The Thanksgiving Truce
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and U.S. President Joe Biden know that if they lose the American people they are both in serious trouble, says Joe Lauria.
Netanyahu’s Thanksgiving message to the American people.
By Joe Lauria
Special to Consortium News
Israel has long depended on American military aid and diplomatic support to pursue its interests in the Middle East. Without such backing, especially in a time of open warfare, it is doubtful that Israel could for long pursue its goals in Gaza.
American politicians likewise depend on support from Israel and its lobby in the United States to pursue their political careers.
But ultimately, both Israel and U.S. politicians depend on the support of the American people.
There was already a trend, especially among young Americans, many of them Jews, to no longer lend unconditional support to Israel. This became evident with the growing popularity of the boycott, divestment and sanctions movement among American youth, causing individual states to pass laws outlawing the movement.
The trend towards rejecting the mainstream media’s whitewashed history of Israel and Palestine, and the growing understanding that Israel was established in 1948 largely through the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians from their ancestral homes and land, has only intensified with Israel’s current onslaught against Gaza.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and U.S. President Joe Biden know that if they lose the American people they are both in serious trouble.
Biden is already feeling the heat from American voters because of his handling of Gaza. He can pretty much kiss the swing state of Michigan goodbye with is large Arab population. But polls show many Democrats across the entire country also strongly disapprove.
Palestinian Americans sued in federal court on Nov. 16 to immediately force Biden, Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin to stop providing additional weapons, money and military and diplomatic support to Israel.
A motion from the Center for Constitutional Rights’ for preliminary injunction charges that:
“Defendants have been on notice of the risk of genocide since at least October 9, if not already on October 7, through the public and widely circulated statements and actions by Israeli officials with whom they were in close, regular contact and consultation, as well as by warnings of indicators of genocide from United Nations officials and other sources that have only increased since then.”
Israel understands that to maintain U.S. government support, without which it cannot continue its genocidal goals, it needs to keep the U.S. public on side, lest it bring pressure on Biden and Congress to finally cut off aid to stop the massacres. Right now Netanyahu sees Americans dangerously turning against Israel and the Biden administration.
Weekly protests and American Jews taking over Grand Central Station (which the New York governor called “a major incident”) are clearly alarming Washington and Tel Aviv, (not to mention London, Berlin and Paris where it’s illegal to support the Palestinians.)
Is it therefore a coincidence that a 4-day ceasefire allowing cameras to show food trucks delivering aid to Gazans coincides with the 4-day U.S. Thanksgiving holiday?
Thanksgiving is infamous for family fights about politics. It’s a time when overworked Americans take a breather and start reflecting on the world. They have time to watch the news criticially.
The last thing Biden and Netanyahu need during these four days are Americans being confronted with more images of genocide and deprivation as they overeat.
Biden needs this pause during Thanksgiving as much as Netanyahu does. They both need to stop the support of the American people slipping away. It’s no wonder then that Netanyahu issued this video message to the American people.
Are Netanyahu and Biden really cynical enough to agree on the timing of this 4-day humanitarian pause to coincide with the 4-day Thanksgiving pause?
Netanyahu went to high school in Philadelphia. He studied at MIT and lived in New York as Israel’s ambassador to the U.N. His English accent is American. He knows America, its holidays and its psychology. About Philadelphia, he said: “A pretty good portion of my intellectual capital was developed in this city.”
He knows that the power to end this war is ultimately in the hands of the American people, who he must win over.
Both Biden and Netanyahu strongly rejected any ceasefire until the timing was right. During this Thanksgiving weekend there will be no war.
The killing will resume when Americans go back to work on Monday.
Joe Lauria is editor-in-chief of Consortium News and a former U.N. correspondent for The Wall Street Journal, Boston Globe, and other newspapers, including The Montreal Gazette, the London Daily Mail and The Star of Johannesburg. He was an investigative reporter for the Sunday Times of London, a financial reporter for Bloomberg News and began his professional work as a 19-year old stringer for The New York Times. He is the author of two books, A Political Odyssey, with Sen. Mike Gravel, foreword by Daniel Ellsberg; and How I Lost By Hillary Clinton, foreword by Julian Assange. He can be reached at joelauria@consortiumnews.com and followed on Twitter @unjoe