Israel should not be sitting by a telephone awaiting the first call from President Joe Biden.
Israel should not be sitting by a telephone awaiting the first call from President Joe Biden. Israel is a busy country. It has policies to implement, wars to fight, vaccines to distribute, agreements to sign, visitors to welcome, critics to reject, elections to hold. Sitting by the phone is a luxury it cannot afford, an indulgence as far from its character as can be imagined. And yet, it gives the impression that it is sitting, biting its nails, awaiting Biden’s call. This is pathetic and harmful. Let Biden bite his nails. Let him be the one waiting to make the call. In 1981, Prime Minister Menachem Begin pointedly asked U.S. Ambassador Sam Lewis, “Are we a vassal state of yours? Are we a banana republic?” The implied message was that Israel is no such thing. Well, if it isn’t – and this could be a matter for a more elaborate discussion – why is it waiting with such impatience for “the call”? Of course, there is a flip side to this story of Biden not yet calling Netanyahu. To understand this side, it is useful to go back a decade, and be reminded of a president’s decision not to visit Israel as he was traveling to the Middle East. It was Barack Obama, who visited Cairo and Riad, Turkey and Iraq, and yet avoided Israel. As his defenders were quick to point out, Obama was hardly the first president to not visit Israel (he did visit, eventually).
