As Netanyahu pushes US to join fight against Iran, Biden tells Jewish leaders US ‘fully’ backs Israel’s right to defend itself
The call came as Israel’s government seems more determined than ever to take the widening conflict directly to Iran, and hopes to persuade allies to join the fight
U.S. President Joe Biden delivers remarks on the assassination attempt on Republican presidential candidate former President Donald Trump at the White House on July 14, 2024 in Washington, DC. Biden was joined by Vice President Kamala Harris. (Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images)
WASHINGTON (JTA) — President Joe Biden told American Jewish leaders Wednesday that he “fully” backs Israel’s right to defend itself against Iran, as Israel’s government prepares to respond to last week’s Iranian missile barrage on its territory and has pushed its allies to join in.
Biden’s annual High Holidays call focused mostly on the challenges Israel and American Jews have faced since Hamas, an Iran-backed terror group, launched its war on Israel last year on Oct. 7. It was postponed from Oct. 1, when Iran barraged Israel with close to 200 ballistic missiles that day, and U.S. forces helped Israel repel most of them. The call ended up taking place shortly after Biden spoke with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for an hour about the conflict with Iran.
“As you saw just last week, the United States fully supports Israel’s right to defend itself against Iran and all its proxies, Hezbollah, Hamas, and the Houthis,” Biden said on the call, which had 5,000 attendees, including rabbis from Judaism’s major denominations. It was hosted by the Reform movement’s Religious Action Center.
Netanyahu and other Israeli leaders have explicitly urged the United States to become more involved in the battle against Iran.
“There is only one force in the world fighting Iran right now,” Netanyahu said Wednesday to a delegation from the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations. “There’s only one force in the world that stands in Iran’s way to conquest. And that force is Israel. If we don’t fight, we die. But it’s not only our fight, it’s the free world’s fight, and I would say the civilized world’s fight.”
The last time Iran attacked Israel, in April, Biden urged Netanyahu to “take the win” of having repelled all but one of the missiles, assisted at the time by a U.S.-led alliance, and not to retaliate expansively.
This time, Biden is not publicly pressing Israel to stand down. Brett McGurk, the White House coordinator for the Middle East who was also on the call, described the conversation between the president and prime minister, and did not mention seeking a diplomatic offramp from the conflict, something U.S. officials have mentioned in the past.
“We are committed to the defense of Israel,” said McGurk. “We’re also committed to holding Iran fully accountable for that attack, and we will continue to do so.”
The White House said that Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democratic nominee for president in next month’s election, joined the call with Netanyahu. Asked in an interview with CBS this week who is the chief adversary of the U.S., Harris answered that Iran was an “obvious” choice, but did not say if the U.S. military would join an attack on the country.
“Iran has American blood on their hands,” she said. “And what we saw in terms of just this attack on Israel, 200 ballistic missiles, what we need to do to ensure that Iran never achieves the ability to be a nuclear power, that is one of my highest priorities.”
McGurk noted the military resources Biden has deployed to the region since last October, and said Iran threatens U.S. forces as well.
“Things come in and out, but we make sure that we have a very strong deterrent posture, because we know that Iran is behind this network of terror that is very focused, not only on U.S. personnel, but particularly on Israel,” he said. “So I can assure you — as you heard directly from the President and the Vice President as well, who was on the call this morning — this has our full complete attention.”
Biden has said his father’s sympathy for the Jews during the Holocaust, and for Israel, shaped his political outlook. He told the listeners, as he has in the past, that he sends his children and grandchildren to see Dachau, the Nazi concentration camp, to absorb its horrors. What he saw when he visited Israel shortly after the Hamas invasion that killed 1,200 people and abducted more than 250, he said, was a “second, smaller Holocaust.”
“I wanted to let the world know where I stood and where America stood,” Biden said.
Rabbis on the call asked questions about the U.S.-Israel relationship, about antisemitism and about reproductive rights. A focus was on the proliferation of student protests against U.S. backing for Israel, which have at times devolved into hostility toward Jewish students. Neera Tanden, Biden’s top domestic policy adviser, said the administration was committed to inhibiting such attacks.
“The Department of Homeland Security has approved and provided resources to train campus law enforcement administrators on how to ensure Jewish students are safe on campus, and we’re going to keep working to ensure that Jewish students can get their education freed of intimidation and harassment,” said Tanden, who encouraged those on the call to report any harassment.
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