U.S. Vice President has rolled out a red carpet with nails for Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu’s visit to the White House this week.
He told 5,000 Reform Jews in Florida Saturday night that no one loves Israel more than he does but threw in a warning that referred to the Prime Minister’s choice for media adviser, who earlier this year posted on Facebook a remark that equated President Barack Obama with anti-Semitism.
Dr. Ron Baratz, slated to be his media guru if the Cabinet agrees, has been exposed in the media for Facebook posts that insulted not only President Obama but also President Reuven Rivlin and the revered Shas party founder and leader Rabbi Ovadia Yosef.
Prime Minister Netanyahu is coming to the White House with his hands out for an increase in American military aid, but the timing of the storm over Baratz may keep Obama’s hands in his pockets until Netanyahu gives in and looks for someone else besides Baratz.
Biden said in his speech Saturday night:
There’s nobody in American policy today, not one single person, who I will take second place to in my affection and defense of Israel.
Biden also took the opportunity to make it clear that Baratz’s Facebook post was not tolerable. Baratz wrote earlier this year that President Obama’s reaction earlier this spring, after Netanyahu announced he would speak to Congress against the nuclear deal with Obama, was “modern anti-Semitism.”
Biden said:
There is no excuse. There should be no tolerance for any member or employee of the Israeli administration referring to the president of the United States in derogatory terms.
Period. Period. Period. Period.
That is a whole lot of periods, which reflect both Biden and Obama’s disgust with their inability to force Netanyahu to let the United States tell him what is good for Israel, especially when it comes to Palestinian Authority and Iranian terror.
Biden spent a good part of his speech praising the Reform Jewish movement for being “early proponents of civil rights and gay equality.” He noted that the Reform movement “just this week adopted a broad transgender rights policy” and declared:
For decades, you’ve been the heart and soul of opportunity for all Americans. Where you lead, the nation eventually follows.
Netanyahu is leaving for the United States on Sunday and will speak to a progressive liberal Jewish group in an effort to schmooze the majority of American Jews who profess love for Israel but consider Zionism as buying Israeli bonds or perhaps visiting the Jewish Home once in a while and sneaking a Torah scroll into the women’s section of the Western Wall.
They generally adopt the mantra of “two states for two peoples.”
The Prime Minister said at the Cabinet meeting Sunday:
My conversation with the president will center on recent events in the Middle East, including in Syria, possible progress with the Palestinians, or at least stabilizing the situation with them, and, of course, strengthening the security of the State of Israel, which the US has always been committed to, while maintaining the State of Israel’s comparative advantage in the face of a changing Middle East and a cycle that changes less.
I believe that this meeting is important in order to clarify the continuation of American aid to Israel in the coming decade.
Haaretz reported that Netanyahu will come to Obama with “good will” measures for the Palestinian Authority, something that the Obama administration always demands when Palestinian Authority terrorists go on a rampage or when they are so calm that the State Dept. is sure “peace is around the corner.”
The newspaper said one of the “good will “measures will be allowing freer mobility for Palestinian Authority Arabs to travel.