FLASHBACK: The Obama-Biden Administration Banned All Flights to Israel While Funding Hamas

On Sunday, Sister Toldjah over at RedState noted the hypocrisy of Joe Biden’s denunciation of Israel’s decision to deny entry to pro-BDS congresswomen Rashida Tlaib and Ilhan Omar because in 2012, while he was vice president, the Obama administration barred a member of the Israeli Knesset from entering the United States. Biden’s hypocrisy goes even further than that example. In fact, Israel’s move pales in comparison to the punitive actions made against their country while Joe Biden was vice president. In July 2014, the Obama-Biden administration temporarily banned all U.S.-based flights into Israel over alleged security concerns from the conflict between Israel and Hamas terrorists in Gaza. The move was seen as excessive, unjustified and hypocritical. When many European airlines followed Obama’s lead, Hamas declared the ban a “great victory.”

Senator Ted Cruz believed the move to be a de facto economic boycott of Israel, “Security concerns in Israel are hardly breaking news, and given the exceptional challenge Israel faces, Ben Gurion has rightly earned the reputation as one of the safest airports in the world due to the aggressive security measures implemented by the Israeli government,” Cruz said in a statement. Obama’s ban coincided with his Secretary of State John Kerry arriving in Israel to pledge $47 million in aid that would be funneled to the terrorist organization Hamas.

“Aiding Hamas while simultaneously isolating Israel does two things. One, it helps our enemy. Two, it hurts our ally,” Senator Cruz said at the time. “The facts suggest that President Obama has just used a federal regulatory agency to launch an economic boycott on Israel, in order to try to force our ally to comply with his foreign-policy demands.” There was a lot of backlash in response to the ban, which was lifted in a matter of days, but the intent of it is hard to deny.

While there may be room to debate the effectiveness and fairness of Israel’s recent actions, Joe Biden is not the right person to be in that debate. Israel’s barring of pro-BDS congresswomen in compliance with their 2017 law to deny entry to foreign supporters BDS movement is trivial compared to the punitive efforts of the Obama-Biden administration against Israel, who are constantly seeing their right to exist attacked on many fronts.

As the Democratic Party continues to tolerate anti-Semitism in their ranks, it’s clear that no matter who the Democrats nominate in 2020, America’s relationship with Israel will sour the same way, if not worse than it did under.