A Not-So-Subtle Message From Bibi Netanyahu

The import of the photograph just released by Prime Minister Netanyahu will be lost on no one. It shows the Israeli leader and Beijing’s ambassador savoring a new book by China’s party boss, Xi Jinping. Mr. Netanyahu, under attack by the White House and its allies in the press, clearly released the photo as a signal to President Biden, who is campaigning against Mr. Netanyahu’s reforms in Israel as a step toward anti-democratic tyranny.Nor is this the first time that Mr. Netanyahu has used a well-placed photograph to make his point. In 2012, our future publisher, Dovid Efune, wrote about Mr. Netanyahu’s signaling as he set out for America amid tension over President Obama’s wooing of Iran. Mr. Netanyahu had posted to his Facebook page a photo of him on his airplane, preparing, with an aide, his UN speech. Clearly visible on the table was Henry Kissinger’s latest book — “On China.”The message was clear then, as it is now. Even the Times has noticed that Mr. Biden’s treatment of Mr. Netanyahu is in contrast to the accolades Mr. Biden has showered on such other world leaders as President Lopez Obrador, who has assaulted Mexico’s Supreme Court. At Warsaw Mr. Biden praised President Duda. He hosted Prime Minister Modi of India for a White House dinner, and President Erdogan of Turkey was warmly cited for his “leadership.”It is not our purpose here to grade these countries’ dedication to liberty or democracy. Nor is the issue in this editorial the question of which side is right in the tumult over Israel’s Supreme Court. Israel’s democracy is sorting that out. Time and again, however, Mr. Biden disagrees with the government in Jerusalem. He sees one side of the Israeli debate — the one that has won a recent election — as a threat to democracy. He is ready to man the barricades to defeat it. Even the prospect of a chance meeting with Mr. Netanyahu at the UN in September was dangled merely as bait, promised so long as the Knesset legislation was buried. Now the president’s whisperers tell reporters that a meeting between Israeli and American leaders might be off, even as Mr. Netanyahu confirms a trip to Beijing. As Mr. Biden once unsuccessfully did to the Saudi crown prince,* Mr. Biden seems eager to turn Mr. Netanyahu into a “pariah.”No wonder the Israeli premier warmly received the Chinese ambassador — even though he knows that his own country is an integral part of the Free World. A recent Pew poll found that 87 percent of Israelis view America positively — second only to Poland in fondness for us Yanks. There is no danger that Bibi would turn his back on America, even as he signals to Mr. Biden that America shouldn’t turn its back on Israel or its government. Some in Washington justify Mr. Biden’s uneven approach to world leaders as a variety of realpolitik. He needs Mr. Modi as an ally amid the global jockeying against Communist China. Mexico’s AMLO could help ameliorate the immigration crisis unfolding at the border. Poland is an ally in Ukraine. Mr. Erdogan’s authoritarianism could be forgiven as long as Sweden gets into NATO. And where does that leave the Jewish state? The importance of Israel as an ally, according to this thinking, is diminishing. Mr. Biden, in this light, is smart to toss a bone to the growing anti-Zionist camp in his party. Yet, that was exactly the thinking that prompted Mr. Biden to throw Saudi Arabia — once seen as a reliable ally in a hostile region — under the bus. As America’s energy needs turn away from reliance on fossil fuels, Mr. Biden appeared to believe, alliances with desert despots can end.Reality and high inflation — especially alarming in the form of soaring gasoline prices — then intervened, and Mr. Biden was forced to travel to Riyadh for a fist bump and a grovel. Sooner or later he will realize that America’s alliance with Israel is indispensable. A scholar of American history, Mr. Netanyahu is not about to adopt Chairman Xi’s doctrines. This is cold comfort considering the harm Mr. Biden is doing to America’s alliances.________* This was warned against early last year in a widely commented-on dispatch by our Caroline Vik.

A Not-So-Subtle Message From Bibi Netanyahu

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