President Joe Biden hosted Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at the White House on Thursday, likely marking the last time the two leaders will meet while both are in office, given Biden’s decision not to run again.
Biden had denied Netanyahu a White House meeting for nearly a year after the latter won Israel’s elections in November 2022 — an extraordinary snub, motivated by the antipathy Democrats have for Israel’s statesman.
They finally met in New York in September 2023, amid talk of a possible Saudi-Israeli peace deal that would have been a major diplomatic accomplishment for Biden. But the Hamas terror attack of October 7 disrupted that process.
Biden traveled to Israel in October to show solidarity with Israel — then began criticizing Israel’s conduct of the war to appease the left, and backed Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer’s (D-NY) calls for Netanyahu to be ousted.
(Netanyahu and Schumer had a frosty meeting on Wednesday, and Netanyahu would go on to ignore Schumer when he passed the New York Democrat on the House floor.)
While the 90-minute meeting was off-camera, Netanyahu issued a statement describing a tribute he had left in a guest book that he signed in the Roosevelt Room at the White House:
Mr. President, we’ve known each other for 40 years, and you’ve known every prime minister for 50 years, since Golda Meir.
So, from a proud Jewish Zionist to a proud Irish-American Zionist – I thank you for 50 years of public service and 50 years of support for the State of Israel.
I look forward to discussing with you today and working with you in the months ahead on the great issues before us.
Netanyahu is also meeting privately with Vice President Kamala Harris, Biden’s replacement as the presumptive Democratic Party presidential nominee, at the White House. Harris is not particularly pro-Israel and has often sought to appease the anti-Israel left within her party.
Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News and the host of Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot on Sunday evenings from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET (4 p.m. to 7 p.m. PT). He is the author of “”The Agenda: What Trump Should Do in His First 100 Days,” available for pre-order on Amazon. He is also the author of “The Trumpian Virtues: The Lessons and Legacy of Donald Trump’s Presidency,” now available on Audible. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.
