Does Biden’s unwavering support for Israel risk his chance for re-election?
Half of young Americans are skeptical of US support for Israel, and campus protesters demand a ceasefire in Gaza
Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown.
On
Wednesday night, Joe Biden basked in the pageantry of a state dinner –
white-jacketed violinists, golden chandeliers dotted with pink roses, a
vivid wall display of 3D paper flowers. But soon after toasting the Australian prime minister
in a pavilion on the White House south lawn, the US president had to
step away to be briefed on a deadly mass shooting in Maine.
The
presence of Lloyd Austin, the defense secretary, and Jake Sullivan, the
national security adviser, was a reminder of another, even darker
shadow. Even as Biden and guests savoured butternut squash soup,
sarsaparilla braised short ribs and hazelnut and chocolate mousse cake,
Israeli bombs were raining down on the people of Gaza, posing one of the
biggest tests yet for the 80-year-old commander-in-chief.
Biden
took office in January 2021 articulating four crises – the coronavirus
pandemic, economic strife, racial injustice and the climate – but as
many of his predecessors discovered, the one guarantee of the job is the
unexpected. Since Hamas’s horrific attack
on Israel on 7 October, the president has found himself in the crucible
of a Middle East war that is killing innocents and threatening a
broader conflagration.
Biden
has given Israel full-throated support and urged Congress to send the
US ally $14bn in military aid. He has stressed that Hamas does not
represent the vast majority of the Palestinian people and pushed for
humanitarian assistance. But he is resisting calls for a ceasefire.
He is trying to thread a diplomatic needle, knowing that each decision
reverberates around the world and one mistake could cost him re-election
next year.
“Biden’s been at the top of his
game – pitch perfect, morally clear, decisive – but there are real risks
to having no daylight between the US and Israel,” said Chris Whipple,
author of The Fight of His Life: Inside Joe Biden’s White House. “We’re
starting to see that now with all the civilian casualties that are
mounting.”
“It reminds me of Colin Powell’s old
Pottery Barn rule: if you break it, you own it. Along with Israel, the
US is going to own the spectacle of Palestinian civilians being killed
no matter how ‘surgical’ the IDF [Israel Defense Forces] claims to be
and we’re already seeing that.”
Biden’s allegiance to Israel is written in his political DNA.
He was born during the presidency of Franklin Roosevelt when, in
Europe, the Nazis were systematically murdering 6 million Jews in the
Holocaust. Biden has said how his father helped instill in him the
justness of establishing Israel as a Jewish homeland in 1948.
His
long political career has long included deep engagement with the
Israeli-Arab conflict in the Middle East. He has often told the story of
his 1973 encounter
with Israel’s then prime minister Golda Meir who, on the cusp of the
Yom Kippur war, told the young senator that Israel’s secret weapon was
“we have no place else to go”.
During 36 years
in the Senate, Biden was the chamber’s biggest ever recipient of
donations from pro-Israeli groups, taking in $4.2m, according to the Open Secrets database. As vice-president, he mediated the rocky relationship between Barack Obama and Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
Brett Bruen,
a former global engagement director for the administration, recalled:
“I remember in the Obama White House how pissed off we were at Netanyahu
for coming to town and addressing a joint session of Congress without
so much as a heads-up. The animosity towards Netanyahu among the current
national security staff at the White House is palpable and yet
obviously it isn’t about personalities, it isn’t about politics – it’s
about the principles that are at stake here.”
Biden’s
own relationship with Netanyahu is hardly uncomplicated. He recently
recalled how, as a young senator, he had written on a photo of himself
and Netanyahu: “Bibi, I love you. I don’t agree with a damn thing you
say.”
That point was illustrated in recent
months with the White House echoing Israeli opponents of Netanyahu’s
plan to curb the powers of the country’s supreme court. All that was put
aside, however, after 7 October when Hamas gunmen killed 1,400 people and took more than 200 hostages.
Standing beneath a portrait of Abraham Lincoln, Biden gave one of the most visceral, heartfelt speeches
of his presidency, denouncing “an act of sheer evil” by Hamas and
insisting “the United States has Israel’s back”. It was received
rapturously in Israel and helped to quell any scepticism about where the
president stood.
Biden then travelled to
Israel, marking his second visit as president to an active war zone not
under US military control after a trip to Ukraine earlier this year. In
Tel Aviv, he met Netanyahu and his war cabinet and displayed his
celebrated empathy as he comforted victims’ families.
People a protest in support of Palestine in front of the White House in Washington DC on 20 October. Photograph: Ali Khaligh/Middle East Images/AFP/Getty Images
He compared the 7 October assault to the September 11 terrorist attacks on the US that killed nearly 3,000 people. But he added:
“I caution this: while you feel that rage, don’t be consumed by it.
After 9/11, we were enraged in the United States. And while we sought
justice and got justice, we also made mistakes.”
