The U.S. president is playing the deadly balancing act of privately demanding that the war stop, while openly funding the Israeli war machine, writes Ramzy Baroud.
Free Palestine protest at the White House on Nov. 4, 2023. (Diane Krauthamer, Flickr, CC BY-NC-SA 2.0)
When the foreign policy of a country as large and significant as the United States is governed by a case of cognitive dissonance, terrible things happen.
These terrible things are, in fact, already taking place in the Gaza Strip, where well over 100,000 people have been killed, wounded or are missing, and an outright famine is currently ravaging the displaced population.
From the start of the war on Oct. 7, the U.S. mishandled the situation, although recent reports indicate that Biden, despite his old age, has read the overall meaning of the Oct. 7 events correctly.
According to the Axios news website, on Oct. 8, Biden said during a meeting with special counsel, Robert Hur, [who was interviewing Biden about his handling of classified documents when he was vice president] that the “Israel thing” – Hamas attack and the Israeli war on Gaza – “has changed it all.”
By “change it all,” he was referring to how the outcome of these events combined will “determine what the next six, seven decades look like.”
Biden is not wrong. Indeed, everything that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his government and war council have done in Gaza point to a similar Israeli reading of the significance of the “world-altering” events.
Netanyahu has proven his willingness to carry out genocide and starve millions of Palestinians because he still feels that the superior firepower of the Israeli army is able to turn back the clock, and restore Israel’s military standing, geopolitical influence and global position.
He is wrong, and over five months of war and senseless killing continue to demonstrate this claim.
US Political Gamble
Biden calling Netanyahu on Oct. 17, 2023, ahead of his trip to Israel. (White House, Erin Scott)
But the American political gamble in the Middle East and the global repercussions of Washington’s self-defeating foreign policy makes far less sense.
Considering Washington’s historic support for Israel, the U.S.’ behavior in the early days of the war was hardly a surprise.
The U.S. quickly mobilized behind Netanyahu’s war cabinet, sent aircraft carriers to the eastern Mediterranean, indicating the U.S. is ready for a major regional conflict.
Media reports began speaking of U.S. military involvement, specifically through the Delta Force, although the Pentagon claimed that the 2,000 US soldiers were not deployed to fight in Gaza itself.
If it was not obvious that the U.S. was a direct partner in the war, U.S. mainstream media reports ended any doubt. On March 6, The Washington Post reported that “the United States has quietly approved and delivered more than 100 separate foreign military sales to Israel since the Gaza war began.”
With time, however, U.S. foreign policy regarding Gaza became even more perplexing.
Though in the early weeks of the war-turned-genocide, Biden questioned the death toll estimates produced by the Gaza Ministry of Health, the casualties count was no longer in doubt later on.
Asked on Feb. 29 about the number of women and children killed by Israel during the war, U.S. Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin answered without hesitation: “It’s over 25,000.”
Yet, the numbers are in constant growth, as well as U.S. shipments of weapons to Israel. “We continue to support Israel with their self-defense needs. That’s not going to change,” John Kirby, U.S. national security adviser, told ABC News on March 14.
This particular statement is worth a pause, since it came after many media leaks regarding Biden’s frustration, in fact, outright anger in the way that Netanyahu is handling the war.
ABC News reported in early February that Biden has been “venting his frustration” over his administration’s “inability to persuade Israel to change its military tactics in Gaza.” Netanyahu, the outlet quoted Biden as saying, is “giving him hell.”
Netanyahu in April 2021. (DoD, Jack Sanders)
This is consistent with other recent reports, including one by Politico, claiming that Biden has privately called the Israeli prime minister a “bad fucking guy,” also over his Gaza war stance.
Yet, Netanyahu remains emboldened to the extent that he appeared in a Fox News interview on March 11, openly speaking about “disagreements,” not only between Biden and Netanyahu’s governments, but between the U.S. president “and the entire Israeli people.”
It is glaringly obvious that, without continued U.S. military and other forms of support, Israel would have not been able to sustain its war on the Palestinians for more than a few weeks, thus sparing the lives of thousands of people.
Moreover, the U.S. has served as Israel’s vanguard against the vast majority of world governments who, daily, demand immediate and unconditional ceasefire in the Strip.
Israeli military during ground operations in the Gaza Strip on Nov. 1, 2023. (IDF Spokesperson’s Unit, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0)
If it were not for repeated U.S. vetoes at the U.N. Security Council, a resolution demanding a ceasefire would have been surely passed.
Despite this unconditional support, the U.S. is struggling to stave off a wider regional conflict, which is already threatening its political standing in the Middle East.
