Biden: I’ll Reverse Trump, Start Sending Money To Palestinians Again
Speaking to the
Jewish Telegraphic Agency, former Vice President Joe Biden said that if he were elected president, he would start sending financial aid to the Palestinian Arabs, reversing the Trump administration’s policy of revoking the aid because it had been used to finance terrorism.
Biden stated, “A priority now for the cause of Israeli-Palestinian peace should be resuming our dialogue with the Palestinians and pressing Israel not to take actions that make a two-state solution impossible. I will reopen the U.S. consulate in East Jerusalem, find a way to reopen the PLO’s diplomatic mission in Washington, and resume the decades-long economic and security assistance efforts to the Palestinians that the Trump Administration stopped.”
On March 23, 2018, President Trump signed into law the Taylor Force Act, which was named for a U.S. citizen murdered by a Palestinian terrorist in a March 2016 attack in Jaffa.
Fox News noted, “Taylor Force was a former U.S. Army officer and West Point graduate who had served honorably in Afghanistan and Iraq, heroically risking his life in defense of America … The Taylor Force Act directs the State Department to certify that the Palestinian Authority has ceased payments to terrorists and their families and to report to Congress any violations. Congress is then legally required to
withhold funds until the egregious violations are corrected.”
In 1982 Biden reportedly banged on a desk and berated Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin that if Israel continued building settlements in Judea and Samaria, the U.S. would cut off financial aid. Begin fired back:
Don’t threaten us with cutting off your aid. It will not work. I am not a Jew with trembling knees. I am a proud Jew with 3,700 years of civilized history. Nobody came to our aid when we were dying in the gas chambers and ovens. Nobody came to our aid when we were striving to create our country. We paid for it. We fought for it. We died for it. We will stand by our principles. We will defend them. And, when necessary, we will die for them again, with or without your aid.
This desk is designed for writing, not for fists. Don’t threaten us with slashing aid. Do you think that because the U.S. lends us money it is entitled to impose on us what we must do? We are grateful for the assistance we have received, but we are not to be threatened. I am a proud Jew. Three thousand years of culture are behind me, and you will not frighten me with threats. Take note: we do not want a single soldier of yours to die for us.
In November 2019, Biden was asked if he would reverse President Trump’s decision to move the U.S. Embassy to Jerusalem. He
replied,“Not now. I wouldn’t reverse it. I wouldn’t have done it in the first place.”
Biden’s embrace of the Palestinians stands in line with pro-Palestinian, anti-Israel organizations like J Street, which organized a
letter from 30 former top national security officials in Democratic administrations stating:
The actions of the Trump administration have upended decades of bipartisan U.S. support for a negotiated two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. In his “Deal of the Century,” President Trump has provided the Israeli government with a green light to annex all West Bank settlements and the Jordan Valley and maintain its occupation in perpetuity, making a sovereign, independent and contiguous Palestinian state impossible.
Biden: I’ll Reverse Trump, Start Sending Money To Palestinians Again