It was not the best of times for an Israeli leader to meet the American president.
President Biden was in the midst of turmoil for his mishandling of the withdrawal from Afghanistan.
Biden was being scorched here and around the world for his failure to stand by our commitments.
“Can any friend ever trust the United States again?” So ran the headlines.
Along comes Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett, representing America’s best friend in the Middle East. It was to be a routine visit.
How would Biden botch this one?
Well, he didn’t. So far. The meetings went well, though it is too early in the game to know if Biden could be trusted should Israel find itself in crisis and in need of US moral support.
We will always remember Biden’s Afghanistan.
Or…in Bogie terms…we’ll always have Afghanistan.
Nor will we forget Obama, who had no time, no patience, no affection for the Jewish State. Through it all, Biden was vice president; Netanyahu was prime minister.
So this is a different time, a partly different cast, and Biden has a chance to prove he is his own man. Or that he is a man, period.
Bennett left satisfied. “Biden loves Israel,” he declared.
That could be true. It was true of old-time Liberals. Biden used to be one of them, but then he turned Woke.
Can he be turning back again to embrace the Old Time Religion?
Then about Israel…what’s not to love?
What is there to say except that Israel is not Afghanistan, thank G-d.
How glaring the difference between a failed Muslim state and a successful Jewish State. How wide the gap between a thriving democracy, which is Israel, and a repressive tribe versus tribe Islamist regime, which is Afghanistan. No wonder Biden was glad to meet Bennett even, or especially, at this tough time. What a relief!
What a pleasure to meet a leader who is not needy, not here for a handout, only a handshake, and whose nation has not plunged the United States down a 20-year quagmire.
Vive la difference?
Thousands of US troops fought and died for the Islamic regime of Afghanistan. Not even a single US soldier or marine was ever asked to fight Israel’s battles.
Nor has Israel sought or received anything remotely close to the trillions of dollars the United States wasted on Afghanistan.
Leaders come and go. This much is indelible – our common heritage based on the Hebrew Bible.
That’s enough to keep us safe as partners against the unsteady hand of any US president.
New York-based bestselling American novelist Jack Engelhard writes regularly for Arutz Sheva.
He wrote the worldwide book-to-movie bestseller “Indecent Proposal,” the authoritative newsroom epic, “The Bathsheba Deadline,” followed by his coming-of-age classics, “The Girls of Cincinnati,” and, the Holocaust-to-Montreal memoir, “Escape from Mount Moriah.” For that and his 1960s epic “The Days of the Bitter End,” contemporaries have hailed him “The last Hemingway, a writer without peer, and the
