The Problem of Joe Biden & the Jews & Israel

  LINK ADDED 11-17-2020 

To give full disclosure, I have disliked Joe Biden since 1975. I heard him at a dinner in the city where I lived at that time speaking to a pro-Israel organization and --I assume-- he was getting a generous speaking fee. At first I was inclined to be sympathetic because everyone knew at the time that he had lost his wife and one of their children in a traffic accident. Yet his speech to the group broadcast a nasty anti-Israel undertone. He made several snide anti-Israel insinuations, nothing too overt or specific. At the end of course he urged the audience to offer monetary support to this organization. So I suppose he, as  a US senator, had earned his fee for this organization. And I like others contributed what I could afford, although his answer to my question was somewhat irritating. I disliked him afterwards although I thought that he was basically OK as long as he voted right on issues that mattered to Jews.

Years later, I came to dislike him even more. That was when he came to Jerusalem representing Obama. But first let's go forward seven years from 1975 to 1982. In that year, when Prime Minister Begin spoke before the US Senate Foreign Relations Committee:

Back [in] 1982, Senator Biden (D-Delaware) threatened to cut off aid to Israel. In subsequent years he hotly denied this but Prime Minister Menachem Begin’s late right-hand man Yechiel Kadisha’i unequivocally confirmed Biden’s bullying in many conversations we held [Sarah Honig, Jerusalem Post 30 April 2015]

 Begin responded to Biden's threat:

“Don’t threaten us with cutting off your aid. It will not work. I am not a Jew with trembling knees. I am a proud Jew with 3,700 years of civilized history. Nobody came to our aid when we were dying in the gas chambers and ovens. Nobody came to our aid when we were striving to create our country. We paid for it. We fought for it. We died for it. We will stand by our principles. We will defend them. And, when necessary, we will die for them again, with or without your aid.” [ibid. Jpost]

By the year 2010, Biden had risen to the level of his incompetence as Barack Hussein Obama's vice president. He came to Jerusalem on Obama's behalf  and promoted the Obama administration's policy of enforcing apartheid against Jews in Judea & Samaria, expressing support for Mahmoud Abbas' demand that Israel stop any activity enabling Jews to take up residence in the heart of the ancient Jewish homeland, called Judea [IVDAEA] by the Roman Empire. On the day that Biden arrived the Interior Ministry announced plans for 1600 new homes for Jews in an already existing Jewish neighborhood in Jerusalem that happened to be north of the 1949 armistice line [called "East Jerusalem" in the media, to be sure]. Both the palestinian Arab leader Abbas and the American VP Biden expressed hostility to homes being built for Jews who were often living in crowded conditions in older areas of the Holy City. And this was in a city that had had a Jewish majority since 1853, if not before. Biden stated:

“It is incumbent on both parties to build an atmosphere of support for negotiations and not to complicate them,” Biden said in a media statement alongside Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas in the West Bank city of Ramallah. “Yesterday the decision by the Israeli government to advance planning for new housing units in East Jerusalem undermines that very trust, the trust that we need right now in order to begin ... profitable negotiations,” Biden said. [Reuters, 10 March 2010: "Biden Scolds Israel over Settlement Plan"]

 There is so much more to say against Biden and against his anti-Israel actions and positions over the years that I will stop here for now, only promising to continue tomorrow with his support for Obama's dangerous Iran nuke deal, that did not stop Iran's move towards a nuke bomb for even one day, endangering both Israel and most Sunni Arab states. I will also cover Biden's work for Obama to force the Ukraine to vote in favor of the anti-Israel UN Security Council resolution 2334 of December 2016 which exemplifies the pro-apartheid [against Jews] anti-Jewish, anti-Israel policy of Obama and much of the old US foreign policy elite. And other matters.

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Biden's Anti-Israel Escapade in Ukraine:  here  by Elder of Ziyyon

Apartheid in South Africa -- Anything like Israel?

UPDATING 5-19 & 6-10-2013 Links added at bottom

Those who want to destroy the Jews, who want to repeat the Holocaust, know that they have to first destroy the Jewish national state, Israel, the ancient Jewish homeland which has been in part recovered. And in order to destroy the Jewish national state, they have to destroy its good name, its reputation, paint it in the ugliest colors, --in short, delegitimize Israel-- in order to justify drastic political and military moves against it.

As in the past, as in the Middle Ages, when various sorts of horrid crimes were attributed to the Jews living in Christendom and Islamdom, as oppressed, exploited and persecuted minorities, so today Israel is accused of an horrid and ugly political crime: apartheid. Likewise, in past centuries, Jews were accused of murdering Christian children to use their blood in baking matsot for Passover or of poisoning the wells which every one had to drink from or of being bloodsuckers, so on and so forth.

But people today might find it hard to believe that Jews bake Christian or Muslim blood in Matsot that they then eat. So more up to date, more politically correct charges have to be put forth. Today's enemies of Jews have seized on apartheid as a useful accusation to make against Israel although it is groundless. It goes without saying that the religious apartheid practiced in Muslim countries, whether Saudi Arabia or non-Arab Pakistan, goes entirely unnoticed by Israel's accusers.

