Dear Joe Biden, please retire for the sake of the free world.

You and your administration are making the world, the U.S. notwithstanding, a much more dangerous place.

U.S. President Joe Biden (left) with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu (courtesy: The White House)

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Dear Joe Biden,

I was thinking about your fellow Democrat, Senator Chuck Schumer and his speech last week on the floor of Congress — you know, the one in which he demanded that Israel should hold elections during an existential, multi-front war on at least three of its borders.

An interesting suggestion on Schumer’s part, because an election right now would be a disaster for Israel, since it would put the Jewish state in an even more vulnerable position.

What a great Jew that Chuck Schumer is, kicking the Jewish state while it is already down.

As one social media user quipped: “Israel has had nine elections since the last Palestinian parliamentary election in 2006. Senator Schumer thinks a tenth Israeli election is just what is needed to solve everything. Anyone who thinks Israelis would vote for a prime minister who campaigns on allowing a Palestinian state is too stupid to give any advice.”¹

And, as one U.S. politician put it, the Democrats “hyperventilate” about foreign interference in their own democracy, so calling for the removal of the democratically elected leader of Israel seems peculiar to say the least.

We then discovered that Schumer is facing a challenge to his leadership from Chris Van Hollen, the junior Maryland senator who has established himself as a bitter critic of Israel and attracted wide support from “progressives.” Thus, Schumer was trying to convince progressives that he, too, can criticize Israel.²

But my problem is less with Schumer and more with you, Biden. And I write that as someone who has exclusively voted Democrat my entire adult life.

I keep hearing that we, Israelis and Jews, should appreciate you for all the weapons you keep sending Israel — and we do — but if you think that sending us weapons while you and your administration disparage Israel, spread untruths and blatant lies about the Jewish state, and talk out of both sides of your mouth ad nauseam, that is not support. That is hypocrisy and an unhealthy relationship for us to be in with you.

As a matter of fact, it was you of all people who in 1992 said at an AIPAC conference:

“The absurd notion that publicly vilifying Israel will somehow change its policy — who in the hell do we think we’re dealing with?”

Exactly, Joe, who in the hell do you think you are dealing with?

I am sure you recall that, in 1982, Israel’s then-prime minister Menachem Begin told you, a young senator at the time, in response to you threatening American aid to the Jewish state:

“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.”

You are an 81-year-old president, though. Your memory might not be the sharpest, so let’s focus on the present: Your administration is doing so much harm to the American-Israeli relationship, especially one to which Israel has and still contributes greatly. Both Americans and Israelis will have to pay the price for years to come because of your destructive foreign policy in this regard.

We are now going into month six of this war, which should have been the end or close to it, but you have put so much pressure on the Israeli military to prove and confirm every little facet, that it has bogged Israel down from responsibly defending itself, defeating Hamas in Gaza, and returning our hostages.

You and your administration’s attitude has become so pernicious that sometimes I wonder if we are fighting Hamas, or if we are fighting the Biden administration. And your sloppy, arrogant, and contradictory “doctrine” during this Israel-Hamas war has been so awful, it is prolonging this conflict and likely resulting in even more Palestinian and Israeli deaths, while you and your talking heads yap about “humanitarian aid” and Islamophobia.

The reality is that you have totally missed the boat about the Middle East geopolitical situation, your own domestic politics, and Israeli society. It has become a disturbing shit show: The more you question and vilify Israel, the more you destabilize the Middle East; the more you make life worse for Palestinians, Israelis, and Jewish Americans; and the more you look like an incompetent, pompous asshole.

You can bitch and scream about Donald Trump cozying up to neo-Nazis all you want, but the reality is that antisemitism has soared to unprecedented heights in the U.S. under your watch. Since October 7th, you have tremendously failed to protect Jewish Americans — who, oh by the way, have regularly contributed more to the U.S. than many of those America-despising Arab and Muslim Americans who your party is suddenly obsessed with.

The absurdity is that you and your administration are making the world, the U.S. notwithstanding, a much more dangerous place, by signaling to Hamas, Hezbollah, Qatar, and ultimately Iran that they get to call the shots and run the show. There should be zero-tolerance for terrorist organizations and their state sponsors, as well as those who support them. (And yes, Hamas does represent a whole lot of Palestinians, contrary to your ill-informed viewpoint.)

As you yourself said at that same AIPAC conference, “Why is there any incentive for the Arabs to make any compromise in the peace talks, if they know they need only wait for the United States to do their bargaining for them?”

I get it, oil and gas are also important and you do not want to stir too much of the Middle East’s pot, but if you enable countries and terrorists by acquiescing to them, they will ultimately burn down a whole lot more than the aforementioned bridges, and oil and gas will be but a mere afterthought. See: October 7th.

Thus, I must ask the rhetorical question: What kind of commander-in-chief are you? To be candid, your inability to lead during a potentially shifting global world order makes you completely unfit to be president — regardless of who will be your opponent in November’s presidential election. Just as Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, is chiefly responsible for October 7th, you are chiefly responsible for America’s domestic and foreign affairs.

Across the Atlantic Ocean, you are holding Israel to standards that the U.S. and other Western countries never remotely meet — not least because these standards are nearly impossible for any country to meet, given the circumstances of dense urban warfare and an enemy that knows no moral, ethical, or humane bounds. I am all for accountability, but if you are going to incessantly preach it, you should also measure up to it.

Except that you cannot measure up to it, because you are asking Israel to do and be what no country can. Like when your Secretary of State, Antony Blinken, said last week: “Protecting civilians, getting people the assistance they need, that has to be job number one, even as they do what is necessary to defend the country and to deal with the threat posed by Hamas.”

In what world has the U.S. — or any other country for that matter — made protecting the enemy’s civilians “job number one”? Someone should tell Blinken to stop opening his mouth. He is making the U.S. look cowardly, confused, and incapable. Every respectable, professional army’s primary duty — including the commander-in-chief’s — is to protect its citizens first and foremost.

Even then, John Spencer (the United States Military Academy’s urban war strategist who served two tours in Iraq) recently visited Israel and wrote that “Israel has taken more measures to avoid needless civilian harm than virtually any other nation that’s fought an urban war,” including the U.S. in Iraq and Afghanistan.

And don’t you remember, when you were Vice President, that your superior Barack Obama sent U.S. military officials to Israel to learn how the Israelis keep civilian casualties exceptionally low, as the Obama administration was concerned about rising civilian deaths in the Syrian civil war?

Naturally, though, many Democrats will read this letter and bizarrely interpret it as an endorsement of Donald Trump. It is not. If anything, this letter is actually a vote for the Democratic Party, which many Jewish Americans have historically supported and still would if you were not overly preoccupied with winning the votes of a vicious, loud minority of “pro-Palestinian” thugs who are undemocratic and anti-American.

This is why you must retire, because you are running the Democratic Party into the ground. It is time for you to make way for a more competent, creative, and credible candidate in time for November’s presidential election.

Israel does not just need a resounding win; so too do the Democrats if they want to stay in the White House, and keep Trump out of it. This is why you must retire — not just for Israel’s sake, but for America and the free world’s as well.

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1. Elder of Ziyon on X

2. Mark Dubowitz on X