Why the Democrats were Israel’s perfect partners in genocide
By masking support for Israel with hollow humanitarian gestures and empathy for Palestinians, Biden and Harris have diluted pressure to end the war.
Over the last year, we have witnessed President Joe Biden elevate the U.S.-Israel “special relationship” to new heights. From replenishing Israel’s weapons stocks and shielding it from accountability on the international stage, to deploying U.S. assets and personnel in Israel’s defense, the Biden administration has gone above and beyond to ensure that Israel not only could sustain its unprecedented assault on Gaza, but that it wouldn’t have to bear the full cost of war.
Biden went into his reelection campaign wrestling with Donald Trump for the title of “Israel’s best friend” — a grotesque race to the bottom that has become a tradition during U.S. election seasons. So when the president ultimately decided to drop out, some were hopeful that Vice President Kamala Harris would release us from this downward spiral. They were soon disappointed.
Media outlets eagerly insisted that Harris seemed to show “greater understanding and empathy for Palestinians,” and surmised that such a difference in perspective might lead to a change in policy. But in the months since assuming the head of the Democratic ticket, Harris has made it clear that she is ready and eager to carry on Biden’s catastrophic legacy for the next four years.
And while Israelis overwhelmingly favor Trump over Harris, and the former president certainly remains the preferred candidate among the country’s most extreme leaders, they might be missing the point. Because if you look past the partisan posturing, not only will Biden go down in history as Israel’s most consistent ally, but the strategy he and his fellow Democrats have embraced — masking their unconditional support for Israel behind a facade of concern for human rights — has played a crucial role in allowing Israel to get away with genocide for this long.
Biden, a committed Zionist
To be fair, America’s “special relationship” is much bigger than Biden. But when unconditional support of Israel became a threat to regional and US interests, past presidents — from Harry Truman and Dwight D. Eisenhower, to Ronald Regan and George Bush Sr. — drew real red lines.
At 81, Biden is the oldest president in U.S. history, with a political career that spans over half a century — one that he built with the help of the pro-Israel lobby. He once boasted that he did “more fundraisers for AIPAC in the ’70s and early ’80s than just about … anybody,” and in turn the president has received more funding from the Israel lobby than any other U.S. politician since 1990.
US Vice President Joe Biden (L) and Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu attend a dinner at the Prime Minister’s residence in Jerusalem on March 09, 2010. Vice president Biden is on a five day official visit to Israel and the Palestinian territories. Photo by Miriam Alster/FLASH90
With this support, Biden has learned that while the Israel lobby can lift political careers to unforeseen heights, it can just as easily destroy them: even the mildest criticism of Israeli policy risks unleashing the wrath of Israel’s influential apologists. The political costs of anything short of unconditional fealty to Israel are especially high during election seasons, and 2024 is no exception.
Biden considers the “special relationship” to be a critical pillar of America’s wider geostrategic priorities. From acting as a key ally during the Cold War to serving as a forward operating base for American power projection, protecting Israel has long occupied the epicenter of U.S. interests in the Middle East.
As he loves to remind us, though, Biden’s support for Israel has always been primarily driven by an ideological commitment to the Zionist project. “You don’t have to be a Jew to be a Zionist, and I am a Zionist,” Biden has repeatedly declared. “Were there no Israel, America would have to invent one.”
Biden came of age during Israel’s ascent, imbibing a one-sided barrage of myths that justified the state’s establishment at all costs. Around the family dinner table, Biden’s father, Joseph R. Biden Sr., would tell his son about the horrors of World War II, insisting that the only way to prevent a second Holocaust was to protect Israel above all else.
For Biden and his generation, Israel was an inspiring redemption story, and one in which Palestinians were entirely absent. That is why in Biden’s view, the Israelis killed on October 7 were “murdered,” “massacred,” and “not just killed, slaughtered.” But when describing the massacre of Palestinians, Biden embraces a different tone. “I have no notion that the Palestinians are telling the truth about how many people are killed. I’m sure innocents have been killed, and it’s the price of waging a war.”
President Joe Biden takes part in a ceremony at Yad Vashem, Israel’s largest Holocaust memorial, Jerusalem, July 13, 2022. (Olivier Fitoussi/Flash90)
Contrast Biden’s deep admiration for Israel with his evident disdain for Palestinians and Arabs, and we get a clear picture of the world view that informs his political decision making.
Weaponizing humanitarianism
But beyond Biden’s personal commitments and biases, he, Harris, and the Democratic establishment personify a wider liberal strategy: the duplicitous embrace of international humanitarian law and the selective enforcement of the so-called “rules-based” world order.
Over the past year, we have seen Biden and Harris weaponize these endearing traits of liberalism, leveraging them to distract from the reality that they are helping Israel carry out a genocide. In doing so, they have effectively deterred wider resistance to these policies at home, as well as international efforts to intervene.
A useful example of the consequences of this is the now infamous “humanitarian pier” that the Biden administration championed as a solution to get humanitarian aid past Israel’s blockade. The pier was a technical disaster, collapsing in turbulent water after failing to deliver aid and costing the U.S. taxpayer over $230 million. But what it did accomplish was to distract temporarily from the Biden administration’s refusal to use its ample leverage to compel Israel to stop restricting humanitarian aid to Gaza. In doing so, they bought Israel more time to starve the Strip.
