‘Hi pal. I love you’ and ‘Russia has seen the lord’ — loopy Biden froths over Netanyahu

Saturday morning cartoons hour. This is from Joe Biden’s visit to Israel three days ago and his presser with PM Benjamin Netanyahu. “When we get together, our key staffs have heart attacks,” Biden says, and you can see why. The Veep is loopy. It’s a good thing he’s not running for president, it would be one gaffe after another.

The “Russia has seen the lord” in Syria moment, at 17:47, is nutty, as is Biden’s enthusiasm about a religious state: “Get over it, it’s the Jewish state of Israel.” Oh and he takes all his children to Israel when they turn 15 so they see the Holocaust memorial, “the things that are the stuff of which cultures are made.”

Here are some excerpts from the video below. All Biden’s statements:

Hi pal. [Posing with the wives] We both married up…

It’s true that the Prime Minister Bibi and I go back a long way…. A long time ago when you were at the Israeli consul, we met at a parking lot outside of a restaurant where I was meeting with Jewish leaders… We became close friends. [As a joke, I signed a picture] “Bibi I don’t agree with a damn thing you say, but I love you.”
Our families have become friends. You have come to know my sons. My daughter you’ve met.

Joe Biden has his own idea of birthright.

I have made it an important part of my family’s life that as my children and grandchildren approach the age of 15, the first place I have taken them is in Europe to Dachau, the second place is to Israel.

Then he notes, with Netanyahu’s approval, that his late son Beau Biden’s two children, whom he brought to Israel, were born to a Jewish mother.

Apropos of the terror attacks inside Israel:

If you don’t go get the terrorists, they’ll come to you… The United States condemns these acts and condemns the failure to condemn these acts… this cannot be viewed by civilized leaders as an appropriate way in which to behave…. it’s just not tolerable in the 21st century.

Biden links Israel’s efforts to defend itself to the U.S. efforts to defend ourselves from terrorism. Then moves on to a possible peace initiative.

It doesn’t mean we don’t disagree. But you never need to doubt that the United States of America has Israel’s back, and we know Israel has our back as well, I might add, it’s not a one-way street. Israel lives in as Bibi knows better than anyone, lives in a very very tough neighborhood. A tough and changing neighborhood…

I think there are possibilities here. I did not come with a plan I just came to speak to a friend and to be able to have an open discussion in a closed room where we brainstormed a whole range of things.

On the wisdom of Israel taking risks for peace:

“[Netanyahu] always quotes my father’s saying about dying on small crosses.” [Reference here].

These folks [Arab leaders] have had an epiphany. They’ve realized they’d rather be in your orbit than in the orbit of Daesh and ISIS and terrorism and al-Nusra, etc. So if we’re lucky and smart and tenacious, over the next six months, year, eighteen months, we can make some real progress. Progress always involves taking a chance.

Biden says he’s here in the region to discuss shared threats the countries face, in Syria and ISIS. Then here’s the weird Russian part.

Biden: Bibi and I talked very– just a few moments ago. I doubt we would have thought either of us was saying as old friends, “it’s good we’re cooperating with Russia on Syria.” Right? That would not have come out of either of our mouths, at least mine, four or five years ago. But the truth is, Russia has seen the lord on some of these issues as well.

Netanyahu: You’re sure you want to use that phrase?

Biden. Well I wasn’t going to use the other phrase–umm. But at any rate….

Then this on the Jewish state:

So you know the only way to assure in my view the future of a Jewish democratic state of Israel and by the way that was what in 1948 it called for, a Jewish state. We should get over all this, it was a Jewish state that was set up, is that the status quo has to break somewhere along the line here, in terms of a two-state solution.

Then more on birthright:

On a personal note I want to say how much I am looking forward to seeing my young grandchildren seeing everything from Yad Vashem to the wall, the things that are the stuff of which cultures are made. I want to understand themselves that the relationship between the United States and Israel is more than the relationship of two governments.

Bernard Avishai has a report in the New Yorker on the meeting, including the canceled visit of Netanyahu to the White House next week and the possibility of President Obama producing yet another peace plan in months to come, which mentions the ’67 borders. Avishai says:

The two powers may, of course, make common cause in the fight against regional terror regimes, from Hamas to ISIS.

Hamas a regional terror regime. Such understanding, in the New Yorker no less.