[Salon] Netanyahu Is the Perpetrator, and Biden the Supplier



https://www.haaretz.com/opinion/2024-07-29/ty-article-opinion/.premium/netanyahu-is-the-perpetrator-and-biden-the-supplier/00000190-fa77-d43d-afd2-fe7f64680000

Netanyahu Is the Perpetrator, and Biden the Supplier - Opinion - Haaretz.com

Odeh BisharatJul 29, 2024

Anwar Sadat once said that 99 percent of the cards in the Middle East are held by America. Following Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's hallucinatory performance in Washington, one might say that the late Egyptian president understated the case.

Thus the problem isn't Netanyahu, or far-right National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, or veteran settler leader Daniella Weiss. Ordinary Palestinians, whether they are in a refugee camp abroad or in the occupied West Bank or in the destroyed Gaza Strip, have found themselves in a superpower's crosshairs.

That nightmarish pagan ritual in Washington, with its hundreds of insane dignitaries participating, is the whole story in a nutshell. This show explains why both peoples' tragedy in the Middle East is only getting worse. The conflict is simply held hostage by those lunatics.

That joyous gang never stopped dancing around the tightrope walker from the Holy Land. They stood up, applauded and sat down, over and over again. Even in rallies led by North Korea's dear leader I've never seen such exaltation. And after all that, they accuse the people of the Middle East of being primitive.

Outgoing U.S. President Joe Biden isn't, heaven forbid, one of those who has been hypnotized by Netanyahu. But in practice, he is their ultimate representative, just minus the rituals and the dancing. In the distant past, he said he was a Zionist, but he forgot to say what kind of Zionist he is – the Peace Now version, or that of far-right Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich?

Judging by his behavior – supplying hundreds of tons of bombs to an Israel led by the unholy trinity of Netanyahu, Smotrich and Ben-Gvir – he appears to be a Zionist of the most extreme and dangerous kind. The blood of the roughly 39,000 Gazans who have been killed by American bombs, most of them women and children, is also on Biden's hands, not just on Netanyahu's. 

Biden is the supplier; Netanyahu is the perpetrator. Thus, if there were any logic – and even before that, if there were any justice – then the first arrest warrant issued by Karim Khan, the chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court, should have been against the arms supplier, and only afterward against the perpetrator.

Life teaches us that if you lavish money and all kinds of other resources on your child, you must first ensure that they aren't used for evil ends, and that at any given moment, you will have the power to turn off the tap. But Biden the Zionist forgot how to be a good father. And when he saw his ally/protectorate acting brutally, even as the entire world was begging it to stop the killing and destruction and starvation, he wasn't wise enough to implement the second half of the equation – deterring his son.

Biden asked Netanyahu not to send the army into Rafah, yet Netanyahu did so anyway. Biden asked Netanyahu to put an end to the thuggery of the settlers' hilltop youth, yet the thuggery has not only continued, but intensified. He asked Israel to release the Palestinian Authority's tax money, but it's as if he hadn't said a word. He asked for a plan for postwar Gaza, but the answer was a perpetual war. 

Mr. President, if you only know how to give and not how to punish, then either you're a dirty businessman, or you're a collaborator. And given your superior status, you are responsible. How do the Israeli protesters put it? "You're in charge, so you're to blame."

And indeed, Biden is in charge, so he is to blame – even more so than Netanyahu. Without his military, economic, political and diplomatic support, we would long since have arrived at a cease-fire, an exchange of prisoners for hostages and initial planning for the postwar situation.

So it's good that you're leaving, Biden. It's just too bad that you're leaving because of your health and your age. It would have been better you left because of the shameful role you played in everything that has happened, and is still happening, on your watch. 

I don't know why, but I'm optimistic about future president – God willing – Kamala Harris. Maybe she will restore a little of America's honor, after you have squandered it through your shameful conduct – a conduct that made America a partner in crime in the Middle East.



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