Democrats Turning Their Backs on Israel, Continued

The news this week pointed to efforts by leftwing Democrats to move their party, and Joe Biden, their presumptive presidential nominee, farther away from Israel.

Matthew Mainen, writing at the Washington Examiner, warns that Biden may be more damaging to Israel than Bernie Sanders would have been: 

During his eight years as second-in-command in the Obama administration, deemed by Israelis to be the most hostile to their interests in recent history, Biden routinely attacked the underpinnings of Jewish self-determination and pushed for failed policies that have proven to exacerbate the Palestinian-Israeli conflict.

…Biden recently embraced an endorsement from J-Street, a far-left organization that seeks to impose upon Israel policies thoroughly rejected by the Israeli electorate. [With] this, combined with his increasingly hostile rhetoric against Israel’s democratically elected government, we can expect him to embrace and even amplify the Obama administration’s posture toward the Jewish state if he becomes president.

Biden is under increasing pressure to back “Palestinian rights” over Israel’s sovereignty and security. Jacob Kornbluh reports on a letter from 32 former diplomats and national security officials, calling on Democratic Party leaders to include in the party’s 2020 platform, “clear opposition to ongoing occupation, settlement expansion and any form of unilateral annexation of territory in the West Bank” by Israel. 

The list of signers includes many familiar names - former Clinton and Obama administration officials whose views on Israel are well-known – such as Strobe Talbott and Anthony Lake; Ben Rhodes, one of the architects of Pres. Barack Obama’s dangerous nuclear plan with Iran; and the two authors of the article Amb. David Friedman rebutted this week (see below), Phil Gordon and Rob Malley.

Biden – also known as "J Street Joe", now that he has enthusiastically accepted the leftwing group’s endorsement – told the JTA about some of his policy plans regarding Israel and the Palestinians:

Joe Biden said the US should press Israel not to take any actions that jeopardize a two-state solution, a reference to reports that Israel may try to annex part of the West Bank. Biden, in a statement Tuesday to the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, also said that as president he would resume US assistance to the Palestinians, reopen the US consulate in eastern Jerusalem that administers primarily to the Palestinians and would seek to reopen the Palestine Liberation Organization mission in Washington.

“A priority now for the cause of Israeli-Palestinian peace should be resuming our dialogue with the Palestinians and pressing Israel not to take actions that make a two-state solution impossible,” Biden said. “I will reopen the US consulate in East Jerusalem, find a way to re-open the PLO’s diplomatic mission in Washington, and resume the decades-long economic and security assistance efforts to the Palestinians that the Trump Administration stopped.”

In other words, a President Biden would take us right back to the failed policies of the Clinton and Obama years and even further. That would be dangerous for Israel and the US.