[Order Daniel Greenfield’s new book, Domestic Enemies: HERE.]
“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 for 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 Israeli 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 the 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.
But 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 and 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 “iIn 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 a 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 other 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 is a group of anti-Israel figures from the Obama administration. Goldenberg was one of the radicals brought into 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.
