Biden Attacks the First Amendment: "Were there No Israel, there Wouldn’t Be a Jew in the World that Is Safe"

At the White House Hanukkah party, Biden said: “Were there no Israel, there wouldn’t be a Jew in the world that is safe,” as he reaffirmed support for Israel’s assault on the Palestinians in Gaza.

I first noticed the formulation by Biden in the month before Oct. 7. On Sept. 20, Biden said to Netanyahu: "I think that without Israel, there’s not a Jew in the world who’s secure. I think Israel is essential."

Biden also made related statements when he went to Israel, quoting alleged statements Golda Meir said to him of Jews in Israel: “We have a secret weapon here in Israel. … We have no place else to go.”

He said it again around the same time in the US: “Were there no Israel, no Jew in the world would be ultimately safe,” Biden said. “It’s the only ultimate guarantee.”

This mantra from Biden is in fact an assault on Constitutional Rights he is sworn to uphold. What keeps Jews and other religious minorities in the US safe is the First Amendment, and the nature of US society, not the existence of a foreign power—particularly one that itself practices apartheid and conducts war crimes.

Moreover, this may hide a dynamic beneath the surface of how Israel functions.

In fact, lots of Israeli Jews actually want to go elsewhere. Just a quick internet search found this piece from the Times of Israel from 2016: “Most Israelis want a passport to prosperity abroad.” There’s also this 2011 piece from Foreign Policy: “The million missing Israelis: Over more than six decades of statehood, successive Israeli governments have repeatedly stressed the centrality of Jewish immigration and the Law of Return of all Jews to Israel for the well-being, security, and survival of the nation. Yet while much is published on Jewish immigration to Israel, considerably less information is available about Jewish emigration…”

I’ve been to historic Palestine, where my father was born and raised, several times. I’ve not spent as much time as I’d like, but some. And some of that time was with Israelis. From my limited interaction with them, they are not a happy bunch.

Netanyahu tells Israelis they must kill Palestinians. “Amalekites” he calls Palestinians, invoking a demented Biblical edict. As Hamas fighters kill Israeli soldiers who seem far more adept at slaughtering civilians than taking out men with guns and rocket launchers.

That the White House cares not a wit for Palestinian lives is clear to see, but there’s evidence they don’t care about Israeli and US lives as well. The White House for their Hanukkah party invited not a single family member of US citizens in Gaza. They have in some respects effectively been silenced, as Israeli spy Jonathan Pollard crassly called on Israeli family members of captives to be jailed to shut them up.

The goal is the slaughter of Palestinians to continue the settler colonial project that Israel in its current form is. It’s not to protect Jews. It’s to utilized some Jews to continue the imperial project.