There are many failures in the U.S. mainstream media’s coverage of the latest crisis in Israel/Palestine. But one of the greatest examples of malpractice is that the mainstream media continue to ignore the hard fact that Benjamin Netanyahu is using Joe Biden for his own selfish reasons, an unpleasant truth that could lure the U.S. into a larger Mideast war with Iran that will ultimately threaten Biden’s reelection.
Alon Pinkas is no extremist, but a former high-ranking Israeli diplomat. Here’s what he just wrote in Haaretz, the respected Israeli daily:
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu believes a lengthy war in Gaza will alleviate criticism and keep him in power. More importantly, he believes it will allow him to spread the blame, shedding all personal responsibility for the October 7 devastation.
Even worse, Pinkas adds that:
. . . some in the Biden administration and Congress are beginning to think Netanyahu is trying to drag the Americans into a war with Iran. . . they believe a U.S. strike against Iran’s provocations would potentially turn Netanyahu’s abject debacle into some kind of strategic triumph.
This site has warned for years that Benjamin Netanyahu has plotted to instigate conflict between the U.S. and Iran. That’s why he enthusiastically encouraged Donald Trump to end the Iran Nuclear Deal in 2018, after he had already flown to Washington back in 2015 to address the U.S. Congress behind President Obama’s back to try and stop it from going into effect. Israel has conducted a secret, violent campaign against Iran for years, including assassinations and sabotage on Iranian soil.
At no stage has the U.S. mainstream media reported on Netanyahu’s provocation campaign. Here’s just one example that appeared on this site, in April 2021, reacting to a New York Times editorial that endorsed the (apparently now dead) effort to revive the Iran nuclear deal:
Even veteran observers of the New York Times’s zeal to protect Israel’s reputation will be astonished at the paper’s latest whitewash. The paper just published a long, sensible editorial endorsing the U.S. return to the Iran nuclear deal — without once mentioning Benjamin Netanyahu’s violent efforts to sabotage the agreement . . .
The word “Israel” did not appear even once in the editorial. . . . [it] said nothing about the months, actually years, of violent Israeli attacks [against Iran], including assassinations . . .
After October 7, Netanyahu’s motivation to distract with a larger war is greater than ever. He’s hated within Israel, including by members of his own party. Families of the Israeli hostages, and others, don’t hesitate to blame him for the current crisis, which many rate as even greater than the 1973 Yom Kippur War. This war is the only thing keeping him in office, and possibly out of prison for his various scandals.
But almost none of the hostility toward Netanyahu, nor his precarious political situation, is appearing in the U.S. press. Here, he’s still treated as the respected leader of a nation under siege.
Dana Bash’s pathetic November 12 interview with him on CNN was representative. She could have started by asking why he agreed to speak to her, and other U.S. media, although since October 7 he has refused interviews with every single Israeli outlet, even including the TV stations that normally act as his stooges. Instead, Bash looked like she was afraid of him. She let him hog the floor during nearly all of the 14:26 interview, as he continued talking over her feeble follow-up questions.
Bash timidly accepted Netanyahu’s protestations that he is doing everything he can to free the 240 hostages who Hamas are holding in Gaza. But there is reporting that his government turned down earlier proposals for a partial deal; at the very least, she could have interrupted his self-justifying monologue to ask.
What’s worse, Netanyahu can apparently stay in power for the foreseeable future, even though he would likely lose if the opposition called a snap election. None of this means that a majority of the Israeli public actually favors ending the attack against Gaza right now. But Benjamin Netanyahu is more desperate than he’s ever been in his life. He feels that continuing the attacks will postpone his day of reckoning with the Israeli public, and might even clean some of the tarnish off of his reputation.
The Biden administration says it does not want a wider war. Former diplomat Pinkas believes the U.S. and Israel are set for “a collision course” over Gaza. Joe Biden and his advisers can count, and they recognize that U.S. public opinion is steadily turning against them; hundreds of employees in 40 different U.S. government agencies signed a protest letter, including even dozens in his own State Department.
But Netanyahu will resist. And the danger is that the mainstream U.S. media’s malpractice means that the American public will have no idea why the Biden-Netanyahu confrontation is happening. The pro-Israel lobby will defend Netanyahu, and the Republicans in Congress are already criticizing Biden for not standing behind Israel strongly enough. Biden could feel pressure to cosign Netanyahu’s increasingly provocative moves — in Gaza, against Iran, or even elsewhere.
The Democratic base is already turning against Joe Biden over his mishandling of the crisis. They won’t vote for Donald Trump, but they are already promising to stay home, or vote third-party. Meanwhile, Biden could be sacrificing a second term in a vain effort to save the reputation of a loathsome man.
