Joe Biden's policies, positions, and persona — and how his track record and policies on Israel are still relevant four decades later
For close to four decades, Joe Biden has been climbing his way to the top of American politics, consummately skilled at being all things to all people. But that tends to obfuscate his real policies and positions, which require closer examination, especially as the Democratic nomination is all but sewed up for him
Some days are more memorable than others. Sunday, June 7, 1981, was one of them.
For Iraq, it is a day that will live in infamy. For Israel, it was a day of military daring, when Prime Minister Menachem Begin ordered the preemptive air strike that destroyed Iraq’s nuclear reactor at Osirak, turning an existential threat against Israel to dust and ashes. For me, as a young journalist in Delaware, it afforded an up-front glimpse into Joe Biden’s true feelings on Israel, in his role as a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. Covering Biden soon became part of my steady beat as news director at WDOV Radio in Dover, the capital of Delaware. Little did I imagine at the time how both the nuclear threat to Israel and Joe Biden’s track record and policies on Israel would still be relevant four decades later.
News traveled slower in the 1980s, and Israel initially kept mum about its lethal strike on Iraq’s nuclear plant at Osirak. It was only a day later that the Associated Press teletype machine in our newsroom spewed out its initial reports of the surprise attack. But when it started clanging and clattering, it did so with great fanfare.
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