Biden’s gambit was widely reported
to be a public embrace of Netanyahu while trying to restrain him behind
the scenes – including with US military advisers – so as to mitigate
the civilian death toll, avoid complicating the release of American
hostages and prevent the war from spreading into a regional conflict.
Bill Galston,
a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution thinktank in Washington,
said: “He has chosen the classic diplomatic course of amity and unity in
public and candour in private. I think Israelis understand and
appreciate that. ”
The
president was said by officials to have asked Netanyahu “tough
questions” about what would come in the days, weeks and months after a
ground invasion of Gaza.
Egypt and Israel agreed to allow a limited number of trucks carrying
food, water, medicine and other essentials into Gaza via the Rafah
border crossing.
Back in Washington, the
president then tried to sell his mission to the American people, using
the ultimate bully pulpit, an Oval Office address, to make a direct
connection between Israel’s fight against Hamas and Ukraine’s war
against Russia. The commander-in-chief said: “American leadership is
what holds the world together … To put all that at risk if we walk away
from Ukraine, if we turn our backs on Israel, it’s just not worth it.”
But
the president is under pressure for a balanced approach from Arab
leaders in Egypt, Iraq, Jordan and beyond who have seen major protests
erupt in their capitals over the crisis in Gaza.
In
theory, the crisis could turn Biden’s political weakness – his age –
into an asset that points to his unrivalled foreign policy experience. Leon Panetta,
a former defence secretary and CIA director, said: “He gets it. He
understands it. He understands what I think he sees as the end game here
… There’s a lot of balls in the air but if anybody understands how to
basically work his way through that, it’s Joe Biden.”
Keeping all the balls in the air at once can be tricky. At a Rose Garden press conference
on Wednesday, he said “there has to be a vision of what comes next” – a
two-state solution – and expressed alarm about extremist settlers
attacking Palestinians in the West Bank, “pouring gasoline on fire”.
But
under questioning, he also angered some on the left by questioning the
death toll in Gaza: “I have no notion that the Palestinians are telling
the truth about how many people are killed.”
The Gaza-based health ministry – an agency in the Hamas-controlled government
– says 7,028 Palestinians, including 2,913 minors, have been killed by
the bombing. Shortages of water, electricity, fuel, food and medicine
are making the humanitarian situation more catastrophic by the day and
prompting a global outcry against Israel’s tactics – and the US’s
unwavering support for it.
Many Palestinians
and others in the Arab world regard Biden as too biased in favor of
Israel to act as an evenhanded peace broker. His blanket refusal to join
calls for a ceasefire also risks alienating elements of his own
Democratic party coalition, exposing a generational divide
between Biden, who grew up knowing Israel as a vulnerable country and
safe haven for Jews, and younger progressives who associate it primarily
with the oppression of Palestinians.
Could 2, 3, 4 million progressive voters not turn out, not vote for Biden because of this? That’s absolutely possible
Matthew Hoh of the Eisenhower Media NetworkA
recent NPR/PBS NewsHour/Marist poll found that only 48% of Gen Z and
millennials believe the US should publicly voice support for Israel.
Protests demanding a ceasefire have erupted on university campuses
across the country. Rashida Tlaib, the only Palestinian American in
Congress, told supporters: “President Biden, not all America is with you
on this one, and you need to wake up and understand. We are literally
watching people commit genocide.”
Rae Abileah,
a strategy consultant based in Half Moon Bay, California, argues that
Biden’s words do not match his actions, which are pouring fuel on the
flames. She said: “My message to President Biden, as a Jewish clergy
person with family who are in Israel, is to say my grief is not your
weapon. Do not use my faith or my grief to justify $14bn of military aid
going to kill innocent lives.”
“The big thing
we have to talk about around Biden’s policies right now, and the
policies of 10 US senators who flew to Tel Aviv as well, is that this is
putting the blood of children in Gaza on our hands as American
taxpayers. This is our responsibility. This is not about a war of Israel
attacking Gaza; this is enabled with our money.”
In addition, Biden is facing a backlash from Arab Americans
and American Muslims. Haroon Moghul, an American Muslim academic and
preacher based in Cincinnati, Ohio, said: “I voted for Biden in 2020. I
thought he would be the adult in the room and right now all I see him
doing is taking American resources, American political capital, American
goodwill and throwing all in with the most radical Israeli government
in history.”
Biden’s job approval rating among Democrats has fallen 11 percentage points in the past month to 75%, according to pollster Gallup,
the party’s worst assessment of the president since he took office.
Gallup cited Biden’s immediate and decisive show of support for Israel
as turning off some members of his own party. He is likely to face
former president Donald Trump in an election a year from now.
Matthew Hoh,
associate director of the Eisenhower Media Network, who served as a US
Marine Corps captain in Iraq, said: “Could 2, 3, 4 million progressive
voters not turn out, not vote for Biden because of this? That’s
absolutely possible.”
Additional reporting by Lauren Gambino