https://mishpacha.com/the-biden-i-know/
AJC president Jack Rosen has been hobnobbing with the high-and-mighty for over a quarter century, pressing his case for Jewish concerns and leveraging ties to benefit Israel’s security. Yet even as he admits that Trump has been a faithful friend of Israel, he still thinks his close friend, Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden, is the Jewish state’s best bet for the next four years. What does he know that we don’t?
“There can’t be too many presidents,” he says, “who are more pro-Israel than Trump — maybe Truman who helped create the State of Israel, you might say.”
But he points to the withdrawal of US troops from Syria last year, ordered by Trump, as something that endangered Israel.
“At the end of the day, moving the capital to Jerusalem may be symbolic, it may have some religious components to it, but there’s nothing in it that moves the problems in any better direction,” Rosen declares determinedly. “It’s good, it’s terrific, it needed to happen.
“On the other hand, you move troops out of Syria, you now have Iran on [Israel’s] border,” Rosen says. “Instead of the US controlling the skies on your border, you have the Russians. So Israel has to contend with Iran on its border and the Russians in the skies. So the end judgment on this will be, as good as Trump is for Israel — and his heart is in the right place — what was the outcome? It’s a balancing act. You get the embassy, you get the Golan Heights, but you also get Iran on the border.”
It’s a precarious argument: The troop withdrawal from Syria ultimately did not prove detrimental for the US, for a variety of reasons. Trump took out Revolutionary Guard head Qassem Soleimani; Tehran is buffeted by tightening sanctions and mass protests; the coronavirus outbreak devastated the Islamic Republic; and a fierce campaign of Israeli airstrikes pushed Iran back from the border and almost out of Syria.
Nevertheless, Jack Rosen is doggedly insistent that Joe Biden’s personal makeup makes him the better choice for Jewish voters.
“I had him at my house last September,” Rosen said. “He got up, and one of the first things he said was, ‘Jack and I disagree on Iran.’ The thing about him is, you could disagree with his policies — I don’t agree with everything he says — but he still has a certain respect for you. Many in the Jewish community, certainly in the Orthodox Jewish community, disagree with his policies, but I think he’ll respect your opinion on it. He has a soul and will respect your pain.
