The shoe finally dropped for the Democratic presidential field this week with the announcement by former Vice President Joe Biden that he is joining the race. It remains to be seen whether his place atop the polls for the 2020 nomination is more a matter of name recognition than a genuine desire by Democrats for Biden to lead them back to the White House. Biden does provide Democrats with a choice more moderate than some and more experienced than almost all of the party's candidates. The same is true with respect to his past vis-à-vis Israel.
The experience issue is a touchy one because it is, in part, a function of his advanced age and a national career that stretches all the way back to the Nixon administration. That exposes Biden to criticism about stands he took on the issues decades ago that are no longer in fashion in the Democratic Party.
Indeed, the fact that he is touted as the leading moderate in the race testifies to his party's drift to the left. Biden is hoping to run as the man determined to rescue the legacy of President Barack Obama. And if Obama's liberal stances now pass for moderation among Democrats, then it's clear the definition of the word may have changed in the last decade.
The Democratic Party is, according to the polls, deeply divided in its support for Israel. Yet at a time when young Democratic rock stars like Reps. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) and Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.) are open supporters of the anti-Semitic boycott, divestment and sanctions movement, and the ubiquitous Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) has called for a re-evaluation of the U.S.-Israel alliance, Biden is more of an old-school pro-Israel Democrat.
Biden dates back to a time when the Democrats were a lockstep pro-Israel party. He has lived to see his side of the aisle split on the issue while Republicans, who were once equally divided, have now become the more ardent supporters of the Jewish state.
That Biden is an enthusiastic supporter of Zionism should not be doubted. Those who have been repeatedly exposed to his spiels about his father's sympathy for the newborn Jewish state or his many encounters with various Israeli leaders may be bored silly by his stories. But there's no question that he views Israel with a degree of affection and familiarity that is unmatched among most of his party's younger generation. And while Bernie Sanders is Jewish and once worked on a kibbutz decades ago, the former vice president is far more comfortable with the pro-Israel community and Israelis than is the Vermont senator.
But that familiarity and even his basic sympathy for Israel should not be confused with stands that are supportive of its government. The issue with Biden is not a matter of underlying antipathy towards Israel – as was the case with Obama – or ideological distaste for Jewish nationalism. Rather, it is that Biden has always thought that he had a better grasp of what was good for Israel than its own citizens and their democratically elected government.
This led to a famous confrontation with Prime Minister Menachem Begin at a Capitol Hill meeting. Biden's table-banging condemnation of Jewish settlement-building prompted Begin to give the senator a memorable tongue-lashing about Jews being unwilling to be intimidated by threats, even if they emanate from America.
Begin wasn't the last Israeli to be lectured by Biden, whose trademark loquaciousness and know-it-all routine has grated on the nerves of generations of prime ministers who regarded him as an insufferable bore, even if his status as a senior member of the Senate and then vice president made tolerating his talks a necessary evil. Throughout the last few decades, Biden has clung to the same mantra of opposing settlements and the need for concessions to the Palestinians. But after the colossal failure of the Oslo process and the bloodshed that ensued as a result, the patience of Israeli politicians for stunts such as his much-publicized hurt feelings after Israel announced approvals for building in Jerusalem while he was still in the city began to run thin.
Few public figures have been more affable or charming than Biden, yet even fewer have been more consistently wrong about the Middle East – whether it was with respect to Palestinian willingness to make peace, or what to do about Iraq and Iran. Though wisdom is supposed to come with age, one of Biden's shortcomings has always been an inability to recognize his mistakes and learn from them. After nearly a half-century in politics, one of the worst things you can say about Biden is that he is still convinced that what he thought at the start is still correct, He has largely ignored disasters like the 1993 Oslo Accords or Israel's 2005 disengagement from the Gaza Strip that might have taught a more self-aware statesman some humility.
More to the point, Biden is running as the executor of Obama's foreign-policy legacy. That means he is deeply committed to reinstating the disastrous 2015 Iran nuclear deal, regardless of the implications for both Israel and Sunni Arab states that regard the pact as a piece of feckless appeasement that has been rightfully tossed on the ash heap of history by U.S. President Donald Trump. He would also probably revive Obama's embrace of a policy of more "daylight" between the United States and Israel, as opposed to Trump's warm embrace.
None of this will likely deter Jewish Democrats from latching on to Biden if they think he really is their best chance to defeat Trump. Biden's invocation of the neo-Nazi march in Charlottesville, Virginia in his opening campaign address will also likely resonate with Jewish voters who are too appalled by Trump's behavior to care about his pro-Israel policies and equally as wary of their party's growing left wing. But Israelis will regard Biden as an unfortunate relic of an Obama administration that is best forgotten. He may be an old friend, but his conceit that he knows better than they do is something Israelis lost patience with long ago.
This article is reprinted with permission from JNS.org.