Therefore, Biden wants to regain the initiative by renewing discussions — though without commitment to real action — about a two-state solution and the future of Gaza.
Netanyahu is not interested in these matters since his single greatest political achievement, from the viewpoint of his rightwing constituency, is that he has completely frozen any discussions on a political horizon in Palestine. For Netanyahu, losing the war means the unceremonious return to the old American political framework of the so-called peace process.
The embattled Israeli prime minister also knows that ending the war would constitute an end to his own government coalition, mostly sustained by far-right extremists like Itamar Ben-Gvir, minister of national security. and Bezalel Smotrich, minister of finance. To achieve these self-serving goals, the Israeli leader is willing to sustain a clearly losing war.
Though Biden has completely “lost faith in Netanyahu,” according to the Associated Press, he continues to support Israel without openly questioning the disastrous outcomes of the war, not just on the Palestinian people, but also on the region and the world, including his own country.
Americans, especially those in Biden’s Democratic Party, must continue to increase their pressure on their administration so that it resolves its cognitive dissonance in Palestine. Biden must not be allowed to play this deadly balancing act, privately demanding for the war to stop, while openly funding the Israeli war machine.
Though the majority of Americans already feel that way, Biden and his government are yet to receive the message. How many more Palestinians would have to die for Biden to hear the chants of the people, “Ceasefire now?”
Ramzy Baroud is a journalist and the editor of the Palestine Chronicle. He is the author of five books including: These Chains Will Be Broken: Palestinian Stories of Struggle and Defiance in Israeli Prisons (2019), My Father Was a Freedom Fighter: Gaza’s Untold Story (2010) and The Second Palestinian Intifada: A Chronicle of a People’s Struggle (2006). Dr. Baroud is a non-resident senior research fellow at the Center for Islam and Global Affairs (CIGA), Istanbul Zaim University (IZU). His website is www.ramzybaroud.net.
This article is from Z Network.
Views expressed in this article and may or may not reflect those of Consortium News.
Biden knows what he is doing, or at least his handlers do. Scolding Netanyahu is strictly for show; it’s an act to make people think that he actually cares about the harm that Israel is doing to the people of Gaza. Meanwhile, Biden’s true feelings are belied by the continued supplying of weapons that Israel will use to inflict more harm. Actions speak louder than words.
If standing your ground is strength, then Biden is but a Bibi groupie.
He’s an old Delaware State Credit Card Bank donor-made man thinking
in old fashioned patterns of the Cold War, Sputnik and availability of Wall Street largesse.
incapable of sharp self-reflection, pure guts, and reassessment of his own attitudes and
predilections objectively in light of what is best for the changing USA and the changing World -objectively.
He is not “his own man.” And as his age cohort, I know he is old. That’s not a pejorative.
It is realistic from one who knows one. And unless you enjoy the beneficence of terrific
genes for legs – spiritual and physical – , know that age may burnish you with a softening
while also sucking out your capacity for balance and genuine steadiness.
also
Come on: Biden hasn’t been sending party favors.
Trying to distance Biden from Netanyahu in the press is part of drawing to Israel part of the blowback for US militarism. The US picks up a proxy to empire and pretends to have outgrown its antisemitism. Israel milks the relationship to profit from the slaughter.
So on.
So forth.
Biden has become more assertive against the Israeli extermination campaign against Gaza, by shifting public rhetoric from ‘Pretty, pretty please don’t do that!’ to ‘Don’t do that – pleeeease?’ Actions speaking far louder – and more truthfully – than words, a constant torrent of weapons, of Niagara proportions, saying all needed as to his true position. There are two military situations now that Biden is promoting, with the sole purpose (he believes) of keeping the Presidency in November 2024. Ukraine, and Gaza. To say that this is despicable and vomit-inducing, is to put it sotto voce.
Well maybe Biden will cork off asap. It will be interesting to see how the VP would handle this.Or on the other hand, Netanyahu should cork off first, then Biden . Don’t forget to cut the funding for murdering Palestinians
Oh, my! Casey. Our valiant Kamala Harris, as CA Attorney General, had a chance to do justice by prosecuting Steven Mnuchin’s OneWest Bank for foreclosure violations in 2013. But, did not. “Harris not only allowed Steve Mnuchin’s OneWest bank to get away with foreclosing on tens of thousands of state homeowners, but then tried to bury the evidence.
The book, titled “Homewreckers: How a Gang of Wall St. Kingpins, Hedge Fund Magnates, Crooked Banks and Vulture Capitalists Suckered Millions of Out of Their Homes and Demolished the American Dream,’’ was published this week by Custom House.
