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By: Jackson Richman
President Joe Biden criticized Israel in a recent interview, describing the Cabinet of the Jewish state’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, as “extremist.”
In an interview with CNN’s Fareed Zakaria that aired on Sunday, Mr. Biden acknowledged that Mr. Netanyahu is dealing with the factions in his coalition, but the president also alluded to some members of the prime minister’s Cabinet.
“This is one of the most extremist members of cabinets that I’ve seen. I go all the way back to Golda Meir and—you know, not that she was extreme, but I go back to that era,” he said.
Ms. Meir was prime minister of Israel from 1969 to 1974, and Mr. Biden began his first term in the U.S. Senate in 1973.
While Mr. Biden did not name any particular Cabinet members, those who have come under fire for being extreme include National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir and Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich.
Mr. Ben-Gvir, in his current role, has on multiple occasions visited the Temple Mount in Jerusalem, where the Holy Jewish Temple once stood. It’s now home to the Muslim site of the Dome of the Rock. While Jews are allowed on the Temple Mount, they are prohibited from praying there.
Mr. Ben-Gvir has made statements viewed by some as divisive, including comments critical of LGBT pride events in Tel Aviv.
“The homosexuals are my brothers and the lesbians are my sisters,” he said on Israeli TV’s Channel 12 in June. “I’ve always said that but I’m against walking around in the streets in underwear and I’m against being coerced.”
Mr. Smotrich, while viewed as not as extreme as Mr. Ben-Gvir, has made remarks viewed as outside the mainstream. For example, he said in March that “there is no such thing as a Palestinian people.”
Mr. Biden has been at odds with Mr. Netanyahu at least since March, when the former said he has no plans to invite the latter to the White House “in the near term” due to Mr. Netanyahu’s efforts to change Israel’s judiciary, especially its Supreme Court, that have prompted widespread protests in the Jewish state’s streets.
Mr. Biden’s comments on Israel come ahead of his reported meeting later in July with Israeli President Isaac Herzog. Mr. Herzog will be in Washington to address Congress on July 19 in commemoration of the 75th anniversary of the founding of Israel.
The U.S. president’s remarks also come following Israel conducting a raid in Jenin, a city notorious for harboring alleged Palestinian terrorists.
In the CNN interview, Mr. Biden did not only criticize Israel’s government. He also spoke about the Palestinian Authority (PA) and said it “has lost its credibility, not necessarily because of what Israel has done, just because it’s—it’s just lost its credibility” and has “created a vacuum for extremism in among the Palestinians. The [Palestinian Liberation Army], they are—there are some very extreme elements.”
Mr. Biden went on to suggest that Israel is not wholly responsible for ending the decades-long conflict.
“It’s not all Israel now, in the West Bank, all Israel’s problem,” he said. “But they are a part of the problem. And particularly those individuals in the cabinet who say, ‘they have no right, we could settle anywhere we want, they have no right to be here,’ etc.”
