Joe Biden Compares Irish Catholics During Troubles With England To Palestinians In East Jerusalem During Speech
President Joe Biden compared Irish Catholics under British rule with the Palestinians during a speech in East Jerusalem where he announced he was reversing Trump’s policies and handed $100 million in new aid to Palestine.
Biden said: “My name is Joe Biden. I am Jill Biden’s husband. She has been here twice before me. And before I begin, I’d like to say that — there’s an old expression: ‘Hope springs eternal.’
“I, my background and the background of my family is Irish American, and we have a long history of — not fundamentally unlike the Palestinian people with Great Britain and their attitude toward Irish-Catholics over the years, for 400 years.
“But my colleagues, when I was a U.S. senator, used to always joke with me that I was always quoting Irish poets when I was on the floor of the Senate.
“And they thought I did it because I’m Irish.
“That’s not the reason I did it.
“I did it because they’re the best poets in the world.
“There’s a great poem from “The Cure at Troy” — a paragraph. It goes like this — and it’s classically Irish, but it also could fit Palestinians.
“It says:
“History [teaches us not to] hope
On this side of the grave.
But then, once in a lifetime
That longed-for tidal wave
Of justice [rises] up,
“And hope and history rhyme.
“Hope and history rhyme. It is my prayer that we’re reaching one of those moments where hope and history rhyme,” he said.
“This analogy is absurd and pathetic,” said Matt Brooks, executive director of the Republican Jewish Coalition.
BIDEN in East Jerusalem: "…the background of my family is Irish American and we have a long history not fundamentally unlike the Palestinian people, with Great Britain and their attitude toward Irish Catholics over the years for 400 years." pic.twitter.com/stj17lgSvv
— RNC Research (@RNCResearch) July 15, 2022
“Biden is saying the ‘Palestinian people’ are indigenous and the Jews, with ties to the land of Israel going back three thousand years across multiple sovereign kingdoms, are foreign colonists,” said former Capitol Hill staffer Boris Ryvkin.
“Stuff you’d hear from the PLO or US English professors rather than the POTUS.”
“There goes the post Brexit ‘special relationship’,” wrote author Ali Shihabi.
According to Fox News:
President Biden stressed his continued commitment to the two-state solution in a Friday meeting with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas in the West Bank.
The Palestinian people deserve a state of their own with an “equal measure of freedom and dignity” as Israel, he said.
He said while the goal of a two-state solution may seem “far away” and Americans can feel the “grief and frustration” of Palestinians, the U.S. will “never give up on the work of peace.”
The U.S. “won’t give up on trying to bring Israel and Palestine closer together,” he added.