Here is a recent account of South African apartheid by a South African expatriate who has been living for years in  Italy. Helene Blignaut is described as "a South African writer resident in Italy for many years. She is the author of historical novels and essays on fashion, and is a creator of events on the international level." [Helene Blignaut, "Apartheid: Il Principio e la Fine della grande vergogna," BBC History Italia (no. 8, November-December 2011), p66]

Apartheid: The Beginning and the End of the Great Shame -- Helene Blignaut

p62
. . . [films and still photos] show the deportations into the shack cities of hundreds of thousands of blacks in order to free up areas occupied by suburban [black] ghettos and make room for new white residential settlements. Forced deportations [were] now allowed by making the apartheid system (apartheid, the separation of various ethnic groups) official [policy]  [racial segregation had been previously unofficial] , being ratified in 1948. It struck 20 million persons, imposing settlements [in segregated localities], school systems, assigning vocations, and civil rights different for each ethnic group. The notorious District Six of Capetown was "liberated" in 1966 in a few days, without prior notification, and immediately declared "an area for whites only." The earthmovers were ready for destroying the houses where 60,000 blacks to be deported were living. The equipment and material yards for new construction were ready too.

In townships like Soweto [South West Township], that in the 1960s and 1970s comprised more than one million persons (today three million live there, distributed over a variety of quarters, some poor and some for an emancipated, emerging middle class), there were common latrines, only one shack out of five had electric lighting, there was no heating, there was no asphalt on the streets. Moreover, pursuant to the "Native Consolidation Act" promulgated in 1957, the inhabitants of the townships were forbidden  many commercial activities; in short, a resident of Soweto could open a business only in certain permitted commercial categories: food, clothing, lumber. . . Child mortality in Soweto was for decades three times higher than in the neighboring city of Johannesburg. . . .

In the cities, a black could not go up on the sidewalk but had to walk only in the gutters. Public transportation vehicles were different for the "non-whites" who did not even have the right to enter public buildings or places of entertainment. On some tracts of beach, one could see persons of Indian origin or of mixed race, but these were tracts of coasts assigned specifically to persons of color. Nearby were bathing zones with signs at the entrance "For whites only." Mixed marriages were forbidden as well as sexual relations between whites and blacks. . . .

[Helene Blignaut, "Apartheid: Il Principio e la Fine della grande vergogna," BBC History Italia (no. 8, November-December 2011), pp 62-63]

We can see that some of the ways in which Blacks were treated in South Africa under apartheid are like the treatment imposed on Jews in Christian lands over the centuries, and like some of the rules imposed on all non-Muslims, dhimmis, including Jews,  in Muslim-ruled lands. Of course, dhimmis were oppressed mainly on account of not being Muslims, not because of their skin color. No doubt some partisans of Arabs and Muslims would like to seize on that distinction in order to exculpate Islam of racism. OK, so the dhimma, the inferior status and oppressive, discriminatory laws and regulations governing the dhimmis was not exactly racism based on skin color. Rather it was religious oppression. Does that make it  OK? Why don't those who smear Israel as an "apartheid" state take some interest in the dhimma which is still in effect, officially or unofficially, in many Muslim states [think of Pakistan, Iraq, Yemen, Egypt, etc]???

When the Land of Israel was under Muslim rule, during the pre-Crusades Arab period [638-1099 CE], during the Mamluk empire and the later Ottoman empire [1517-1917 (up to 1918 in northern Israel)], Jews in the Land lived in humiliating, oppressive, discriminatory conditions. Of course, Arabs are not treated by apartheid rules in Israel today. All adults in Israel are required to carry an ID card, although ordinarily people are not asked to show this ID card [te`udat zehut]. When withdrawing money from a bank or receiving a registered letter at the post office, you are usually asked to show your ID card.

The Jewish settlements in Judea-Samaria were built as a rule in uninhabited areas, in many cases on real estate already owned by Jews. In other cases, where Arabs were living on real estate owned by Jews, Arab residents were paid generously to leave.

Historically, the Palestinian Arab leadership collaborated in the Holocaust, particularly in the person of Haj Amin el-Husseini, the chief Palestinian Arab leader in the 1920s, 1930s, and 1940s. By the way, Husseini was appointed to the prestigious Muslim religious post of mufti of Jerusalem by the British rulers of the country [1921]. For that reason, he is often referred to as "the mufti," "the mufti of Jerusalem," or "the grand mufti."

After UN General Assembly recommendation to partition the country between Jews and Arabs was made on 29 November 1947, Arab irregulars forces sponsored by Husseini began to attack Jewish residential areas and isolated Jewish homes throughout the country [December 1947], often succeeding in driving Jews out of their homes. In those days, the Arabs were frank about wanting to drive the Jews out of the country. And this followed their age-old oppression of the Jews in the Jewish homeland. Hence, the South African situation cannot be compared with that in the Land of Israel after the restoration of a Jewish state. The yearning for apartheid is clearly expressed, however, by the Palestinian Authority which aspires to political control over all of what is now Israel. Consider this. The Palestinian Authority wants to exclude Jews from a future Arab state that may arise in the Land of Israel.
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UPDATING 5-19-2013 Black South African, Rev Dr Kenneth Meshoe,  a member of the South African parliament, refutes the Big Lie of "apartheid" in Israel. "This ridiculous accusation trivializes the word apartheid, minimizing and belittling the magnitude of the racism and suffering endured by South Africans of color. . . . The misapplication of the term apartheid makes a mockery of a grievous injustice and threatens to undermine the true meaning of the term." [emphasis added]
6-10-2013 Another refutation of the "Israeli apartheid"  lie [here]. This lie is so gross, such a Big Lie, that it is a lie of Nazi dimensions.

More on alleged "apartheid in Israel" on Emet m'Tsiyon:
here, here, here, here, & here.
On the other hand, the European Union promotes apartheid in the Land of Israel against Jews: here.
Former US secretary of state Condoleeza Rice smears Israel with apartheid label: here.
The British Govt in the Holocaust era and "Liberal" US President Franklin Roosevelt treated Jews in racist, discriminatory and apartheid ways: here.