The short version is that Israel cracked down on 6 anti-Israel groups with ties to the PFLP terrorist group. The Biden administration and its media condemned the move and complained that Israel had not informed it beforehand. Israel however says that it did.
The Foreign Ministry insists it informed the US prior to designating six Palestinian NGOs as terrorist organizations last week, despite US State Department spokesman Ned Price saying otherwise.
Foreign Ministry Deputy Director-General for Strategic Affairs Joshua Zarka on Monday said he had spoken with an official in the State Department’s Bureau of Counterterrorism ahead of the move.
The Biden admin is doubling down.
During a daily press briefing on Sunday, Price said: “We are currently engaging our Israeli partners for more information regarding the basis for these designations.”
“It is, to the best of our knowledge, accurate that we did not receive a specific heads-up about any forthcoming designations,” he said days after multiple Israeli government sources had said the opposite.
The wording, as usual, is a tell. When officials feel the need to insert ‘lawyerisms’, you know that they’re not being honest.
Price throws in to “the best of our knowledge” (a plausible deniability classic) and “a specific heads-up” (an admission that sounds like a denial).
What’s he actually saying? The only reason to throw in “to the best of our knowledge” is if you’re lying or unsure about what you’re saying and you want an option for weaseling out of it later without being called a liar. But then “a specific heads-up” is a virtual admission that the Biden administration had been informed of something. Otherwise why specify a “specific heads-up”?
What Price is really saying is that the Biden regime was informed, but not in the way that it wishes it had been informed. Except that instead of saying that, Price falsely accused Israel of not informing it. That’s sloppy, stupid, and typifies the way that the third term of the Obama administration is repeating the same tactics of picking a fight over a non-issue and then trying to make it look like Israel’s fault.
The obvious explanation after eight years of this is that the whole point of this game is picking fights in order to fracture the relationship with the Jewish State.
JihadW