At a closed-door fundraiser last week, [Biden] warned that Israel’s “indiscriminate bombing” was costing the country international support. But Biden’s own support for the government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu remained largely intact. After saying he favored the eventual creation of a Palestinian state, he reiterated his unwavering backing for the Jewish nation. “We’re not going to do a damn thing other than protect Israel,” Biden said. “Not a single thing.”
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Both before and after October 7, the empathy Biden is known for has rarely extended to Palestinians. Rashid Khalidi, the Edward Said Professor of Modern Arab Studies at Columbia University, said such statements are missing “to the degree that I don’t really think he sees the Palestinians at all.” In contrast, Khalidi added, Biden sees Israelis “as they are very carefully presented by their government and their massive information apparatus.”
A former Biden administration official shared a similar perspective with me. “The President does not seem to acknowledge the humanity of all parties affected by this conflict,” this person said. “He has described Israeli suffering in great detail, while Palestinian suffering is left vague if mentioned at all.”
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Biden has prioritized providing Israel largely unconditional support and the space to continue fighting in the face of intense international opposition.
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As a senator, [Biden] backed moving the American embassy to Jerusalem decades before Donald Trump made that a reality, boasted about attending more fundraisers for the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) than any other senator, and savaged an effort by George H.W. Bush to push Israel toward negotiating with Palestinians. As vice president, he undercut Barack Obama’s efforts to push Israel toward peace. As president prior to October 7, he continued policies implemented by Trump that sidelined Palestinians.
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As he explained in an interview while running for president [...], “In my 34-year career, I have never wavered from the notion that the only time progress has ever been made in the Middle East is when the Arab nations have known that there is no daylight between us and Israel.”
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[H]e argued that it was “absolutely outrageous” and a “gigantic mistake” for Democratic rivals like Bernie Sanders and Pete Buttigieg to suggest that there should be some conditions on aid to Israel.
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He stuck with Trump’s decision to move the embassy to Jerusalem, did not reverse a major announcement by Secretary of State Mike Pompeo that upended decades of US policy by saying Israeli settlements did not necessarily violate international law, and failed to reopen a separate consulate for Palestinians shuttered by Trump.
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[T]he Biden administration continues to push Congress to provide $14 billion in mostly military aid with no strings attached. This comes after the United States has already supplied Israel with thousands of bombs as it has leveled much of Gaza, displaced more than 80 percent of the population, and committed the war crime of using the starvation of civilians as a weapon of war, according to a report from Human Rights Watch released on Monday.
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In 2010, Netanyahu’s government infuriated Obama and his advisers by announcing a major settlement expansion while Biden was in Israel. [...] Biden and his team wanted to handle the dispute privately. Obama’s camp took a different route by drawing up a list of demands to be made of Netanyahu. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton then gave the prime minister 24 hours to respond, warning him, “If you will not be able to comply, it might have unprecedented consequences on the bilateral relations of the kind never seen before.”
Biden was soon in touch with a stunned Netanayhu. [...] [In a call with Netanyahu] "Biden completely undercut the secretary of state and gave [Netanyahu] a strong indication that whatever was being planned in Washington was hotheadedness and he could defuse it when he got back.” When Clinton saw the transcript, she “realized she’d been thrown under the bus” by Biden, the official added.
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Just how much Biden might have been able to restrain Israel in the wake of October 7 will never be known. But a close examination of his record makes it clear [...] he was not prepared to try.
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“All of our missiles, the ammunition, the precision-guided bombs, all the airplanes and bombs, it’s all from the US,” retired Israeli Major General Yitzhak Brick told a columnist with the Jewish News Syndicate last month. “The minute they turn off the tap, you can’t keep fighting. You have no capability…Everyone understands that we can’t fight this war without the United States. Period.”
Late last month, Biden seemed to become slightly more open to restraining Israel by saying it was a “worthwhile thought” to consider placing some restrictions on that aid. Days later, though, administration officials said they were not pushing for any limitations.
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Since October 7, about 70 percent of the more than 20,000 people killed in Gaza have been women and children, according to the local health ministry. In the first five weeks of the conflict, children were killed at roughly 200 times the rate that they were during the Iraq War. The deaths of thousands more people trapped under the rubble are still believed to be uncounted. More than 1.8 million people, roughly 85 percent of Gaza’s population, have been displaced. Doctors have been forced to operate on patients without anesthesia. A lack of clean water, medicine, and basic sanitation is causing infectious diseases to spread through overcrowded shelters for displaced persons. [...] This is all happening in a place that the United Nations deemed “unlivable” before the war began due to a devastating Israeli blockade.
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The world sees the Biden administration vetoing a UN ceasefire resolution that only 10 out of 186 nations opposed, bypassing Congress to get tank shells to Israel more quickly, and maintaining “unshakeable” support for a nation multiple human rights groups in and outside of Israel—as well as a former head of the Mossad—have concluded forces Palestinians to live under a system of apartheid.
The political fallout of Biden’s position is now global in scale. Shibley Telhami, the Anwar Sadat Professor for Peace and Development at the University of Maryland, said Biden might now even surpass Netanyahu as the most disliked leader in the Arab world.
Mother Jones
