First Lady Jill Biden to Skip Israel on Trip to Middle East

First Lady Jill Biden will skip Israel on her current trip to the Middle East and North Africa, visiting Jordan and Egypt to “strengthen our relationships” with allies in the region but flying over the country between them.

The First Lady is expected to attend the wedding of the Jordanian Crown Prince — an unelected monarch whose country is majority Palestinian — as part of her visit. But she will skip the region’s only true democratic nation.

According to the Associated Press, the First Lady’s trip will include Jordan, Egypt, Morocco, and Portugal to “promote empowerment for women and young people,” among other priorities — though again, she is declining to visit the most egalitarian society in the Middle East and the only one that has had an elected female leader.

The Biden administration has refused to engage directly with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who won Israel’s elections last November but has yet to receive a customary White House invitation.

In March, President Joe Biden publicly contradicted outgoing U.S. Ambassador Tom Nides, who had promised that Netanyahu would receive a White House invitation if he paused his government’s controversial judicial reforms.

Biden told reporters the opposite at an impromptu press gaggle, saying that there would be no invitation to Netanyahu: “No. Not in the near term.”

The Biden administration appears to be isolating Israel as a way to exert leverage within internal domestic Israeli politics, and over Israel’s policy on Iran and the Palestinians.

President Barack Obama offended many Israelis in 2009 when, in his first trip to the region, he visited Egypt and delivered a speech aimed at the Muslim world, but failed to visit Israel. He visited Israel in his second term.

Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News and the host of Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot on Sunday evenings from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET (4 p.m. to 7 p.m. PT). He is the author of the new biography, Rhoda: ‘Comrade Kadalie, You Are Out of Order’. He is also the author of the recent e-book, Neither Free nor Fair: The 2020 U.S. Presidential Election. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.