President Joe Biden draws a direct line from his visits to Dachau, the infamous concentration camp, to the recent Hamas attacks on Israel. In a poignant speech from the White House, Biden reflects on the painful memories of the Holocaust and the scars of antisemitism.
Then-Vice President Joseph Biden visits the Hall of Names at the Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial in Jerusalem, March 9, 2010. President Joe Biden has spent decades as a stalwart supporter of Israel, a connection rooted in dinner table conversations with his father about the Holocaust. Now his devotion is back in the spotlight after last week’s Hamas attacks that caused the largest loss of Jewish life in a single day since the Holocaust.
Biden and his granddaughter Finnegan tour the Nazi concentration camp in Dachau, Germany, with Max Mannheimer, a 95-year-old Holocaust survivor, on February 8, 2015, the person pushing the wheelchair is unidentified. Biden’s support for Israel has remained solid over the years even as some corners of his Democratic Party have urged a more critical approach toward the country and its decades-long occupation of Palestinian territory, which is widely viewed as illegal by the international community.
Instead, Biden’s focus has been on demonstrating “unshakable” solidarity with Israel, including his remarks during a White House meeting Wednesday with Jewish leaders to talk about combating antisemitism. Amy Spitalnick, a leader of the Jewish Council for Public Affairs who attended the Wednesday meeting, said it’s clear that Biden “feels it in his kishkes, as my grandmother would have said,” using a Yiddish word for gut.It’s a lesson that Biden traces to his father, who he describes as having a “preoccupation with the Holocaust.
Then-Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir speaks at the United Nations, October 22, 1970. President Joe Biden has met every Israeli prime minister over more than five decades in elected office, starting with Golda Meir in 1973. In Biden’s first trip to the country after being elected senator, he said Meir sensed his concern about the country’s future.
Biden also went to Jerusalem during the trip, and his remarks there were a window into how he has tried to balance Israel’s imperiled beginnings and its current status as a regional power. Frank Jannuzi, who worked for Biden when he was chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, remembered how the senator gave explicit guidance that any disagreements with Israel should be handled quietly.
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