WASHINGTON — President Joe Biden ended his reelection campaign and endorsed his vice president, Kamala Harris, taking off the Democratic presidential ballot one of the country’s longest-serving and staunchest supporters of Israel.
If Harris is nominated and wins in November, she would mark two firsts for the United States: first woman president, and first president to have a Jewish spouse. Her husband, Doug Emhoff, has been an outspoken advocate against antisemitism since becoming the inaugural second gentleman nearly four years ago.
Biden’s exit comes on the eve of a visit to Washington by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu as U.S.-led efforts to end Israel’s war with Hamas are entering a critical phase.
Biden, 81, has been under pressure from fellow Democrats, including reportedly top congressional leaders, since a disastrous debate performance against his rival, former President Donald Trump, in June. The pressure mounted as polls showed Biden tanking, a trajectory accelerated after Trump survived an assassination attempt.
“It has been the greatest honor of my life to serve as your President,” Biden said in a letter posted Sunday on social media. “And while it has been my intention to seek reelection, I believe it is in the best interest of my party and the country for me to stand down and to focus solely on fulfilling my duties as President for the remainder of my term.”
Biden said he would speak later this week but followed up his letter with an endorsement of Harris, a bid to unite Democrats and refocus the party on defeating Trump.
“My very first decision as the party nominee in 2020 was to pick Kamala Harris as my Vice President,” he said. “And it’s been the best decision I’ve made. Today I want to offer my full support and endorsement for Kamala to be the nominee of our party this year. Democrats — it’s time to come together and beat Trump. Let’s do this.”
Netanyahu was set to meet Biden on Tuesday, a day ahead of his speech to a joint meeting of Congress. (The meeting had been delayed a day prior to Biden’s announcement because the president is isolating with a case of COVID-19.)
American negotiators say they are closer than ever to brokering a deal that would bring about a temporary ceasefire and the release of hostages still held by Hamas since its deadly raid of Israel on Oct. 7 launched the war.
The hostage-for-ceasefire deal as well as how to stop the war from expanding to other parts of the region were on the agenda, Israeli officials have said. Over the weekend Israeli combat aircraft hit Yemen after a device launched by the Houthi rebel group, which has declared its solidarity with Hamas, killed one person and injured 10 in Tel Aviv. Also simmering close to a boil is the Israel-Lebanon border, where Hezbollah has been firing into Israel since Oct. 8.
Israeli officials have noted and appreciated Biden’s decades-long ties to the country, a hallmark of once-close relations between Israel and Democrats at a time that younger Americans feel less attachment to Israel.
“I want to extend my heartfelt thanks to President Joe Biden for his friendship and steadfast support for the Israeli people over his decades long career,” Israeli President Isaac Herzog said in a statement. “As the first U.S. President to visit Israel in wartime, as a recipient of the Israeli Presidential Medal of Honor, and as a true ally of the Jewish people, he is a symbol of the unbreakable bond between our two peoples.”
Biden has held fast against some progressives in his party who want to cut defense assistance to Israel, and even as pressure mounted for him to resign, he would remark on his affection for Israel — stemming from his Roman Catholic father’s insistence that its creation was redemptive for the West in the wake of the Holocaust.
In a recent NBC interview, he explained why he saw himself as a Zionist, and in a lengthy press conference staged at the end of a NATO summit — and aimed at showing that he was still in control — he recalled, as he has many times, how a 1973 meeting with then-Prime Minister Golda Meir was formative. In the same press conference, he expressed frustration at what he depicted as Netanyahu’s recalcitrance in resisting American pleas to come to a deal and to facilitating the entry of humanitarian assistance into Gaza.
Jews remain prominent among Democratic donors, and many — including some of the biggest givers — went into shock after the debate and joined in calling for Biden to get out. A number of the Jewish Democrats told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency that they saw a Democratic win in November as existential: Trump and his associations with the far right did not portend an America where religious and other minorities would thrive, they said.
“We have to do everything we can to prevent Donald Trump’s election,” a leading Biden Victory Fund Finance Committee member told JTA in the days after the debate. “I’ve been hearing the same thing pretty uniformly” that other Jewish donors “believe that Biden should get out.”
The fundraiser added, “Jewish voters that I talked to overwhelmingly are frightened to death of a Donald Trump presidency, both as Americans and as supporters of Israel and that supersedes anything else.”
This liberal Jewish cohort was not comforted by the Republican convention last week in Milwaukee, where Trump chose as his running mate Ohio Sen. J.D. Vance, an isolationist who has obstructed funding for Ukraine in its effort to repel Russia’s invasion — but who says he makes an exception for Israel.
One of the headliners on the final night was populist talk show host Tucker Carlson, who was key in persuading Trump to select Vance, and who has dabbled openly with antisemitic tropes. Carlson’s influence unnerved even some Republican Jews at the convention.
How Israel-U.S. relations fare as Harris’s star rises is an open question. Israeli officials note that Emhoff, the first Jewish spouse of a president or a vice president, has exhibited deep sympathy for Jewish students on campuses unsettled by extreme expressions of pro-Palestinian protest. They note that Harris as a senator was close to the pro-Israel community, but that she has played “bad cop” on Israel to Biden’s good cop in recent months.
Just how much the Democrats or the November election will focus on Israel is another question. Already, leading Republicans are calling on Biden to resign immediately and say they plan to challenge any nominating process that the Democrats undertake.
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