Joe Biden’s exit ends an era of Democratic presidents with deep personal ties with Israel
Israel’s war on Hamas left the White House facing pressure from both the pro-Israel right and the pro-Palestinian left
President Joe Biden and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu embrace on the tarmac at ben Gurion Airport, Oct. 18, 2023. (Avi Ohayon, Israel Government Press Office)
(JTA) — If there is one story that defines Joe Biden’s relationship with Israel, it is the famous Golda Meir anecdote.
At an Israeli embassy Independence Day bash in 2015, the then-vice president told the story he had been telling for 42 years.
He was a neophyte Delaware senator in the fall of 1973, barely 30 years old. She was the wizened, chain-smoking prime minister. He conveyed to her his sense that Israel’s enemies were about to launch a war. She seemed pessimistic, too. (The attack that launched the Yom Kippur War would surprise Israel within days.) She asked him if he wanted to pose for a photograph. They stepped outside of her office.
“She said, ‘Senator, you look so worried,’” he said. “I said, ‘Well, my God, madame prime minister,’ and I turned to look at her. I said, ‘The picture you paint.’ She said, ‘Oh, don’t worry. We have’ — I thought she only said this to me. She said, ‘We have a secret weapon in our conflict with the Arabs. You see, we have no place else to go.’”
The 2015 speech was aimed at assuaging tensions between his boss, President Barack Obama, and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu over the Iran nuclear deal Obama was brokering that year.
But buried toward the end of the speech was a prophecy, made by a vice president and fulfilled by the same man once he became president: America would bring its military might to bear on Israel’s behalf, if it came to that.
“We’ll never stop working to ensure that Jews from around the world always have somewhere to go,” he said. “We’ll never stop working to make sure Israel has a qualitative edge. And whomever the next President is — Republican or Democrat — it will be the same because the American people, the American people are committed. The American people understand.”
In 2023, President Biden made good on that promise: literally embracing Netanyahu in the wake of the Oct. 7 attack by Hamas, and pledging, “As long as the United States stands — and we will stand forever — we will not let you ever be alone.”
Over the next nine months and the war that followed those attacks, that pledge has been tested, with the administration withholding large bombs from Israel’s arsenal and warning repeatedly that the counterattack that by now has killed nearly 40,000 Palestinians was in danger of going too far.
The war cost Biden political capital across the board: a rebellion among pro-Palestinian voters who voted “uncommitted” in various state primaries, and anger from the right and the kinds of pro-Israel interests who consider anything but a full green light to Israel a betrayal of America’s closest ally in the Middle East.
For nearly his entire political career Biden represented the once-mainstream Democratic view of Israel: When Obama was pressuring Israel over Iran and other matters, veteran Mideast peace broker Dennis Ross said at the time, Netanyahu “understood that Biden would disagree with him on a lot of things but never questioned Biden’s basic friendship.”
Biden has long identified as a Zionist, including a nod to that identity as recently as last week, when he said, “You don’t have to be a Jew to be a Zionist, and a Zionist is about whether or not Israel is a safe haven for Jews because of their history of how they’ve been persecuted.” He also said he believed many people did not know the term, which pro-Palestinian voices have increasingly used as a pejorative.
Biden’s relationship with Israel dates back to that visit in 1973. It’s a personal history that makes him something of the last of a breed.
“There’s hardly anyone out there who was in the U.S. government in 1973 and is still involved in politics in 2020,” said David Makovsky, a member of the Obama administration team that tried in 2013 and 2014 to broker an Israeli-Palestinian peace and is now at the Washington Institute, in a 2020 interview. “He remembers an Israel that is not just a startup nation, but facing wars.”
By withdrawing from the presidential race, after an agonizing few weeks of defiance and indecision, Biden at last became the bridge to the next generation that he once pledged to be. But it appears unlikely that another Democratic president will ever have his generational and personal attachment to to Israel — while the Democratic platform staunchly supports Israel, and most Democratic lawmakers do, too, anti-Israel sentiment is on the rise among younger Americans and within the progressive wing of the Democratic Party. And even some mainstream Democrats have, in the context of the war, entertained policies that previously had been off-limits, such as conditioning aid to Israel.
Vice President Kamala Harris, a front-runner to replace Biden at the top of the ticket, has stoked worries among pro-Israel voters for appearing to be more vocal than Biden in calling out what the administration sees as the oversteps of Netanyahu.
In March, she was the first administration official to call for an “immediate” ceasefire, and used tough language to describe demands on Israel to allow in humanitarian aid.
“No excuses,” Harris said. “They must open new border crossings. They must not impose any unnecessary restrictions on the delivery of aid. They must ensure humanitarian personnel, sites, and convoys are not targeted.”
Harris, who drew Biden’s endorsement on Sunday when he exited the race, is married to a Jewish man, Doug Emhoff, who has been a vocal advocate against antisemitism during his stint as second gentleman. Emhoff’s first trip to Israel was in 2017, when he traveled with his wife, then a California senator.
A range of Israeli politicians referred to Biden’s long record of support when responding to his exit — though Netanyahu, who had been scheduled to meet with Biden during a Washington visit this week, did not immediately issue a statement.
“President Biden is a true friend of Israel who stood by us in our most difficult moments,” tweeted the former Prime Minister Naftali Bennett. “During my tenure as Prime Minister, I witnessed his unwavering support of the State of Israel. Thank you for everything.”
A left-wing former lawmaker, Stav Shaffir, tweeted, “President Biden, you will be remembered as one of the greatest leaders of our time. Thank you for your unwavering support of our country, your tireless efforts to safeguard democracy, your courage and responsibility. The world desperately needs more leaders like you.”
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