The one thing you can say about Joe Biden’s trip to Israel and Palestine this week is that the Israeli government and its lobby are over the moon. So many things they wanted, they got!
Biden bowed to the pressure of Israeli hawks and said a military option against Iran is on the table. He had joyful meetings with Israeli politicians at which he professed that he was a “Zionist” and denounced the BDS campaign. He embraced the Trump policy of normalization deals with Arab monarchies that are aimed at marginalizing Palestinian demands.
The president said nothing about Israel’s killing of the Palestinian-American journalist Shireen Abu Akleh on May 11. No, he left that for his brief visit to the West Bank, and said her killing was “heart-wrenching” before he mangled the pronunciation of Abu Akleh’s name. Palestinians did all they could to force the case before the world’s eyes, and the State Department scurried behind the scenes to try to arrange a meeting with Abu Akleh’s family in Washington, later, so there would be no distraction to Biden’s Zionism tour.
And despite the feverish hopes of liberal Zionists that he would put his foot down against more illegal settlements, Biden renewed his friendships with rightwing leaders, including Benjamin Netanyahu, and said, We are committed to a two state solution, but not any time soon, so here’s some money for Palestinian hospitals. As the Israeli columnist Gideon Levy said, Biden issued the death certificate for the two-state solution.
It’s a sign of what a joke the trip was that on stop two on the tour of human rights violators, the murderous Saudi Prince Mohammed bin Salman raised the issue of Shireen Abu Akleh’s killing. When Biden brought up MBS’s role in the brutal killing of journalist Jamal Khashoggi in 2018, bin Salman asked why Biden cared so much more about Khashoggi than Abu Akleh. Good question.
Biden knows the story. He even said that his heart was on the Palestinian side. At a hospital visit in East Jerusalem he said that the Palestinians were like his Irish ancestors under the British– oppressed. Then he quoted an Irish poet saying that “once in a lifetime, that longed-for tidal wave, of justice [rises] up.”
So Biden gets it. All American politicians do at some level. But in that same speech Biden covered himself. He joked that the doctors who had opened his skull years ago to operate on an aneurysm “couldn’t find a brain.”
No wonder Palestinians just want him to stay away.
A visit in DC with the Abu Akleh family can be parlayed to an educating PR opportunity.