In Mr. Liben’s attempt to absolve President Biden’s duplicitous behavior towards Israel (“A Look Back at US-Israel Relations” May 9, 2024), he tries to portray Republican presidents as doing similarly. However, what Mr. Liben fails to distinguish is that no Republican president cut off arms to Israel during an active war. This is President Obama’s innovation when he stopped a shipment of Hellfire missiles to Israel during the 2014 Gaza war. President Biden is continuing this tradition with his embargo of bombs and threats to withhold additional arms. Biden’s duplicity is captured in his 2019 comment to PBS that, “The idea that we would cut off military aid to an ally, our only true, true ally in the entire region, is absolutely preposterous.”
I find it astonishing that Jews stick their heads in the sand and continue to believe that today’s Democratic Party is still the party of Truman and Kennedy. Democrat hostility to Israel is not a new phenomenon. During the 2012 Democratic convention, delegates booed when a line was added back to the platform affirming Jerusalem as Israel’s capital. A 2014 poll by GfK found that 51% of Republicans wanted the U.S. to lean toward Israel, compared to just 17% of Democrats. Not much has changed since then, as a January 2024 YouGov poll confirmed. Only 24% of Biden voters favored Israel in the current conflict compared to 69% of Trump voters. A Gallup poll from March 4 tells a similar tale: 35% of Democrats support Israel and 80% of Republicans.
I personally am tired of Democratic Jews who persist in defending the indefensible.
