U.S. President Joe Biden drew rebukes for comments about the Jewish state during a nationally televised press conference on Thursday night, in which he assured the American public that he intends to remain in the presidential race.
While fielding questions from reporters for nearly an hour, Biden referred to the Israeli war cabinet as “one of the most conservative” in the Jewish state’s history. Contrary to polling, he also claimed that Hamas is increasingly unpopular in Judea and Samaria and that “my numbers are better in Israel than they are here. But, then again, they’re better than a lot of other people here, too.”
“His tone toward Israel seems to reflect his view that Israel and Hamas equally share blame for the situation,” Alan Dershowitz, professor emeritus at Harvard Law School, told JNS.
Morton Klein, national president of the Zionist Organization of America, told JNS that “it is reckless and irresponsible for Biden to undermine the security of Israel and America by protecting the Iran-backed, Islamist, Hamas Arabs from being destroyed by Israel.”
“Biden also recklessly promotes a Palestinian state, which 85% of the Israelis oppose, knowing it will become a larger Hamas-Iran terrorist regime,” Klein added.
Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) wrote that “Biden’s criticism of Israel—without even mentioning the hostages—was disgraceful.”
“Biden bragged about not providing Israel with weapons to destroy Hamas, who is holding American citizens captive,” wrote Sen. Joni Ernst (R-Iowa). “Meanwhile, he failed to even mention those hostages.”
Abraham Foxman, the former national director of the Anti-Defamation League, wrote that he admires and appreciates the president’s accomplishments. “But to put the blame on Israel for lack of progress in bringing peace to Gaza on ‘a conservative war cabinet’ and not Hamas, Hezbollah and Iran, is outrageous,” he wrote.
John Bolton, a former U.S. national security advisor, noted that Biden failed to name “Iran as the chief aggressor in the Middle East,” and “Tehran is using terrorist proxies like Hamas and Hezbollah to wipe out Israel, and the United States is next.”
“This is a failure for our national security,” he added.
On Friday morning, Biden wrote that he had “laid out a comprehensive framework for how to achieve a ceasefire and bring the hostages home.”
He acknowledged that “there is still work to do, and these are complex issues, but that framework is now agreed to by both Israel and Hamas. My team is making progress, and I’m determined to get this done.”
Kenneth Roth, former executive director of Human Rights Watch and current Princeton University lecturer, was one of several harsh Israel critics on the left who praised Biden’s comments on the Jewish state.
