Biden Sent To Reassure Jews--Says #Pollard Release "Over My Dead Body"

Remember Biden?
I haven't come across Biden's name in months.

And yet here here is Vice President Joe Biden bragging that he is the reason Pollard has not been released:

In the middle of a meeting with 15 rabbis in Boca Raton, Fla., last week, Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. took a punch meant for his boss.

One of the rabbis asked why Jonathan Pollard, the Israeli spy convicted in 1986, was still in prison. Mr. Biden, on a mission to shore up support for President Obama, replied forcefully, according to several people at the meeting.

“President Obama was considering clemency, but I told him, ‘Over my dead body are we going to let him out before his time,’ ” Mr. Biden said. “If it were up to me, he would stay in jail for life.”

I'm not sure how much of a punch Biden took for Obama, since the implication is that Obama went ahead and took the advice. If I don't like the guy giving the advice, how should I feel about the one following it?

The major emphasis in the article is how big a friend of Israel Biden is--in fact, Biden is hosting a Rosh Hashanah party on October 5th! (No, I didn't understand that one either)

But this paragraph caught my eye:

Mr. Biden, who through his foreign policy work in the Senate built lifelong ties with Israeli politicians, is able to sprinkle his remarks with asides about how he first met Yitzhak Rabin back in 1973 when Mr. Rabin was working with Golda Meir, then the Israeli prime minister, and how Mrs. Meir once confided to Mr. Biden that Israel’s secret weapon is that it has “nowhere else to go.” He talked about having dinner at the home of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, and about how he autographed a photo for Mr. Netanyahu with “love you, love you, love you, but we don’t agree on anything,” Mr. Klein said.

It is a level of comfort with all things Israeli in general and Jewish in particular that Mr. Obama simply cannot convey, White House officials acknowledge.

Oops, looks like another Israel story was overlooked--this one related on a New York Sun blog back December 4, 2006, quoting from a Jerusalem Post article. It's about the time Biden tried to intimidate Menachem Begin with threats:

When hearing the name Biden, we always think of the famous exchange between Biden and Prime Minister Begin. As Moshe Zak recounted in a March 13, 1992, piece in the Jerusalem Post:

In a conversation with Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan, after a sharp confrontation in the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on the subject of the settlements, Begin defined himself as "a proud Jew who does not tremble with fear" when speaking with foreign statesmen.

During that committee hearing, at the height of the Lebanon War, Sen. John Biden (Delaware) had attacked Israeli settlements in Judea and Samaria and threatened that if Israel did not immediately cease this activity, the US would have to cut economic aid to Israel.

When the senator raised his voice and banged twice on the table with his fist, Begin commented to him: "This desk is designed for writing, not for fists. Don't threaten us with slashing aid. Do you think that because the US lends us money it is entitled to impose on us what we must do? We are grateful for the assistance we have received, but we are not to be threatened. I am a proud Jew. Three thousand years of culture are behind me, and you will not frighten me with threats. Take note: we do not want a single soldier of yours to die for us."

After the meeting, Sen. Moynihan approached Begin and praised him for his cutting reply. To which Begin answered with thanks, defining his stand against threats. [emphasis added]

Bet you that Biden never gave such a ridiculously signed autograph to Begin.
Begin did not knuckle under to Biden nor fall for what Biden was selling.
We should not either.

And Biden's boast about Pollard undercuts Biden's carefully crafted image as a knowledgeable politician.

UPDATE: Mere Rhetoric reminds us that in another betrayal of Jews, Biden told Russia they could ignore US about Refuseniks and human rights:

Joe Biden effectively told Soviet negotiators not to worry about American rhetoric about human-rights concerns… “Biden said they did not want to spoil the atmosphere with problems which are bound to cause distrust in our relations. However, during the breaks between the sessions the senators passed to us several letters concerning these or those ‘refuseniks’…” Bukovsky and Poilov point out that Zagladin would have been taking a risk in painting Biden and Lugar as sympathetic even to a small degree to Soviet concerns about dissidents… In April 1979, Jimmy Carter… badly needed an arms treaty to demonstrate that he wasn’t being completely feckless in the Cold War, and the refusenik situation complicated that. Biden and Lugar may have wanted to clear the talks from all other considerations.

Wouldn’t you know it, Carter’s fecklessness had something to do with worsening the plight of international Jewry. And Joe Biden was involved. Will wonders never cease?

The real wonder is that Biden is in any way considered a friend of Israel.

Technorati Tag: Israel and Obama and Biden.