A more detailed look at Biden’s awful policy from POLITICO:
The Biden administration thought it could ignore the bad in the Middle East. Now his Middle East doctrine is collapsing….The Middle East is back on the president’s desk: With his staunch support for Israel, he has assumed joint custody over a devastating war with no clear endgame. Here, too, the administration has chased some fantasies. It pushed Egypt to accept refugees from Gaza, which Egypt was never going to accept. (It fears temporary refugees will become permanent ones.) It has asked Arab states to contribute troops to a multinational peacekeeping force in Gaza, a military and moral quagmire they want to avoid. It offers near-daily criticism of Israel’s tactics, with their appalling civilian death toll, and its strategy, with no vision of what comes after Hamas — yet continues to give full support to Israel’s war. The bad stuff, it turns out, still overshadows the good, and the administration has no plan for dealing with it.
https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2023/11/14/joe-biden-middle-east-failure-analysis-00126915
Of course Netanyahu is manipulating Biden to drag the US to a greater war that he knows he won’t have to fight!
What the media should be wondering is, what the hell is going on with the 250 Israeli hostages? It’s been a biblical 40 days of mass death and destruction in Gaza, and the grand total of hostages freed so far is what? Five? Four of them before Israel even launched its ground invasion and one whose miraculous and sudden appearance out of absolutely nowhere within the first few days of the invasion is shrouded in secrecy. She now seems to have vanished into the ether as quickly as the hundreds of Hamas fighters Israel keeps insisting are hiding in the hospitals they bomb and then invade, only to conveniently find a handful of AK-47s, half a dozen grenades, some Hamas pamphlets, and box of dates.
Something is not adding up. Israel keeps insisting that its intelligence services know far more than they are telling us. They keep bombing and invading hospitals and “guaranteeing” us that their intelligence has hard proof that Hamas is using them as command centers, storage depots, and armories. Yet are showing up with bupkis! There are pickup trucks at your local Walmart with more guns, ammo, and tactical material than the IDF is recovering. Not to mention, still no more hostages!
Which reminds me of something from the last major war with Hamas in 2014.
The three kidnapped teens. The media suddenly has chronic anmesia and not said a fucking peep about that disgusting role none other than Netanyahu himself played.
How can we possibly forget that this monster spent a full week parading unbelievably distraught mothers in front of every camera in Israel and the EU that would have him, whipping up the nation into a murderous frenzy, and using the “hostage situation” to justify carry out an unrelenting laundry list of raids across the West Bank on NGOs, civilians, any and all suspects completely unrelated to the kidnapping. All while having imposed a media gag order on reports that he and his security cabinet already had evidence that the teens had been killed within hours of their kidnapping. What kind of sick and depraved monster would do this to the parents of innocent Jewish children, and the entire nation? A sick and sorry excuse for a human being that would gladly abuse his power to goad Hamas into a 51 Day War and another round of “mowing the lawn” by the IDF.
Which brings us back the 250 hostages today. What aren’t we being told? How many are in fact already dead? Either by Hamas, Israeli bombs or failed IDF raids? Is the media under military censorship and a gag order regarding their status? Is Israel, yet again, concealing their possible fate to justify and prolong their operations, extend their mandate, and overreach militarily, simply to further Netanyahu’s ambitions to reoccupy and cleanse Gaza and ultimately draw Hezbollah and Iran into action and thus drag in the US in to do his dirty work?
Netanyahu has always manipulated America and its governments. He has boasted that America can be pushed in the direction Israel wants them to. Netanyahu has lied many times to the US government even testifying that Saddam Hussein had WMD’s trying to push us into war with Iraq, which eventually they were successful in doing so. Netanyahu/Israel has caused so much damage in our political system, and interfered in our foreign policies AND domestic policies, and has in his deep pockets many in Congress, the media, “anti defamation leagues”, and Institutions, and he has made sure wealthy Jewish Americans, do their bit in controlling universities and think tanks, by making generous donations. Hosts of a gossip show like The View were reading hasbara talking points, justifying the violence going on in Gaza, and they sounded totally ignorant and misinformed. Americans are being sold a bill of goods, and a one sided narrative, deliberately.
“We control America and they know it”…
Shifa Hospital Bunker – How Would They Know?
“The Israelis are so sure about the location of the Hamas bunker, however, not because they are trying to score propaganda points, or because it has been repeatedly mentioned in passing by Western reporters—but because they built it. Back in 1983, when Israel still ruled Gaza, they built a secure underground operating room and tunnel network beneath Shifa hospital—which is one among several reasons why Israeli security sources are so sure that there is a main Hamas command bunker in or around the large cement basement beneath the area of Building 2 of the Hospital, which reporters are obviously prohibited from entering.”
https://www.thetruthseeker.co.uk/?p=275706
Important and timely article.
I hope Abbas will pressure Biden to put some meat on his 2SS diplomacy. Not because it has promise, rather it can expose Netanyahu’s duplicity and create a public split…. at a time 14 billion is on the table. Additionally, Netanyahu rejecting it could move diplomacy in alternative directions. Biden could force Netanyahu to expose his lack of interest in diplomacy.
Additionally, Biden could advance diplomacy as a way to regain public support for his candidacy.