Biden Compares Irish Catholics During The Troubles with Palestinians in East Jerusalem Speech

President Joe Biden compared Irish Catholics under British rule with the Palestinian plight during a speech in East Jerusalem announcing $100 million in new aid to area hospitals.

President Biden spoke at Augusta Victoria Hospital in East Jerusalem on Friday, and he began his speech with some familiar material — and an aside about what he described as a shared history between the Irish-Catholics of his own heritage and the Palestinian people whom the hospital serves:

My name is Joe Biden. I am Jill Biden’s husband. (Laughter.) 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. (Laughter.)

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.

Biden went on to praise nurses in emotional terms, as he often does, and to announce “the United States is committing an additional $100 million to support these hospitals, your staffs, and — that work for the Palestinian people.”

Watch above via C-SPAN.