US President Joe Biden’s interview on Monday with pop culture journalist Speedy Morman, as well as the opening prayer at Monday’s Republican National Convention and a Fox News interview with newly-minted Vice Presidential candidate J.D. Vance showed how differently the candidates will navigate the “Israel issue” until the November elections.
What became clear Monday is that Biden will express support for the Jewish state, though he will do so somewhat haltingly, carefully balancing it with empathy and support for the Palestinians.
The Republican ticket – Donald Trump and Vance – will express support for Israel without feeling the need to sound apologetic.
It all has to do with demographics.
Biden needs to play to the progressive wing of his party and needs to retain Arab American voters in Michigan, all the while not alienating Jews in the key battleground states of Pennsylvania, Georgia, and Arizona. That is a delicate balancing act.
On the other hand, Trump and Vance, without any expectations of securing either Arab or progressive voters, can voice full-throated support for Israel. This will not cost them any support with their base and – who knows – might draw a couple of percentage points of Jewish and pro-Israel supporters into the Republican tent that could make all the difference in a tight election.
All this came into focus on Monday when the Republican National Convention crowned Trump its party’s nominee, and Trump tabbed Vance as his running mate.
The political minefield Biden will have to maneuver regarding Israel was on display in the interview taped with Morman on a platform of the youth-oriented Complex Networks that aired Monday.
Asked why he and the US are so supportive of Israel and why they provide billions of dollars of military aid, Biden started off the Mideast section of the interview by stressing he has only approved defensive weapons – signaling that he understands supplying arms to Israel is a controversial issue among some Democrats, including many of those who watch Morman’s interviews with celebrities, sports stars, and politicians.
“I denied them offensive weapons they are using – 2,000-pound bombs. I made it real clear that they cannot use weapons we provide them in civilian areas,” the president stressed.
Unbreakable bond
Pressed to explain why his and the US’s support for Israel is so strong, Biden repeated what he has said numerous times in explaining his pro-Israel position: “If there weren’t an Israel, every Jew in the world would be at risk. So there’s a need for it to be strong and a need for Israel to be able to have, after World War II, the ability for Jews to have a place that was their own.”
This response is one that dated the president, who is trying to fend off those claiming he is too old for his job. Biden is of an aging breed of Democratic Party leaders who lived in and remember a world without an Israel, and the horrific fate that befell the Jews in that world. His 27-year-old interviewer, and one assumes most of those watching, know not of this world, and it is unclear how much this argument resonates with them – if at all.
“You don’t have to be a Jew to be a Zionist. A Zionist is about whether or not Israel is a safe haven for Jews because of their history of how they’ve been persecuted,” Biden added.
Then Morman asked him point-blank: “Are you a Zionist?”
That question has to be put into the context of how the word has been twisted over the last nine months into something ugly. Think of the masked hoodlums who a couple of months ago boarded a New York Subway and in an intimidating manner demanded that Zionists on the packed subway car identify themselves.
“Yes,” Biden – to his great credit – answered, then added something reflecting how he understands that the word has taken on a negative connotation among many, anticipating that this would be used against him in some of the progressive and Arab circles he was trying to woo. “Now, you’ll be able to make a lot of that because different people don’t know what a Zionist is,” he said. Then he asked the interviewer: “Do you know what a Zionist is?”
To which, rather snarkily, Morman replied: “I just ask questions, I don’t answer them.”
Playing both sides to come out on top
Tellingly, after declaring himself a Zionist, in his next breath Biden – again revealing the need to play to a lot of different audiences – said, “By the way, I’m the guy who has done more for the Palestinian community than anybody.”
He mentioned that he ensured the Egyptians opened their border to Gaza to allow food and medicine through, and was the “guy who has been able to bring together the Arab states to help the Palestinians with food and shelter. I mean, I’ve been very supportive of the Palestinians, but Hamas, they’re a bunch of thugs.”
Asked why, given these positions, Arab Americans or Muslims should vote for him, Biden said the same reason Arabs in the region support him: “to keep peace, put things back together, to make sure there is a two-state solution in the region – I’ve been a strong supporter of that.”
With this performance, Biden was clearly trying to be everything for everybody – pro-Israel for Jews and Israeli supporters, sympathetic to the Palestinians, and a champion of a two-state solution to the progressives and Arabs.
The Republican Party, as it also became apparent on the first day of the convention in Milwaukee, is less encumbered by such considerations.
Consider a prayer on opening night delivered by Laura Levy, a Jewish Republican from Connecticut. Not only did she issue a prayer for victims killed and wounded in the attempted assassination of Trump, but also for the peace of Jerusalem and the hostages.
“Lord our God, we pray for the peace of Jerusalem, your eternal city, and for all the children of Abraham. We remember and pray for freedom for the hostages kidnapped and held so cruelly against their will,” Levy said. “Lord, please keep them in your sight and hasten the day of their freedom.”
It is difficult to imagine a similar prayer being delivered during prime time from the center stage at next month’s Democratic National Convention, where Israel will be a contentious issue sure to stir up angry debate between various wings of the party.
And then there is Vance.
In an interview with Fox News’s Sean Hannity, Vance – who is among Republican isolationists but one who is robustly pro-Israel and thinks Israel is in a different category than other countries such as Ukraine – voiced strong support for “our ally Israel.”
Biden, he said in an apparent reference to the delay of arms shipments and the president’s warnings to Israel not to go into Rafah several months ago, “has made it harder and harder for Israel to win that war.”
“You want two things to happen: you want Israel to win that war, and as quickly as possible – the longer it goes on the harder their situation becomes. And second, after the war, you want to reinvigorate that peace process between Israel, the Saudi Arabians, Jordanians, and so forth.”
Note that Vance here, when talking about a peace process, said nothing about a Palestinian state, only about some kind of regional cooperation. He does not have a constituency to which he has to pledge allegiance to a “two-state solution” every time Mideast diplomacy is raised.
“What Biden has done is the worst of all possible worlds,” he contended. “He has prolonged the war – Israel’s war to actually take out Hamas – but in the process has made it harder to move toward a sustainable peace.”
Vance also added Iran into the mix. “A lot of people recognize you need to do something with Iran, but not these weak little bombing runs. If you are going to punch the Iranians, you punch them hard.”
He said that Trump did just that in 2020 when the US killed Iranian military leader Qassem Soleimani.
“The most important diplomatic breakthrough of the Trump administration was the Abraham Accords, because if you want to change Iran, the way to do it is to one, withhold their oil money, which Biden has been bad about, and also enable the Israelis and Sunni Arab states to work together and provide a counterbalance to Iran. Joe Biden has done nothing. You have the infrastructure there to weaken Iran – to strengthen our ally Israel – and Joe Biden has done nothing with it.”
Whether, as Vance said, Trump could reinvigorate a regional counterbalance to Iran is not clear – or even whether that is possible without a pathway to a two-state solution. Nevertheless, Vance’s interview clearly demonstrates that he, the Republican Party, and presumably Trump are not encumbered by the same constraints as the current administration when discussing Israel, the Palestinians, Hamas, and Gaza.