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Barack Obama and Joe Biden on Election Day - November 6, 2012. (Photo: Christopher Dilts for Obama for America/Flickr)

A month after Osama bin Laden was killed Barack Obama declared that the United States was reaching its goals in Afghanistan and that he’d begin withdrawing troops. By 2016 he went back on that promise. Joe Biden’s speech defending the U.S. withdrawal was a terrible exercise in imperial hubris, but it reflected an attitude that has been consistent across the U.S. political class since 9/11.

Israeli billionaire Dan Gertler visits Kamoto Copper Company (KCC) mines at Kolwezi in Katanga, DR Congo, in August 1, 2012. (Photo: Bloomberg)

Today’s New York Times has a valuable investigative report that explains how days before the end of Donald Trump’s term, U.S. Treasury Department economic sanctions that had hampered Israeli businessman Dan Gertler were mysteriously lifted. The report shows how celebrity lawyer Alan Dershowitz, along with “high-powered connections in Israel,” helped get the stiff sanctions rolled back for a year, which gave Gertler “access to money frozen in U.S. banks and allowed him once again to do business with financial institutions worldwide.”

Palestinians burn posters depicting U.S. President Donald Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu during a protest against the U.S. intention to move its embassy to Jerusalem and to recognize the city of Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, in Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip December 6, 2017. (Photo: Ashraf Amra/APA Images)

The Biden Administration put forth its first detailed comments on its Israeli-Palestinian policy in a speech to the United Nations Security Council on January 26, 2021, which was also the first anniversary of the reveal of Donald Trump’s infamous “Deal of the Century.” A year later, America needs to show goodwill towards the Palestinians to gain their trust. For starters, the Biden Administration should begin by disavowing Trump’s “Deal of the Century” and declare it, and all that which resulted from it, as null and void.

You can watch the cable news networks for hours without stumbling across a single report about Iran. Which means that if the U.S. and Israel do attack before 12 noon on January 20, or if a tragic accident amid the tightened tensions in the regions triggers an outbreak of violence, the American public will have no idea of what just happened.