Joe Biden did not look like he is tired, lost in a fog, or “losing it” on Thursday night in his State of the Union speech. Indeed, he came across a lot more coherent, on top of what is actually happening in the world, and more than ready for whatever Donald Trump might throw at him. I’ll admit that I may have a bias. I am a year older than the President and also from the state of Delaware. I have known about him virtually all my life, and as a still active 82 year old I have not been too worried about Biden’s youthful 81. Sure, neither he nor I have the same energy today that we had at 40. BUT, we know a hell of a lot more and have developed a lot more personal contacts with key global players now than we had then. He also not only knows more about the events of the last eighty odd years. He also knows, on a personal basis, virtually all of the key international players of those years. My mother often said of me that I “was book smart, but life dumb.” I must admit that there is maybe something to what she said, but no one can say that of Joe Biden. He has been a key global player for half a century. He knew and knows all the other key players and where all the bodies are buried. Those are far more important attributes than glib knee jerk slogans and MAGA hats. Clyde’s Newsletter is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. Nor should anyone downplay the energy it takes to give an hour long speech before a partly hostile congress and on prime time to a global audience that is looking for any wrong word, any line of perspiration, and any possible sign of weakness. It looked to me like the President could handle anything a very tough audience could throw at him. If I did not know better, I would have guessed that he is younger than Donald Trump who at the end of the night often has difficulty uttering coherent thoughts. THE GENOCIDE PROBLEM And yet, and yet. There is one problem the President must address and solve directly to assure his reelection in the fall. It is the problem of Israel and the Palestinians. If there was a stumble in Biden’s speech, it was over the situation in Gaza. The President announced that he is directing the U.S. armed forces to establish a pier on the Mediterranean coast of Gaza to serve as a direct line of supply to the 2.2 odd million Palestinians trapped and under more or less continual Israeli bombardment from the air as well as from Israeli army tanks surrounding the now completely wrecked major cities of Gaza. The number of dead has officially topped 30,000, but that surely is a miscount given that literally half or more of structures in Gaza have been destroyed. In addition, the number of seriously wounded and those now in the beginning throws of starvation and contagious disease must be much larger. The term genocide is increasingly being used to describe the Israeli counter attack on Hamas in Gaza. To me, it certainly seems like genocide. A problem is that it is not being perpetrated only by the Israelis. It is also being perpetrated by the United States which has sent and is sending billions of dollars worth of advanced weapons and ammunition to Israel while also making U.S. intelligence available to the Israeli armed forces. Israel could not have done what it has done so far without enormous American aid nor can it continue its effort in lieu of continuing U.S. supply. If what is happening in Gaza is genocide, it is much too close to being genocide by America as well as by Israel. Joe has it within his power to stop the massacre (which it certainly is) very quickly. The Israeli army cannot operate without American equipment, cooperation, and support. Indeed, the Israeli government is financially shaky and could not consider continuing its attacks without assistance from Joe. If the President is serious about providing adequate food, shelter, and medical aid to the Gazans, he can do it relatively quickly . He just has to tell the Israeli government that there will be no more supply of anything from the United States to Israel until it ceases fire and halts the destruction of the Gazan Palestinians and shows some mercy by allowing shipments of medicine, food, and water to get to the literally starving masses. THE ISRAEL LOBBY Of course, to do that he must run the risk of alienating the Zionist Jewish American lobby which has long been a major source of funds and support for the Democratic Party and in particular for one Joe Biden who is apparently the all time champion recipient of Jewish-American political donations because he has long been seen as a “friend of Zionist Israel.” This streak actually began in the Spring of 1948 when Harry Truman was running for a second term as President at the moment when the European Zionist founders of Israel first declared independence on May 14, 1948. Truman badly needed to win New York in order to win the Presidency. The Zionist American Jews (including the likes of Supreme Court Justices Felix Frankfurter and Louis Brandeis) who were strongly backing the founding of a new, independent Israel mounted a strong effort to persuade Truman to make a congratulatory call to the new, self announced Prime Minister of the new Israel immediately after his declaration of Israeli independence. Truman had reservations about the whole Israeli enterprise, but he needed campaign money and he needed to win New York state in order to remain President. Of course, the American Jewish population was politically strong in New York. Truman later said that he had never been subjected to such intense lobbying before this event. In any case, he submitted and about a half hour after Israel’s declaration of independence, Truman called to congratulate the new Zionist Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion. Mind you, at the time, Jewish Americans far outnumbered