The Triangulation of Joe Biden by Benjamin Netanyahu

Israel's Prime Minister wants a second Trump presidency

Gaza City street after Israeli bombing. The over 30,000 Palestinian deaths don’t include those buried and dead under the endless rubble of collapsed buildings (screen grab from CNN report)

There are two US media memes that are used to explain why Netanyahu is so deadly and defiant in his pulverizing of Gaza. First is a goal that is shared by Trump; they both want to use their national leadership to shield them from prosecutions. (Of course this would only work for the "Orange Man" if he somehow reached the White House for a second time.) The second meme is that Netanyahu can only stay in office if he energizes his pro-genocidal cabinet and right-wing zealot support.

However, neither of these frayed mainstream media explanations reveal how Netanyahu has succeeded in using Biden as a sock-puppet.

It is no coincidence that Netanyahu is defying Biden in large part to make him appear weak, which could help Trump be elected again. A Biden who lets Netanyahu be immune to repercussions for defying the President, and making him appear complicit in the murder of 30,000 Gazans, is a Biden who appears frail and lacking in formidable leadership. This assists Trump in offering a strongman alternative to a pusillanimous president in his handling of Israel

And make no mistake about it, Netanyahu will do what he can to get Trump into the White House. After all, Trump moved the US embassy to Jerusalem and supports the Israeli occupation of the West Bank (which the Biden Administration just toothlessly declared illegal, as previous administrations have done for decades, without penalizing Israel for encouraging settlement and the killing and harassment there, now more than 500,000 "Land of Israel fanatics and thugs" strong). Trump would quite possibly support an Israel that, ironically, Netanyahu has predicted would stretch from the "river to the sea." (It is a blatant evidence of US media and political double standard that Palestinian advocates have been called anti-Semitic for chanting for a state from the "river to the sea.") 

Netanyahu has effectively blackmailed Biden because he knows that if Biden cracks down on Israel in Gaza or cuts down on shipping weapons to Israel, "Bibi" can successfully appeal to an AIPAC-controlled Congress to force Biden to back down. AIPAC may appear to be losing some of its sway over Democratic voters, but that is consistent with its increasing shift to backing more Republicans. The bottom line is that Netanyahu knows that he has Biden on a leash, because the Israeli Prime Minister has more power in Congress than Biden when it comes to Israeli policy. 

Furthermore the US weapons manufacturers profit from the billions of dollars spent on weapons systems to Israel, not to mention the testing of weapons in battlefield conditions. As Stephen Zunes wrote in the February 27^th Progressive: "The arms industry also stands to gain greatly from U.S. support for Israel and its military operations. The industry contributes five times more money to Congressional campaigns and lobbying efforts than AIPAC and other pro-Israel groups, and has a considerable stake in supporting massive arms shipments to Israel and other Middle Eastern allies of the United States."

This triangulation of Biden has resulted in his likely loss of key support in swing states in this year's presidential election.  This includes pivotal states such as Michigan (which Trump won in 2016 by 5000 votes and where on February 27 more than 13% of voters cast ballots in the Democratic Party primary in a protest vote for “uncommitted.”)  A large chunk of the youth vote, and of course Palestinian-Americans, may stay home and not vote on November 5. There is even some hemorrhaging among Black voters who may view the genocide in Gaza as devaluing people of color while backing a primarily white Israeli government. The Jewish vote is concentrated in states that Biden will win anyway. So the peeling away of just a few thousand Democrats in swing states could put Trump back in the White House as a fascist leader.

Netanyahu's primary foreign policy goal has been the bombing of Iran, including its nuclear capabilities, and the overthrow of its current government. Through his relentless genocide in Gaza, he has stirred up Iran's proxies in the region, resulting in sporadic attacks on American soldiers, drones and shipping interests. It is still not out of the realm of possibility that Netanyahu's uncompromising vengeance may goad Biden into attacking Iran more directly, all because Biden is giving "Bibi" a free hand in bloodletting. During the tail end of the Obama administration in 2015, Netanyahu defied the then-president by accepting a Republican invitation to speak to a joint session of Congress in an attempt to scuttle a White House-brokered effort to prevent Iran from developing a nuclear bomb. The possibility of a nuclear war being triggered doesn't appear to concern Netanyahu who reportedly has a nuclear war protection bunker in the mansion where he and his third wife live in Jerusalem. Israel is also widely recognized as having developed an arsenal of nuclear bombs.

The Arab states that have or, in the case of Saudi Arabia, are on the verge of establishing diplomatic relationships with Israel are likely privately in support of Israel's war on Palestinians because they perceive Hamas, Hezbollah, and other radical opponents of the Jewish State as a threat to their monarchies and dictatorships. This is not like 1948 when the neighboring Arab states united in a failed attempt to keep Israel from becoming a nation. The modern petrostates and many unitary-rule Arab countries, particularly the Sunnis, now seek to become part of the neo-liberal economic community of the United States and Europe, with Israel as a Middle-Eastern hi-tech partner and Middle East anchor. The petrostates want to build post oil-boom economies.

Biden's final betrayal is to the State of Israel. Those who support a State of Israel living within its pre-1967 borders and a State of Palestine in the West Bank and Gaza will only be disappointed by the grim grind of ongoing bloodshed. What we saw in the macabre massacre of 1200 Israelis on October 7 and the slaughter of 30,000 Gazans since is only a prelude to more loss of life if Netanyahu stays in power and Israel continues to deny Palestinians statehood. To achieve peace, extremist Palestinians will have to come to terms with the original State of Israel in exchange for land and sovereignty, and Israeli ultra-Zionists promoting Gaza and the West Bank of Israel as "the Land of Israel" will need to reined in. But ridding Israel of Netanyahu and "Netanyahuism" will need to come first.

Indeed, Biden's embrace of Netanyahu makes Israel's existence less secure and more precarious. The claims of Biden and his national security advisor, Jake Sullivan, that they are being tough on Netanyahu in private are dispelled by the Prime Minister's brazen defiance of any admonishments he may or may not have received from Biden.  Efforts to mitigate the political damage he is responsible for are not diminished by public relations gestures such as air dropping 32,000 "pre-cooked meals" and a trickle of medicine in Gaza. That Biden continues to allow Netanyahu to prolong the slaughter, starvation and pestilence appears to indicate Biden believes that some lives are more valuable than others.

Former Prime Minister Ehud Olmert ominously warned on a recent Haaretz (Israeli English newspaper) podcast that Netanyahu (and his hard right-wing cabinet) have as their goal, an "Armageddon, that will make it possible to expel many of the Palestinians in the West Bank."

Joe Biden is an impediment to the only political solution that will see the children of Israelis and Palestinians living in peace and prosperity. (Imagine if the estimated 100 billion dollars of destruction in Gaza were spent on uplifting the Palestinians economically instead of a wholesale killing of them.)

Biden is like someone wearing the wrong prescription glasses. He either does not see what is hiding in plain sight, or he doesn't have the will to try and stop it.

Mark D Karlin is a former Editor and Founder of BuzzFlash.com and a journalist for Truthout for 10 years.