by Rabbi Steven Pruzansky(First published at Israelnationalnews.com)Are good and decent people so easily manipulated?
Even as President Joe Biden’s advancing senescence was so obvious to impartial observers that his aides and handlers kept him under wraps for years, allowing him only rare and heavily scripted encounters with the media and public, Americans were being reassured by those closest to him as well as the media types who masquerade as objective journalists that Biden was sharp as a tack and nimble as a gymnast. Almost all Democrat politicians and foreign diplomats played along even as they privately voiced concerns about his mental acuity.
This is no laughing matter. Global crises abound, America’s leadership is vital, and whoever has been running the country for the last 3 ½ years has made a mess of it – domestically and internationally. And the American people are still being played for fools. The same people who for years said that Biden is perfectly well abruptly decided that he is perfectly unwell and have now decided that Kamala Harris is a perfect successor. It is even within reason that whoever talked Biden into engaging in an unprecedented pre-convention debate with Donald Trump knew that Biden would crash and burn and, as such, easier to disgorge from the campaign.
To add to the contempt the administration must have for American citizens, Biden’s decision to drop out has been attributed to no specific cause except a desire to “pass the torch to a new generation.” But what changed from July 12, 2024, when Biden was committed to his candidacy, and July 14, 2024, when he announced his withdrawal from the race? The glaring problem, necessitating the lies and obfuscation, is that if Biden admits to a physical and mental condition that makes his candidacy untenable, it should be his remaining president for the next six months untenable as well.
It is worth noting that as Joe Biden began his presidential aspirations with a flagrant act of plagiarism, he ends it with another act of plagiarism. His 1987 campaign foundered when it was revealed that he, oddly, had filched then British Labor Party leader’s Neil Kinnock’s personal biography almost verbatim. Similarly, his campaign ends with Biden’s desire, repeated endlessly by every Democrat who received the memo, to “pass the torch to a new generation.” Anyone with even slight historical memory recalls that line from President John F. Kennedy’s eloquent inaugural speech, where he intoned “Let the word go forth from this time and place to friend and foe alike, that the torch has been passed to a new generation of Americans…” Really?
Perhaps if Biden had cited Kennedy, he might have brought redemption to the world, in line with Masechet Megilah 15a. Another missed opportunity.
It is indeed strange that there is little outcry from Americans about being duped for so long, maybe because so many who were duped for so long were duped wittingly, with a vested interest in being duped for as long as possible.
Nevertheless, the Biden deceptions have not spared Israelis either.
In Biden’s withdrawal address, he stated that in the last six months of his presidency, he would like, among other things, to “end cancer as we know it” and “bring peace and security to the Middle East.” At least he is thinking big, if not a bit fancifully.
But he also stated that he is “going to call for Supreme Court reform because this is critical to our democracy.” Biden wants to reform the US Supreme Court, in some unspecified ways, because he disagrees with their rulings. Perhaps he would like to pack the Court with additional justices more to his liking. Perhaps he would like to change their method of selection, the extent of their jurisdiction, or place the current justices under greater Congressional scrutiny, notwithstanding that these three proposals would require a constitutional amendment that will never happen.
Are we, too, so easily manipulated? Isn’t this the same Joe Biden (or his mouthpieces) who lectured and hectored Israel last year that our proposed judicial reforms were a threat to democracy in Israel? Didn’t Biden declare his opposition to judicial reform in Israel – including the selection of judges and limiting their jurisdiction – and state “the need for the broadest possible consensus” or the reforms should not take place?
Didn’t Biden proclaim “that shared democratic values have always been and must remain a hallmark of the U.S.-Israel relationship,” implying – as tendentious leftist Israeli “journalists” opined – that judicial reform in Israel will imperil the US-Israel alliance, as the US will invariably conclude that Israel is no longer a democracy (if Supreme Court justices do not have unlimited jurisdiction on every issue in Israeli society and insist on choosing their successors as well)?
Didn’t Biden term “unfortunate” the Knesset passage of the repeal of the “reasonableness clause” that allowed Israel’s High Court to base its decisions on personal whims and predilections and not at all on laws or legislation passed by majority vote in Israel’s Parliament?
That minor modification, since annulled by Israel’s undemocratic Supreme Court, was nonetheless called by one Congressman, Jerry Nadler, a “dark day for Israeli democracy.” Has Nadler deplored Biden’s attempt at judicial reform in the US? Of course not, and don’t hold your breath that he ever will.
Didn’t Israelis, even some good and decent people who supported judicial reform, allow themselves to be bamboozled into thinking that our ties with America would fray forever if true reforms were passed, that the country would veer into chaos and dictatorship, so now was not the time for reform? We must not lose sight of the fact that the Supreme Court’s heavy-handedness (dictating IDF tactics and responses along the Gaza border) was also partly responsible for the calamity of October 7 – and that such will never be properly investigated because the Court also controls any commission of inquiry?
In essence, Biden has reserved a right for himself that he denies Israel’s public. He will champion judicial reform in the United States, even though as currently constituted the US Supreme Court is subject to democratic controls that Israel’s Supreme Court is not. And he will denounce Israel’s valid efforts at making Israel’s Court more democratic, more responsive to the people, and more subject to checks and balances like the other branches of government.
We should not expect Biden to remember what he said last year nor demand consistency of expression from any politician. But there should be limits even to hypocrisy (but, of course, there are none). We should, though, expose the palpable manipulations from last year, and this year, and not let up.
When Israel passed our minor reform (that was soon after nullified by the Supreme Court it attempted to constrain), Biden said: “The genius of American democracy and Israeli democracy is that they are both built on strong institutions, on checks and balances, on an independent judiciary.” Hmmm. What changed? Why does the genius of American democracy need reform now but not the genius of Israeli democracy, which actually needs it more?
One takeaway is that we should stop taking seriously every pronouncement from the United States government, which should have been denounced at the time for its gross interference in Israel’s domestic affairs. We might consider issuing a statement urging Biden to retain America’s “independent judiciary,” whose weakening will reflect poorly on our “shared democratic values.” Another takeaway is that we should pay even less attention to Israel’s leftist journalists, activists, protesters, and rioters, whose goal is not to protect the judiciary or democracy but – as it has been for almost a decade – to topple the Netanyahu government and then restructure Israel as a less Jewish state.
And we should scrutinize every pronouncement through one lens: who is trying to manipulate us, and why?
The main street of Bnei Brak, 1928
Making blocks to build houses. Bnei Brak, 1928
