israel, scouted those “Israeli communities around Gaza” and when Oct 7 began, they came back with maps of the communities so that they knew where the security teams were, which houses had dogs and where the children could be found.

Gordon and Goldenberg, who are set to play major roles in any Kamala Harris administration, have expressed no regrets or retractions of their past policies and positions.

Even as the Middle East burns due to Iranian terrorism, all they have done is double down on them.

In a co-written op-ed headlined, “Relax, Israel – if your ally is working with your enemy, it doesn’t make them friends:, Goldenberg envisioned that “in the aftermath of a successful nuclear deal, U.S. relations with Iran should shift from that of an adversary to that of a competitor.”

His position on Israel was rather different with op-eds like “Why Israel’s Settlement Construction Must Be Stopped” and “How Israel Brought U.N. Resolution on Itself With Irrational Settlement Push”.

Under Secretary of State Phil Gordon, the Abraham Accords and normalization with countries like Saudi Arabia, which one of his op-eds described asn “Arabian fantasy” would be swept aside in a return of Obama’s non-stop pressure campaign on Israel to create a terrorist state.

“How will it have peace if it is unwilling to delineate a border, end the occupation, and allow for Palestinian sovereignty, security, and dignity?” Philip Gordon had warned at a conference in Israel right after terror rockets began to fall.

“It cannot maintain military control of another people indefinitely. Doing so is not only wrong but a recipe for resentment and recurring instability.”

After the kidnapping and murder of three Israeli teens by Hamas, Gordon equated Israel and the terrorists, claimed that both sides suffered from “racism”, told “both sides to demonstrate reason and calm” and warned that “calls for retribution and revenge have no place on either side”.

Finally he falsely contended that “neither side” was “ready to make the difficult decisions required for an agreement”.

Ilan Goldenberg had similarly argued that, “half the root causes are Israeli actions, in terms of — especially just focusing on Gaza, on the blockade. And the other half is Hamas’ choice to use violence and arm itself in response.”

That false paradigm has been markedly present in Kamala’s attacks on Israel after Oct 7.

Kamala’s relentless criticism of Israel’s self-defense is a preview of things to come. Behind her escalating rhetoric are a group of anti-Israel figures from the Obama administration.

Goldenberg was one of the radicals brought in the Warren campaign and then injected into the Biden administration.

Philip Gordon is a longtime State Department anti-Israel figure from a faction whose fingerprints are all over the policies that empowered Iran and set the region on fire.

What would Kamala’s foreign policy look like? The presence of Gordon and Goldenberg as her close advisors on the region shows that it would be the Obama administration on steroids.

The post Kamala’s anti-Israel advisers helped bring on October 7th – opinion appeared first on World Israel News.