Biden said efforts to delegitimize Israel are anti-Semitic, and he elided anti-Zionists and rightwing nationalists.
"anti-Semitism goes hand in hand -- it's bad under any circumstance -- but now it goes hand in hand in what I would call an overall effort to delegitimize Israel, to delegitimize Israel in almost every quarter. You see it all over the world. This summer, during the conflict in Gaza, we saw too many people in too many places cross the line from legitimate criticism into demonization and outright anti-Semitism. You saw it in demonstrations that devolved into mobs that torched synagogues. You see it in menacing messages on social media. You see it in attacks on religious Jews on streets of major European cities.
"It is a fundamental threat not simply to Jews, primarily but not simply to Jews, but to legitimization of the State of Israel and to democracy itself. There can be no tolerance for anti-Semitism."
Delegitimization "worries me more than anything else," he has said.
Biden also supported Israel's raid on the Gaza aid ship Mavi Marmara in 2010, days after it took place, killing nine Turks, one of them also an American citizen. "Israel" is "at war with Hamas," he said, and "It's legitimate for Israel to say I don't know what's on that ship." He said the Obama administration was working to lift the siege of Gaza. "The one thing we have to do is not to forget the plight of these Palestinians they're not Hamas they are in bad shape."
Here's Biden speaking to the Jewish Broadcasting Service in 2007, when he was last running for president. He dismisses criticism of Israel's effect on US foreign policy, saying the Iraq war has nothing at all to do with Israel. Of course, Biden had supported that war. He also says, I'm a Zionist, and warns that pardoning Jonathan Pollard would raise the dual loyalty charge against American Zionists.
Mark Golub questions U.S. policy, saying "Many Americans tell me there's a link between the US war in Iraq and the US relationship to Israel." If US didn't have such a commitment to Israel, there wouldn't be a problem in Iraq. Biden dismisses that idea.
"It's bizarre. Let me point out to you, when the Baker commission filed its report [in 2006] saying peace in Israel is related to Iraq, you may remember I was the first and only one in Congress to point out, if tomorrow peace broke out between Israelis and Palestinians, does anyone think there wouldn't be a full blown war in Iraq? And conversely, if tomorrow peace broke out between Israel and the Palestinians does anyone think there wouldn't be a full blown war in Iraq. Conversely, if Iraq were transported to Mars, does anyone think that there wouldn't be the terrorism visited on Israelis every day.
"The difference between now and before 9/11, many Americans can taste what it must feel like for every Israeli mother and father, when they send their kid out to school with their lunch and they put them, on a bus, on a bicycle, walking, they pray to god that the cellphone doesn't ring. Every day. Every day. And so let's get it straight. Israel is not the cause of Iraq. Iraq being settled or not settled has nothing to do with Israel's conduct.
"The second part is, people should understand by now, this should be crystal clear, that Israel is the single greatest strength America has in the Middle East. I always say to my friends when they say those things to you. Imagine our circumstance in the world were there no Israel. How many battleships would there be? How many troops would be stationed. So I find it not only incorrect but sometimes mildly insulting."
He said his father loved Israel and was baffled by anti-Zionists (clearly referencing Jewish anti-Zionists).
"I was raised by what you would call a righteous Christian... My father was... a student of history and a devoted, devoted supporter of Israel. My father always resented the fact that anyone particularly if you were a Jew who supported Israel from back in '48 when the debates were going on in the Jewish community here in the Untied States, he could not understand how people could assume that because people understood that without an Israel, no Jew in the world was safe, he didn't understand how that support could be translated into somehow being un-American."
Biden mentioned that his son married into a prominent Jewish family in Delaware, the Bergers. Then the future veep told of attending a seder in '73 after his visit to Israel and meeting with Golda Meir.
"I had predicted that something was going on in Egypt. I remember the poignancy... We began the meal with people talking about What it meant to them if Israel were actually, actually defeated. And there is this inextricable tie between culture, religion, ethnicity that most people don't fully understand, that is unique and how can I say it, so strong, with Jews worldwide. There is a I used to say early on when I was a kid, when I was a young senator, I would say, If I were a Jew, I would be a Zionist. I am a Zionist. You don't have to be a Jew to be a Zionist. That's the sense, the sense of vulnerability which worries me."
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