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Senior Israeli Official: Biden Is Ideal Candidate For Us

Senior Israeli Official: Biden Is Ideal Candidate For Us

Israeli
A senior Israeli official says former Vice President Joe Biden is the ideal presidential candidate. “Biden is as good as it gets — for a Democrat.” Photo: Vice President Joe Biden addresses the American-Israeli Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) 2013 Policy Conference, March 4, 2013, at the Walter E. Washington Convention Center in Washington. (AP Photo/Susan Walsh)

Israelis may have a lot of questions and concerns about Joe Biden but at least one senior Israeli official who has known Biden for years thinks he is the ideal Democrat candidate.

Some Israelis remember Biden as a troublemaker when he served as vice president to Barack Obama, an Israeli official told Shmuel Rosner, political editor at The Jewish Journal and a contributing opinion writer for The New York Times.

“As far as Israelis are concerned, Biden has two disadvantages. He is not Trump, and he is a Democrat. In other words, he is not the candidate they support and he comes from the party many of them distrust,” Rosner wrote in the Times.

But Biden’s VP selection of Kamala Harris, who is married to a Jewish man, could tip U.S.-Israel ties. 

Biden and Harris both support a two-state solution, but she has pleased “pro-Israel” circles by speaking out in favor of Israel’s “right to defend itself” from Hamas attacks from the Gaza Strip, Haaretz reported.

The senator “strongly aligns with the values of American Jews, including her support of the U.S.-Israel relationship,” according to Halie Soifer, an Obama administration alum, foreign policy expert and Harris’s former national security adviser. Soifer is now the executive director of the Jewish Democratic Council of America.

Way before Harris’ presidential bid when she was first elected as a California senator, Harris was the star performer at a powerful pro-Israel lobby’s 2017 Policy Conference. During her speech at the conference, she said: “Having grown up in the Bay Area, I fondly remember those Jewish National Fund boxes that we would use to collect donations to plant trees for Israel.” 

She also co-sponsored a Senate resolution in January 2017 criticizing President Barack Obama for abstaining in a vote on a U.N. Security Council resolution condemning Israel’s settlement policies.

In 2018, however, Harris quietly attended an off-the-record session at American Israel Public Affairs Committee conference (AIPAC). AIPAC is a lobbying group that advocates pro-Israel policies to the Congress and executive branch. Then, in 2019, she came under pressure to boycott the conference. While she did not attend, she made a point of releasing photos with AIPAC leaders in her Capitol Hill office, Haaretz reported.

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But like other Democrat lawmakers, Harris is also against Israel’s potential unilateral annexation of parts of the West Bank. In June, she wrote a letter to President Trump arguing that annexation would “harm prospects for a negotiated two-state solution.” She did not, however, sign a letter signed by other senators stating that annexation would fray U.S.-Israel ties, the Jewish Telegraphic Agency reported.

So a Biden-Harris ticket is looking good, according to some in Israel.

“Biden is as good as it gets — for a Democrat,” Rosner wrote in the Times.