Joe Biden
The president “offered all appropriate assistance to our Israeli allies,” says the White House.
U.S. President Joe Biden said that Americans will see rising prices, but made it a point to say that “defending freedom is going to cost.”
While Democratic Majority for Israel’s Mark Mellman praised Biden’s four-point plan to tackle inflation, the Republican Jewish Coalition’s Sam Markstein said the address “ignored his administration’s failed agenda.”
The two leaders discussed Iran’s nuclear program, Russia-Ukraine tensions and the elimination of ISIS leader Abu Ibrahim al-Hashimi al-Qurashi. Biden hopes to visit Israel later this year, according to the White House.
William Daroff, CEO of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, applauded the opportunity U.S. President Biden took “to speak about the scourge of anti-Semitism facing our nation and to shine a light on anti-Semitism is a message that all of America must hear.”
During the roughly 16-minute-long teleconference, Biden lamented the rise in anti-Semitism in the United States.
A letter to the U.S. president noted that the complete removal of forces in the region “runs the real risk of a complete takeover of the region at the hands of ISIS, the Iranian extremists and their proxies.”
Regarding the U.S. chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan, Foreign Minister Yair Lapid said, “It was probably the right decision maybe that wasn’t performed in the right manner.”
According to one source, Israeli Prime Minister Bennett wanted to demonstrate that he can be “prime ministerial” like his predecessor, while President Joe Biden needed to show that despite the Afghanistan crisis, the United States is still important in the Middle East.
Israel and the U.S. have agreed on a “joint working strategy” regarding Iran’s nuclear program, says Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett.
The two men met twice, discussing everything from a coronavirus booster and the Amtrak train system to the threat the terror groups and an Iran that seems to be headed for a nuclear weapon poses to the Middle East and the world.
Jonathan Schanzer at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies says the meeting between Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennet and U.S President Joe Biden represents a chance to affirm the strong U.S.-Israeli relationship—something to show that America has the trust of its friends in the Mideast.