For its part, mainstream media coverage has focused more on Biden’s toothless rhetoric and supposed “frustration” with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu than on his administration’s support for Israel’s war effort. In doing so, it created the impression that a change in Israeli tactics was always just one more harsh rebuke away, ignoring the glaring reality of U.S. complicity.
Vice President Harris meets with Prime Minister Netanyahu at the White House, July 25, 2024. (Wikimedia Commons)
While Harris may not harbor as much of Biden’s Zionist zeal, she has repeatedly promised that she will continue Biden’s genocidal legacy. When not dodging questions about why her administration’s “tireless” efforts to secure a ceasefire have so far failed and how her approach would differ from Biden’s, Harris has reiterated her “commitment to Israel’s defense and its ability to defend itself.”
This might sound like a vague slogan, devoid of policy specifics. But the intent is as explicit as can be: Harris will continue using U.S. power to shield Israel from accountability in pursuit of “Israel’s defense” and will keep weapon shipments flowing to ensure Israel can “defend itself.” Harris’ empathetic rhetoric, which does not deviate much from Biden’s, will be just as empty and distracting.
A ‘lesser evil’?
Many who oppose the current administration’s unconditional support for Israel have argued that, with Trump as the alternative, Biden and Harris still represent the “lesser evil.” But this reasoning ignores both the consequences of their empty, distracting rhetoric on domestic and international opposition, and the fact that the Biden and Harris administration’s policy resume, even long before October 7, closely mirrors its predecessor’s.
Since day one, the Biden administration has upheld Trump’s most controversial moves: keeping the U.S. embassy in Jerusalem, recognizing Israeli sovereignty over the Golan Heights, failing to reopen the PLO mission in Washington, and desperately seeking normalization agreements between Israel and its Arab neighbors that erase Palestinians entirely. While Biden restored funding to UNRWA, his administration promptly cut it again under pressure from an Israeli smear campaign.
The only discernible policy difference has been Biden’s largely ineffectual sanctions campaign targeting Israeli settlers who continue to attack Palestinians throughout the West Bank. Meanwhile, the Biden administration has given Israel more financial and military assistance than any previous administration.
President Biden greets Vice President Harris as he arrives to deliver his State of the Union address, Tuesday, February 7, 2023. (Adam Schultz/Wikimedia Commons)
To this day, the biggest difference has been the rhetoric. But when Trump says that he would let Israel “finish the job” in Gaza, at least he is honest, making U.S. complicity impossible to ignore. Trump’s blunt, jarring racism — using “Palestinian” as a slur, for instance — creates a clear target. In contrast, Biden and Harris cloak their support for Israel behind the language of humanitarianism, lulling voters and activists into complacency while allowing Israel to “finish the job” anyway.
There is no doubt that thousands of Palestinians would be dead regardless of who occupied the Oval Office this past year. But given Trump’s notorious unpredictability, it is difficult, if not futile, to know exactly what the U.S. role in the genocide would have looked like.
Would a conservative, “America-first” Trump administration also have spent more on military aid to Israel than any previous administration, or rather have focused its energies on other foreign policy priorities like heightened competition with China? Since Trump doesn’t share Biden’s personal ideological commitment to Israel, would he have allowed Israel to extend its war across the region if it meant scuttling hopes of expanding the Abraham Accords to include Saudi-Israel normalization?
More importantly, if Trump had been president, would both domestic and international actors have been spurred to oppose Israel’s genocide and U.S. complicity more vigorously through calls for arms embargoes, sanctions, or divestment? Would the anti-genocide movement in the U.S. be so widely vilified, or could it have expanded to include a wide coalition of liberals and progressives, united in their opposition to Trump’s extremism?
There is no doubt that Democratic party loyalty has muted opposition to the Biden Administration’s complicity in genocide. And one could argue that the international community hasn’t felt the urgency to counterbalance Washington’s disregard for international law in the same way it might have if Trump had been flouting it.
Between overt extremism and performative empathy
After more than a year of a genocide that has been broadcasted across the globe in gruesome detail, we must ask ourselves what a wider, more politically diverse anti-genocide movement in both the U.S. and abroad, motivated by shared interests in unseating Trump, could have achieved. Because all the Biden and Harris administration has done is perpetuate the same genocide under a veneer of legitimacy — diffusing pressure with platitudes about peace while deepening U.S. complicity.
This is not a plea to vote (or refrain from voting) for anyone. Democrats won’t “learn their lesson” by losing anti-genocide voters; instead, they’ll blame them for Trump’s victory and undermine efforts to build a broader, more effective movement for years to come. Nor should we downplay the consequences of Trump encouraging Israel to “finish the job” in Gaza, Lebanon, and Iran — even if it would merely represent an accelerated version of what Israel is doing now, with Biden’s tacit support. Trump has also made it clear that he will do everything in his power to step up bipartisan effortsto quell all pro-Palestine organizing.
But we must recognize that there is danger not just in overt extremism, but in performative empathy that actively preserves the status quo. Because the truth is, there is no “lesser evil.” And as we argue over this and obsess over the differences between administrations that share the same genocidal goals but employ different tactics, the pile of Palestinian and Lebanese bodies only grows.