Biden: Tell Netanyahu ‘we’re still buddies’

Vice President Biden says he and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu are “still buddies,” downplaying recent tensions between the two countries.

In a speech Monday, Biden joked that Israel’s ambassador to the U.S. “better damn well report to [Netanyahu] that we’re still buddies.”

{mosads}He made the comment less than two weeks after an Obama administration official blasted the Israeli leader as “chickens—” in an interview with The Atlantic, straining relations between the two allies.

But speaking at the General Assembly of Jewish Federations of North America on Monday, Biden looked to smooth over any lingering conflict.

“I signed a picture a long time for Bibi; he’s been a friend for over 30 years. I said, Bibi, I don’t agree with a damn thing you say but I love you,” Biden said, using Netanyahu’s nickname. “But we really are good friends.”

Biden noted the attendance of Israeli Ambassador Ron Dermer in the crowd and asked him to tell Netanyahu that they remained close.

“You got it, right?” Biden said as the crowd laughed.

Biden went on to note that President Obama had met with Netanyahu more than any other world leader, and he said the two nations shared an “especially deep security partnership.”

But the vice president acknowledged that tensions exist between the U.S. and Israel, but he dismissed it as “what friends do.”

“Like all close friends, we talk honestly with one another,” Biden said. “We talk directly with one another. We disagree with one another. We love one another, and we drive one another crazy.”

In the Atlantic story, an unnamed senior administration official blasted Netanyahu as overly concerned about his own political future.

“The good thing about Netanyahu is that he’s scared to launch wars,” one official said, expanding on his “chickens—” insult. “The bad thing about him is that he won’t do anything to reach an accommodation with the Palestinians or with the Sunni Arab states,” the official added, before comparing him to former Israeli prime ministers.

“The only thing he’s interested in is protecting himself from political defeat. He’s not [Yitzhak] Rabin, he’s not [Ariel] Sharon, he’s certainly no [Menachem] Begin. He’s got no guts.”

Israel and the U.S. have also clashed in recent months over the Israeli bombing of a U.N. shelter in Gaza, as well as the Obama administration’s pursuit of a nuclear weapon deal with Iran.

Biden called suggestions the U.S. would allow Iran to take advantage of the negotiations nonsense.

“I’ve heard so much malarkey about our position on Iran,” he said. “Let me say it to you clearly, in a Bidenesque way: We will not let Iran acquire a nuclear weapon, period, period, period. And I would not put my 42-year reputation on the line were I not certain when I say it. We mean it.”