Earlier this week, Congressman Doug Lamborn (Republican, Colorado), circulated a letter addressed to President Joe Biden, expressing the concerns regarding the Biden administration’s indication of opening up the Palestinian mission in Washington, resuming aid to UNRWA, which only perpetuates the sense of victimhood among the Palestinians and keeps the 1948 conflict alive, and resuming aid to the Palestinian Authority. Given the fact that the Palestinian Authority has a pay-for-slay policy, compensating Palestinian terrorists based on the number of Jews they have killed, this move by the administration is concerning.
The letter also addresses the concerns of our allies in the Middle East with two recent appointments by the administration; Mr. Robert Malley, US Envoy to Iran, and Mr. Maher Bitar, Director for Intelligence on the National Security Council. The opposition to the appointment of these individuals are not based on their religion, ethnicity or place of national origin, but because of their words and their actions.
EMET shares the concerns raised by Congressman Lamborn and strongly urges members of Congress to sign on to the letter. We also encourage citizens to call or write their Representatives and ask them to sign on to this letter. The office of Congressman Lamborn is collecting signatures of his colleagues in the House of Representatives until COB Wednesday, February 17th.
Says EMET Founder and President, Sarah Stern, “We would all like to give the new administration a honeymoon period. However, we are concerned about many of the opening salvos of the Biden administration. The Taylor Force Act is an act of American law. Named after a courageous young American who completed two tours of duty in Iraq and Afghanistan, and came back totally unscathed, only to be murdered by Palestinian terrorists while on a class trip to Israel. It is now American law to deduct the amount of money going to the Palestinian Authority that they use for their martyrs’ and prisoners’ pension funds. Ignoring this is a violation of American law.”
“Furthermore,” she adds, “there is an old saying in Washington that ‘personnel is policy’. One has to wonder about the impartiality of Mr. Malley who has been appointed as our “Envoy to Iran.” Mr. Malley has met with Hamas several times, which has been on the State Department’s List of Terrorist Organizations since 1997, who met with Mohammad Javad Zarif on the sides of the opening of the U.N. General Assembly. Which is a violation of the Logan Act, and whose appointment has been met with enthusiasm by the ‘Tehran Times’ as well as by NIAC, which Iranian President Hassan Rouhani has called “our Iranian lobby in Washington.”
“And finally, we are very concerned about the appointment of Maher Bitar, who will be sitting in the White House as our Director of Intelligence for the National Security Council. In that sensitive and strategic position, he will be able to sift through the intelligence that President Biden sees. As a student, Mr. Bitar brought the BDS movement to Georgetown University, and he still sits of the Executive Board of Students for Justice in Palestine. After receiving his law degree from Georgetown, he went on to Oxford where he received his master’s degree in refugee issues. His thesis was on the “Nakba”, the Arabic word for catastrophe, describing the very founding of the state of Israel in 1948. Note this is not about the disputed territory of 1967. It is about the very existence of the state of Israel.”