It posits that a group of Wall Street moguls including Trump Cabinet appointees Mnuchin and Wilbur Ross, as well as White House insiders like Steve Schwarzman and Tom Barrack, took advantage of “a rigged system” to transfer billions of dollars from individual homeowners into their own pockets during the Great Recession.” (Poliitico.com)
We need to “write in” a 3rd choice for our next President and Veep. Two inspiring candidates that will cut off all funding to Israel forever, disband AIPAC and expose Zionism for what it is; genocidial bigotry and biblical apartheid. A dual leadership that will open negotiations with Russia, China and Iran. Two new leaders that envisions a future America that is at peace with the rest of the world …..instead of being a Zionist controlled puppet world dictator. A team presidency that will denounce the principals of PNAC and the barricade of Nato. Humanitarians first and above all….
Forget the parties. Let’s find these two people…..and elect them! Our current choices are absurd… the time is ripe for a grass roots movement topple the political duopoly. WE CAN DO THIS! WE CAN WRITE THEM IN!
Any suggestions? let’s start a list.
I suggest Jill Stein and whoever runs with her on the GPUSA ticket. And you don’t need to write her in either (unless you are in a state where the Dems were able to keep her off the ballot.)
What Biden cares about is his RE-ELECTION! whatever promotes that he is for….if things change, as with Palestinian protests…he changes…..Personal ambition, holding on to power…navigating HOW TO WIN IS HIS MOTIVATION
The author is simping for Biden and the Democratic party. First we know Biden is a Zionist – he said himself. Biden has no regard for Palestinians. So this notion that Biden is outraged over Netanyahu is a fantasy. Biden does not care.
The United States can stop the Genocide right now. It chooses not too.
No, “self-defense” is not bombing kids. It’s not taking a blowtorch to a fly on the window-sill. It’s not demolishing buildings on water front property with residents still inside to advertise lucrative investments. It’s not attacking hospitals and murdering patients and doctors with phony claims of fighters hiding inside. It’s not lying through your teeth with “not our fault” while enabling the savages to carry out their atrocities. This is the worst I can remember it, in the decline of the human beast.
Biden is a Zionist, he does nothing without permission from the Zionists in Tel Aviv. He wants to be reelected, that is all the man without a soul cares about.
I know that religion and politics should not be mixed, but…what about Biden’s ‘Christianity’? Must a person of any religion be blind and morally soiled not to see what is happening to fellow humans?
With no compassion for this, how can one be expected to take his supposed compassionate intentions elsewhere seriously?
Biden has been bought off by the pro-Israel lobby his entire career, much like all of Capitol Hill.
Only a genuine revolt of some kind in Washington can stop the carnage in Gaza.
The author’s description of the Biden policy on the ongoing genocide is entirely too polite. it is not a “perflexing” policy or a “balancing act”. It is 100% duplicity and hypocrisy. The Dems are trying to scapegoat Netanyahu by suggesting that his removal from power would end the genocide. Obviously that is not the case. The Dems are also trying (I hop unsuccessfully) trying to hide the obvious fact that it is the U.S. which is making this genocide possible. Israel could not carry out this genocide without U.S. military, financial and political support. Therefore, it is the U.S. which is primarily responsible for the genocide. Genocide Joe and his amateurs pretending to be diplomats, together with the odious “intelligence agencies” and the military are all willing and eager participants in and cheerleaders for this genocide. Do not be deceived by these liars.
Israeli-American Zionists control the State Department, Biden is a Zionist first and the legislature is full of Israel-American Zionists, so it is no surprise that they serve Israel’s interests first.
Exactly so. Biden is a true believer in all the nonsense and lies that most of DC ruling class believes. Remember, he declared that “of course” the USA was and is the greatest country ever. He’s a cynical, amoral simpleton who believes his own bullshit. Ramzy I think is way too generous here in his assessment of Genocide Joe.
Only those looking through the wrong end of a one-way mirror may construe and thereby be perplexed by Biden’s (cough, cough) overall policies!
None of us actually knows from where the ‘deep’ brain operates on behalf, in our best interests!
This is not new. Many times leaders in Washington have knowingly made decisions that resulted in the killing of millions of innocent people around the world. If the US is the world’s leader is has become the world’s leader in doing evil.
Biden could have stopped the slaughter at any time by stopping money and weapons to Israel. For all his crocodile tears, Biden knows exactly what he’s doing and wants the killing of Palestinians to continue.