The grisly farce that is the Biden administration’s support for Israeli war crimes became even more grotesque this week.
Netanyahu is coming to Washington in a few days. Democrats believe overwhelmingly that Netanyahu is carrying out a genocide– nearly 39,000 Palestinians deaths with thousands more under the rubble. So some Dems will boycott Netanyahu’s speech to the Congress, but the Democratic Party leadership is rolling out the welcome mat.
Netanyahu is to meet at the White House with the president who has provided Israel with endless munitions to carry out the war. And though many expect Biden to drop out of the presidential race, the New York Times says Biden won’t do so before he meets with Netanyahu, because Biden does not want to give the far-right-wing prime minister who has repeatedly bossed Democratic presidents the “satisfaction” of seeing Biden when he’s a lame duck.
Though if you think Kamala Harris will stand up for human rights and U.S. interests if she becomes president—think again, she is going to meet Netanyahu too, the White House assured the press.
Why meet with this war criminal at all? To answer that, consider who are the most important voters in the Biden debate right now: the donors who are the last shoe to drop on Biden’s reelection hopes, pulling their money to pressure the president to get out of the race.
Many of these donors now in rebellion are big Israel supporters. Michael Moritz the latest billionaire to put it to Biden has been in solidarity with Israel. Reid Hoffman who organized a concerned donors call with Kamala Harris calls Israeli forces a model.
While another group of 75 donors almost all of whom want Biden out is reported by CNBC to include as leaders Ari Emanuel and his brother Zeke. Ari Emanuel said that Israel’s war is “justified” in May 2024, and has said that he loves the country. Of course, there are Dem donors who don’t care about Israel. But the power map is clear.
It’s not like Trump is any different. The top Republican donor is thought to be Miriam Adelson, the Israeli doctor, and she is reportedly spending millions to stake Trump to a promise to allow Israeli annexation of the West Bank.
Just as Adelson’s late husband Sheldon, once the biggest Republican donor, asked Trump to move the embassy to Jerusalem and trash the Iran deal, and Trump followed through, in utter contempt for the Palestinian people and world leaders.
So our Middle East policy is up for bid by billionaire zealots. This is what a liberal democracy looks like.
In any just order, the U.S. would have nothing to do with Israel. The country is committing flagrant war crimes in Gaza, killing journalists and athletes and other civilians with complete impunity.
And the International Court of Justice last week issued (yet another) ruling saying that the settlements in East Jerusalem and the West Bank are violations of international law.
Back in December 2016 the Obama administration after 8 years of being walked over by Netanyahu allowed the U.N. Security Council to issue the same determination, in a resolution on which Obama abstained, that condemned the occupation. President-elect Trump called the Russians to try and stop the resolution but it went through. And of course nothing came of it. The Biden administration has never followed through on the landgrab, and the ethnic cleansing.
As the U.S. bombs flow to Gaza, the levels of Israeli violence and land seizure in the West Bank are at a high for the last 25 years.
The Knesset passed a resolution this week saying there must never be a Palestinian state; that would be an “existential threat” to Israel.
Netanyahu repeated the claim of Jewish supremacy in his response to the International Court of Justice.
The Jewish people are not occupiers in their own land, including in our eternal capital Jerusalem nor in Judea and Samaria, our historical homeland. No absurd opinion in the Hague can deny this historical truth or the legal right of Israelis to live in their own communities in our ancestoral home.
The Biden administration is incapable of condemning these racists. “It’s like pulling teeth to get you to say something on this,” a reporter complained in the State Department this week after the Knesset’s attack on a Palestinian state.
Antony Blinken was unable to say a critical word about Netanyahu during a fawning interview in Aspen (by NPR’s Mary Louise Kelly) in which he used a football metaphor to claim the U.S. was doing something to stop the genocide. “I believe we’re inside the 10-yard line and driving toward the goal line in getting an agreement that would produce a ceasefire, get the hostages home, and put us on a better track to trying to build lasting peace and stability.”
And keep the bombs flowing, as Israel bombs hospitals and refugee camps…
Netanyahu should be persona non grata in Washington. But he will be welcomed with open arms.
As a former Biden official Tariq Habash said on a webinar this week, our policy is “rooted in anti-Palestinian racism”– in the dehumanization and erasure of Palestinians.
Habash quit the Biden administration in January. Let’s hope that his courage and honesty are infectious.
“No absurd opinion in the Hague can deny this historical truth or the legal right of Israelis to live in their own communities in our ancestral home.} ( Netanyahu)
I did a 23-and-me test a while back – the results show that all my ancestors came from what is now Russia, with a few random Swedes thrown in for good measure. I have no genes that are popular with people who hail from the Middle East. And yet – unless my parents were fooling me all those years – I’m Jewish.
Is Israel my ‘ancestral homeland’? Is Germany the ‘ancestral homeland’ of Protestants?
A minor nitpick, the UNSC Resolution at the end of Obama’s term condemned Israeli settlements as illegal, not the occupation. The beauty of this recent ICJ opinion is that it brands the occupation itself as illegal. Otherwise couldn’t agree more with the article.
It is possible that discussion and debate, by any side or participant, regarding how to achieve a successful governance under one state could have profound implications.
Now that many nations have recognized a Palestinian state, its time for figuring out how to get to a one-gun authority.