the population of the new Jewish Israel. They were also relatively rich in financial terms and exercised significant political influence in the United States and especially in New York. Truman did eventually carry New York and won reelection and established a strong and lasting tie between the Zionist-Jewish-American population and the Democratic Party. Joe Biden has long been a beneficiary of that tie. It must be emphasized that there was no competing tie with Arab Palestinians because there were few if any Palestinian or other citizens of Arab origin living in the United States at the time. THIS IS NOW That was then. Now, Biden must recognize that the situation has changed dramatically. There is now a substantial Palestinian-American and Arab-American population, established, at least in part, as a result of the arrival in America of Palestinian Arabs who were driven out of their traditional homeland by the Zionist immigrants from elsewhere. To be sure, Jewish Americans still outnumber Arab-Americans but the latter are likely to be an important determinant of victory in states like Michigan that Biden must win if he is to prevail against Trump in November. As a matter of sheer politics, Joe can simply no longer ignore these people. In addition, and more importantly, he must recognize that Israel’s policies and revealed values are alienating the rest of the world from it, and because of our close association with Israel, from us also. Far from being seen and accepted as the leader of the free world, we are increasingly being perceived as the hypocritical champion of a tyrannical regime that champions Jewish supremacy while committing what looks a lot like genocide against Arab Palestinians. We Americans are casting vetoes in the UN and other international bodies that are voting overwhelmingly in favor of a halt to the Israeli massacre. THE BACKGROUND In retrospect, it is easy to see how this has all evolved so badly. Since its founding by Zionist-European Jewish leaders in 1948, the state of Israel has dominated the perceptions and global understanding of Judaism and Jewish people. However, the origins of the present state go back to the late 19th century when what were then known as Zionists ( e.g. Theodor Herzl, Chaim Weizmann, et al ) first preached the doctrine that Jews constitute a single universally hated race or blood group that can only be safe and happy in an independent state in the ancient Jewish homeland of Zion (Palestine) run for and by them. This was not the view of all Jewish people or even of a majority of Jewish people at the time and probably not today. Non Zionist Jews understand Judaism to be a religion constituted not only of what are known as Ashkenazi (European origin) Jews but also of Jews of many ethnicities, blood types, and nationalities. Indeed, in the United States the Reform Jewish movement has emphasized that it was and is not a diaspora longing to return to some ancient homeland. Most Orthodox Jews rejected the Zionist argument for similar reasons. Indeed, they have asked: “where is it written that God would appoint the atheists Herzl and Ben Gurion as the Messiah.?” The anti-Zionists also contradicted an important slogan of the Zionists at the time (early 20th century). The slogan went like this: “ A land without people (Palestine) for a people without land” (European Jews). “Nonsense” said the anti-Zionists. They knew the land was inhabited by Arabs, Christians, and many others and that the European Zionists harbored disdain for these groups. They rightly anticipated trouble if the world’s Zionists were to start arriving in Palestine in large numbers. Reform Alfred Lilienthal’s 1949 Readers Digest article spells all this out in prophetic detail. Of course, the Zionists prevailed and Israel was established as the putative safe home for world Jewry. America’s Zionists played a key role in achieving this objective and the presentation of Israel to the American public since 1948 has been that of the victorious Zionists. Few Americans today have been exposed to any viewpoint on Israel other than that of the Zionists. AMERICA CANNOT PLAY GENOCIDE The problem today is that standing up for the Zionists like Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu means supporting what looks very much like an Israel led genocide of the Palestinians in Gaza. Moreover, this is happening at a time when people of Arab origin have come to constitute a significant segment of the American population ( not as big a segment as that of American Jews, but significant nevertheless) and that segment just happens to exist in some politically key areas for anyone like Joe Biden wishing to become President of the United States. To assure victory in the Presidential election, the continued credibility of the United States as the global leader of the free world, and the end of the on-going Israeli destruction of Gaza, President Biden must take a brave political step. He must turn his back on AIPAC (American Israel Political Action Committee), the American-Israeli lobbying group that has historically provided him enormous amounts of Jewish money over the years. He must stop pussyfooting withe Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu and announce a halt of all shipments of American military equipment as well as of other equipment that may be used to support war making. He must also cut off loans to the Israeli banking system and to Israeli businesses. In short, to assure himself of the Presidency and America of its future leadership of the free world, Biden must now take down not only Netanyahu, but also the Zionist dogma that has long prevailed in Israel. If he can do that, beating Donald Trump in the Presidential election in November will be child’s play.
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