“To wipe the spit off his face, Biden had to say it was only rain.” The Israeli journalist Akiva Eldar was tapping a vein of bitter Jewish wit when he wrote those words about the humiliation of the vice president on his recent state-visit to Israel. Trust a weakling, the saying goes: if you spit in his face he’ll just pretend it was rain. Last week, an American leader finally chose not to pretend.