Jonathan S. Tobin
JNS, Feb. 12, 2024
“… the main point of sending Finer to bend the knee to the mayor of Dearborn and other local Arab-American activists was to hint that the escalation of criticism of Israel on the part of the administration may be about to be translated into a policy shift.”
The comings and goings of the principal deputy national security director are not usually newsworthy. Yet one particular trip undertaken by the current occupant of that post, Jon Finer, which was supposedly private rather than public, has become a matter of national political importance.
Accompanied by a delegation of other high-ranking administration officials, including President Barack Obama’s U.N. ambassador and current administrator of the U.S. Agency for International Development Samantha Power, Finer went to Dearborn, Mich., last week for meetings with Arab-American leaders. And what he said, which was leaked to The New York Times and confirmed by the White House, should come as a shock to Democrats who are confident that the U.S.-Israel relationship is in good hands so long as President Joe Biden is in office.
Finer’s message to Arab Americans was one of contrition. “We are very well aware that we have [made] missteps in the course of responding to this crisis since Oct. 7,” said Finer. He said that the administration was sorry for its messaging and policies in the aftermath of the Oct. 7 massacres in which Hamas terrorists murdered more than 1,200 men, women and children in southern Israel. Biden forthrightly declared American support for Israel’s right to defend itself but also to the cause of eradicating Hamas.
While not directly repudiating those positions, Finer said that “we have left a very damaging impression based on what has been a wholly inadequate public accounting for how much the president, the administration and the country values the lives of Palestinians. And that began, frankly, pretty early in the conflict.”
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