Joe Biden is signalling his differences with Barack Obama on Israel. He won’t allow any “daylight” between Israel and the United States, won’t air dirty laundry in public, won’t ever lower military aid to Israel, says a surrogate.
And the American left is “equally wrong” to Donald Trump on Israel issues, because it doesn’t fault Palestinians for not recognizing “the right and reality of the Jewish state.”
The comments came in a conference call from Biden’s foreign policy adviser Tony Blinken, a former deputy secretary of state, with the Israel lobby group, Democratic Majority for Israel today.
The group has ties to the right wing organization AIPAC, which is famous for its effort to assure there is never “daylight” between the U.S. and Israeli governments.
Here are some of Blinken’s comments. On not airing dirty laundry:
Joe Biden believes strongly in keeping your differences to the greatest extent possible, between friends, behind doors– having it out as necessary, but maintaining as little daylight as possible in public. You don’t want to put people in a corner, when it comes to your friends and partners, in public. You’re much more effective when you have a difference of opinion when you disagree on a policy matter in dealing with it in private– doing it clearly, forcefully, effectively, but not airing to the greatest extent possible any dirty laundry in public.
Biden is against annexation because it will set back the two-state solution, and endanger Israel’s future as a Jewish state, Blinken says, but Biden won’t lower the nearly $4 billion we give to Israel if it goes forward with annexation.
He is resolutely opposed to [conditions on aid]. He would not tie military assistance to Israel to any political decisions it makes. Period. Full stop. He said it, he’s committed to it.
Blinken never directly criticized Israel in the call, never mentioned occupation, settlements, or human rights violations against Palestinians. Though he repeatedly criticized Palestinians for alleged incitement and not recognizing Israel as a Jewish state.
Biden loves Netanyahu and looks forward to working with him, to “sustain and deepen the military and intelligence cooperation” between the countries, Blinken assured. “He is known respected and liked across the body politic in Israel.”
Blinken told of a visit to Netanyahu as Israeli Finance Minister during the Second Intifada in the early 2000s, when Biden was a senator from Delaware, and Blinken was a staffer for the Senate Foreign Relations Committee:
With great glee, he [Netanyahu] pointed to a photo on his desk. The photo was a signed photograph from Joe Biden, and it said, “Bibi you’re wrong about everything but I love you.” That’s the nature of the relationship, and that makes a huge difference when it comes to working closely together closely to get things done….
Blinken said that Biden would reverse efforts from the right and left to make Israel a political football, “something that is profoundly damaging to Israel and also the United States.”
We’ve had decades of Republicans and Democratic administrations alike making sure that support for Israel was done on a bipartisan basis…. I believe profoundly we need to keep it that way. Republican and Democratic administrations alike have worked to ensure Israel has the means and the right to defend itself…
Trump has called the Democrats an “anti-Israel party,” and that rhetoric is going to “get worse as we get closer to the election,” Blinken said.
That’s profoundly wrong and profoundly dangerous to the relationship, bad for Israel, bad for the United States.
Then Blinken faulted the left, for being just as wrong as Trump:
But equally wrong are those who dismiss the daily and existential threats that Israel faces or who don’t call out Palestinians for the very bad choices that they make. The failure to recognize the right and reality of the Jewish state.
There is of course room for legitimate criticism of some Israeli policies, but that doesn’t define the relationship and too often that slides into antisemitism. So we need to call that out as well. Our party, the Democratic Party, should model what has been a bipartisan consensus.
Why is supporting Israel so important for the U.S.? Blinken said that Israel is a “strategic partner” with the U.S. in dealing with the threats to our security from the region, including from Iran. And also a “profound partner in thinking about and working on some of the most profound problems.” From the pandemic, to climate change, to the use of technology– it is hard to think of a partnership that matters more, because Israel has the “same values” as we do, Blinken said.
Attention: Joe Biden
Excerpt from George Washington’s Farewell Address:
“…nothing is more essential than that permanent, inveterate antipathies against particular nations, and passionate attachments for others, should be excluded; and that, in place of them, just and amicable feelings towards all should be cultivated.
“The nation which indulges towards another a habitual hatred or a habitual fondness is in some degree a slave. It is a slave to its animosity or to its affection, either of which is sufficient to lead it astray from its duty and its interest…
“…So likewise, a passionate attachment of one nation for another produces a variety of evils. Sympathy for the favorite nation, facilitating the illusion of an imaginary common interest in cases where no real common interest exists, and infusing into one the enmities of the other, betrays the former into a participation in the quarrels and wars of the latter without adequate inducement or justification.
“It leads also to concessions to the favorite nation of privileges denied to others which is apt doubly to injure the nation making the concessions; by unnecessarily parting with what ought to have been retained, and by exciting jealousy, ill-will, and a disposition to retaliate, in the parties from whom equal privileges are withheld.
“And it gives to ambitious, corrupted, or deluded citizens (who devote themselves to the favorite nation), facility to betray or sacrifice the interests of their own country, without odium, sometimes even with popularity; gilding, with the appearances of a virtuous sense of obligation, a commendable deference for public opinion, or a laudable zeal for public good, the base or foolish compliances of ambition, corruption, or infatuation.”
This is very disappointing. It looks like Bernie Sanders was unable to exert any influence and get Biden to re-think his sick devotion to a nation that still brutally occupies, steals lands, and kills unarmed kids who protest their suffering.
ALL against International laws, and condemned by the world. Biden is WRONG on this. So far he was doing the right things to unite the party and country, but THIS is disappointing and it shows he’d rather pander to the Israeli lobbies, than do what is best for the US, human rights, and missing the opportunity to free people who are in dire straits, once again.
What exactly is this, a competition between Trump and Biden to show who loves a crooked war criminal MORE?
It looks like the Israeli lobbies still control our politicians, and nothing has changed.
We are between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea. :((
Wasn’t Biden completely humiliated and blindsided in one of his visits by an announcement of settlement expansion? Why does he want more of that? Is it political expediency or is he a true believer?
When it comes to pro-supremacism or pro-rape or pro-some-other-sort-of-evil, two fundamental moral issues greater than “keeping your differences to the greatest extent possible, between friends, behind doors– having it out as necessary, but maintaining as little daylight as possible in public” and not wanting to “put people in a corner, when it comes to your friends and partners, in public” are:
1. The fact that you chose to be pro-supremacism or pro-rape or pro-some-other-sort-of-evil.
And if that’s not bad enough:
2. The fact that you consider the supremacist or the rapist or the evil-doer to be your friend and/or partner.