{"id":1499946,"date":"2024-02-14T14:03:56","date_gmt":"2024-02-14T14:03:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/jacobin.com\/2024\/02\/biden-administration-gaza-israel-war\/"},"modified":"2024-02-15T11:55:09","modified_gmt":"2024-02-15T11:55:09","slug":"officials-keep-admitting-bidens-anger-at-israel-isnt-real","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/2024\/02\/14\/officials-keep-admitting-bidens-anger-at-israel-isnt-real\/","title":{"rendered":"Officials Keep Admitting Biden\u2019s Anger at Israel Isn\u2019t Real"},"content":{"rendered":"\n \n\n\n\n

Since October 7, US officials have been quietly admitting in the press that Joe Biden fully supports Israel\u2019s war \u2014 and that talk about the president\u2019s supposed anger at massive civilian casualties in Gaza is purely PR to keep the war going.<\/h3>\n\n\n
\n \n
\n Joe Biden speaks on the Senate's recent passage of the national security supplemental bill, which provides military aid to Ukraine, Israel, and Taiwan, on February 13, 2024, in Washington, DC. (Anna Moneymaker \/ Getty Images)\n <\/figcaption> \n<\/figure>\n\n\n\n\n \n

Buried in one<\/a> of the recent<\/a> spate<\/a> of stories<\/a> about how President Joe Biden is really, really upset with Benjamin Netanyahu when no one\u2019s looking \u2014 part of a newly urgent press campaign by the White House to distance the president from his own increasingly<\/a> unpopular<\/a> polic<\/a>y on the brutal Gaza war \u2014 was a telling line: \u201cYet, even as Biden has escalated his rhetoric, he is not yet prepared to make significant policy changes, officials said. He and his aides continue to believe his approach of unequivocally supporting Israel is the right one.\u201d<\/p>\n

Besides comically negating the fourteen paragraphs that came before it emphasizing Biden\u2019s supposed unhappiness with Israel\u2019s conduct in the war, the line corroborates what has been, from time to time, explicitly stated in reporting on Gaza: that Biden is and has been consciously and deliberately helping Israel carry out what the International Court of Justice has now ruled is plausibly a genocide.<\/p>\n

A January 8 report<\/a> in Politico<\/em> based on conversations with US officials, for instance, stated that while some in the administration thought the White House needed to stay friendly with Israel to influence its actions, \u201canother factor\u201d was driving Biden\u2019s policy of enabling Netanyahu: the administration \u201cagrees with the idea that Hamas must be uprooted and degraded as much as possible.\u201d<\/p>\n

In a December 28 Hebrew-language report<\/a> in the Israeli outlet Walla<\/em>, a senior US official is quoted remarking on a \u201cdifficult conversation\u201d between the two world leaders over Netanyahu\u2019s refusal to release Palestinian tax money Israel had frozen: \u201cThe feeling was that the president is going above and beyond for Netanyahu and taking political risks every day but when Bibi’s moment comes to give something back and take political risk he is unwilling to do so.\u201d<\/p>\n

This suggests it\u2019s not that Biden doesn\u2019t realize his Gaza policy is torpedoing US global standing and risks losing an election he believes will decide the fate of American democracy; he\u2019s consciously taking that risk.<\/p>\n

In a November 13 Times of Israel <\/em>report<\/a>, an anonymous Biden official complained about Netanyahu\u2019s rejection of letting the Palestinian Authority govern Gaza and postwar planning more generally, because it meant international pressure would mount on Israel to end its campaign. \u201cThe diplomatic umbrella the US and other Western countries are providing Israel to continue operating in Gaza constricts, as civilian casualties mount,\u201d the official explained. \u201cRefusal to cooperate with \u2014 and even inhibiting \u2014 [our] efforts constrict that umbrella even more.\u201d<\/p>\n

According to a November 4 Axios <\/em>report<\/a>, Secretary of State Antony Blinken told Israeli officials that the administration\u2019s push that month for a \u201chumanitarian pause\u201d \u2014 which Biden officials misleadingly<\/a> hyped as a meaningful humanitarian measure that was no different from a general cease-fire \u2014 was really just a public relations effort to take international pressure off the United States and make it easier for Israel to carry on with its killing.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe don’t want to stop you, but help us help you get more time,\u201d three separate officials recalled Blinken saying.<\/p>\n

Some observers noticed that this was Biden\u2019s approach, like former Israeli diplomat and politician Danny Ayalon. \u201cThe United States, just as much as Israel . . . would love to see Hamas eliminated as a military force,\u201d he told<\/a> Israeli channel i24News in December. \u201cBiden is very skillfully, in a political maneuver, making the right, I would say, decisions, in terms of giving Israel the time to eliminate Hamas.\u201d<\/p>\n