Watch: Netanyahu Thanks Biden for ‘Public Service’ in Bizarre Moment Before Meeting with Trump
On a recent Thursday, a meeting at the White House between President Joe Biden and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu took on significant complexities amid their historically strained relationship. The meeting was set against the backdrop of Netanyahu’s imminent discussions with former President Donald Trump, whom many view as a more favorable ally than Biden. During a publicly orchestrated appearance, Netanyahu expressed gratitude to Biden for his long-standing support of Israel, emphasizing their long relationship. Despite the cordial public interaction, there exists an underlying tension, as Netanyahu’s government faces challenges in Israel while attempting to secure U.S. support amid a politically charged environment.
The dynamic is complicated by Trump’s prior accomplishments in strengthening U.S.–Israel relations, including the Abraham Accords and the recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital. In contrast, Biden’s administration has struggled to balance support for Israel with appeasing parts of the Democratic Party critical of Israel’s policies. As Netanyahu walks the diplomatic tightrope, the prelude to his meeting with Trump highlights the bizarre yet strategic nature of international diplomacy, sitting between public gratitude and political realities that could impact Israel’s stability.
On the surface, Thursday’s meeting between heads of state in the White House was the usual ceremonial pleasantries.
In the context of recent strained relations between President Joe Biden and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, however, things were more complex.
And with Netanyahu’s scheduled meeting with former President Donald Trump hovering in the background, they were downright bizarre.
In an obviously orchestrated meeting for the media, before their private huddle, Netanyahu kicked things off by thanking Biden for his backing of the Jewish state.
JUST IN: Pres. Biden welcomed Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to the Oval Office for a bilateral meeting.
“I want to thank you for 50 years of public service and 50 years of support for the state of Israel,” Netanyahu told Biden. https://t.co/bLw8hsMyhA pic.twitter.com/YsZNP5DmCh
— ABC News (@ABC) July 25, 2024
“Mr. President, we’ve known each other for 40 years,” Netanyahu said. “And you’ve known every Israeli prime minister for 50 years, from Golda Meir. So from a proud Jewish Zionist to a proud Irish-American Zionist, I want to thank you for 50 years of public service and 50 years of support for the State of Israel.”
Given the tightrope Netanyahu is walking on his visit to the U.S. while his country is at war at home, the words were understandable.
No matter what party wins in November, Israel is going to need the support of the U.S., so the prime minister attempting to placate the president with buttery words — at least in public — is definitely in his country’s interests.
The bizarre aspect is that Netanyahu has a much-publicized meeting on Friday with Trump — the Republican nominee for president and the man who drove Biden out of public life by striking fear into the hearts of Democrats that they would be defeated in November with Biden as their candidate.
There is also no question that Trump is an American president much more to Netanyahu’s liking than Biden is, or ever could be.
As Netanyahu pointed out in his speech to a joint session of Congress on Wednesday, Trump had brokered the Abraham Accords, the biggest step toward peace in the Middle East since the Camp David Accords in 1978.
His administration recognized Jerusalem as the capital of Israel and moved the U.S. Embassy there in 2018. And even if Trump has played up his openness to talking to Palestinians — a prerequisite for any role as broker in the region — both Netanyahu and Biden know that a substantial element of the Democratic Party despises Israel and supports the murderous terrorists that threaten its existence.
Those terrorists are proxies of the Islamic Republic of Iran, and Biden has spent his presidential tenure appeasing the Tehran mullahs.
Trump, on the other hand, spent his administration successfully containing Iran with sanctions, nearly bankrupting the country, and wiping out one of its terrorist masterminds when the U.S. military under Trump’s leadership killed Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps Gen. Qassem Soleimani in January 2020 in Iraq.
Under the Biden administration, the president has been trying to cater to the anti-Semites in his party by vilifying Israel and Netanyahu personally as an obstacle to peace and failing to use U.S. power in the United Nations to protect Israel from resolutions that clearly favor Hamas terrorists.
That’s the real context of Thursday’s White House meeting.
Biden might personally support Israel, just as he might “personally” oppose abortion while his administration establishes the most radical pro-abortion record in history, and the results are the same: Innocents die while leftists cheer.
When Netanyahu thanked Biden for his years of “service” he was thanking a man whose recent record puts Israel in danger of being destroyed for purely domestic political purposes.
And he was doing it with a meeting looming with a man who did as much or more than any American president to support the Jewish state since Harry Truman made the U.S. the first to recognize Israel in 1948.
It’s diplomacy. It’s politics. It’s understandable.
And it’s bizarre.
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