ADL chairman speaks out against argument that Israel endangers US soldiers.

US Vice President Joe Biden was quoted by Yediot Aharonot last week as telling Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, in an angry exchange over the Ramat Shlomo incident, that “this is starting to get dangerous for us.”

“What you’re doing here undermines the security of our troops who are fighting in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan,” Biden was quoted as saying. “That endangers us and it endangers regional peace.”

On Saturday, the Foreign Policy magazine Web site ran a story saying that the commander of the US Central Command, Gen. David Petraeus, sent a briefing team to the Pentagon at the beginning of the year “with a stark warning: America’s relationship with Israel is important, but not as important as the lives of America’s soldiers.”

And on Sunday, ABC News senior White House correspondent Jake Tapper asked US President Barack Obama’s top aide David Axelrod twice whether “Israel’s intransigence on the housing issue put the lives of US troops at risk.”

Axelrod said he wouldn’t put it in those terms.

“This is probably one of the most serious charges that we have ever heard,” Foxman said.

“Israel is a country that has never asked American soldiers, even in its darkest moment, to risk its lives to defend it. From time to time there have been suggestions of security pacts, where the US would have to come to Israel’s aid, and all the leaders of Israel have said that the last thing they would want is for US soldiers to risk their lives to defend Israelis,” he said.

The charge that supporting Israel endangers US soldiers, Foxman said, comes from the “linkage fantasy,” a point of view that “if you just resolve this conflict, everything else will fall into place: Afghanistan, Iraq, Iran, America’s war with fundamentalist Islam.”