Is Nothing Sacred at Washington?

American intervention in Israel’s internal matters was once thought to be a rare thing. Now the Biden administration is openly opining on the Jewish state’s efforts at judicial reform and transparently hoping that Prime Minister Netanyahu will lose his grip on the premiership. To that meddling add interference by the administration in respect of who directs Yad Vashem, Israel’s Holocaust Museum. Is nothing sacred at Washington? Yad Vashem, perched on a slope of Mount Herzl, is an important institution. It dates to 1953. It is, after the Western Wall, also at Jerusalem, the most visited site in the Jewish state. Its director, Dani Dayan, is a political appointee. Mr. Dayan, though, was appointed not by Mr. Netanyahu but by the previous government, which Mr. Netanyahu defeated in the last election. Israel’s education minister, Yoav Kisch, has tried to remove Mr. Dayan. It is not for us to determine the justness of that. Mr. Kisch alleges mismanagement. Mr. Dayan claims raw politics tied to the judicial overhaul, and has threatened to take the matter to Mr Netanyahu’s political arch-foe, Attorney General Gali Baharav-Miara. The American Society for Yad Vashem — another distinguished institution — claims that Mr. Dayan is trying to “raid” the Society’s finances and is seeking its endowment of $80 million.The society, in a letter to Yad Vashem, writes that since Mr. Dayan “assumed the Chairmanship of the Yad Vashem Directorate, we have been troubled by his repeated and significant exercises of bad judgment, disregard of past written agreements, disdain for legal requirements.” It cites “lack of transparency and manipulations of Yad Vashem’s decision making process.” The society warns of “ever increasing belligerence and threats.”At the least, the correspondence suggests that Mr. Kisch’s concerns over Mr. Dayan might not be entirely unfounded. Yet now comes America’s antisemitism envoy, Deborah Lipstadt, tweeting that “Yad Vashem’s painstaking and invaluable research on the Shoah is in no small part due to its professionalism and independence.” An envoy for Holocaust Issues, Ellen Germain, writes that maintaining the “independence” of such institutions is “key.”These Biden administration officials were joined by the European Union’s coordinator on antisemitism, Katharina von Schnurbein. She tweeted that the museum’s “expertise and independence of its leadership are essential in times of Holocaust distortion.” Those all read to us like a warning. One not without chutzpah, coming from the Europeans. Why isn’t our State Department springing to defend the decisions of Israel’s democracy?We’ve long since concluded that it was just a mistake for America to put an antisemitism envoy into the State Department in the first place. It was from the start only a matter of time before such an officer started telling Israel how to run its affairs. Plus, too, we had to watch the administration start hedging on a definition of the world’s oldest hatred. Congress could have legislated a blunt definition before underwriting an envoy. It turns out, according to the Times of Israel, that “amid a growing outcry over alleged attempts by Prime Minister Netanyahu’s government to oust” Mr. Dayan, “unnamed senior officials” believe he will stay. In other words, hectoring by President Biden’s camarilla stayed Mr. Netanyahu’s hand. We have little doubt that similar efforts are afoot in respect of, say, the Iran nuclear deal and judicial reform. It’s just the way Mr. Biden works.

Is Nothing Sacred at Washington?

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