I don’t know about you, but it feels like it’s been a tough week. Some of it was self-inflicted, as I have spent a fair amount of time debating all comers on the Facebook wall of my old friend and high school physics teacher, Don Boyle, who has spent his life on the left wing of Canadian politics. I have warm memories of my class with him, and of talking about world affairs, during the brief period when I, too, was on the left. He briefly recruited me as a member of the New Democrat Youth when I was a 15 year old eleventh grader.
At the moment, my old friend is a frequent poster of memes and articles written from the angry “pro-Palestinian” point of view. I engage with those posts, calling attention to unsubstantiated claims and selective reporting, as well as the application of double standards in which behaviour by Israel sparks outrage, where similar behaviour by other actors did not. On the whole my arguments are not well received. Some of the people posting there accuse me of being brainwashed, others of moral turpitude. Don just thinks I’m wrong.
Some of the people I engage with there are speaking from deep within a conspiratorial universe in which many of the deaths of October 7 were actually perpetrated by Israel. Others repeat the deeply problematic claim that Jews weaponize antisemitism to suppress criticism of Israel. For most of them the claim that Israel is committing genocide is obvious on its face.
Sometimes Don posts on my wall, and mirror image discussions ensue between him and the many pro-Israel people who follow me.
This all became even more fraught for me when the IDF killed seven aid workers from World Central Kitchen. This was followed in the next forty eight hours by a dramatic escalation in criticism of Israel by western leaders, including Canada’s Prime Minister Trudeau, but most prominently from US President Biden and spokespeople for the his Administration.
I experienced a feeling of vertigo, as I did in the weeks after October 7 when I quickly realized that the world would be lining up against Israel in the aftermath of the horrors of October 7. For a while it felt like everything was spinning out of control and the exact course of the future was unknowable but seemed pointed toward disaster.
Once I got a bit of a grip, I began, as I often do, to ventilate my thoughts with my beloved co-conspirator, the woman who shares my life for mysterious reasons only understood by her, and accepted with gratitude by me.
What was happening? Why the dramatic change in tone? Is America preparing to throw Israel under the bus?
Horrible as it was, the killing of the World Central Kitchen workers in an Israeli drone strike was surely not a reason for a fundamental shift in the American position. It could be argued that the American decision on March 25 to abstain on a Security Council resolution that called for an immediate ceasefire, not conditioned on hostage release already reflected a shift in American policy. Times of Israel Editor David Horovitz said as much in one of the daily briefing podcasts last week.
This was followed on March 26 by the report of UN Special Rapporteur Francesca Albanese’s report to the UN Human Rights Council where she declared that there were “reasonable grounds” to believe Israel was committing genocide in Gaza. Even for those of us who find such claims unfounded and the general level of vitriol against Israel unwarranted, it certainly seemed like the other side was winning the argument last week.
So what is really going on? There are three ideas I’ve been thinking about. The first has to do with the dynamics of American politics and the impending presidential election. I wrote about this before in my earlier article, Bibi and Biden.
Two days before the US President’s public dressing down of Israel’s Prime Minister, the results of a Democratic presidential primary in Wisconsin showed that 8% of voters voted “uninstructed”. This was in response to an appeal by critics of Biden’s policy on the war in Gaza. In addition 3% voted for another candidate, leaving 88% of the votes for President Biden. This followed an earlier result in Michigan on February 27 where 13% voted “uncommitted” and in Minnesota on March 5, where 18% cast a protest vote.
President Joe Biden in phone conversation with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on April 4 — Source CNN
These numbers come in the context of a tight race in which most polls show Biden’s opponent, Donald Trump to be ahead. It would make sense that, even if Biden’s heart is with Israel, the future of America must come first. Concern about his prospects in the upcoming election could motivate him to try to show that he can be tough on the Israelis when he has to be. While much of the commentary coming from the anti-Israel wing of the Democratic party remains highly critical, and is unlikely to change in response to such gestures, Biden may still think it makes political sense to distance himself from Netanyahu.
As I also mentioned in my earlier article on the subject, Netanyahu gains credibility with his right wing allies when he is seen to stand up to Biden. On the other hand, we saw Netanyahu doing things today, in response to American demands, that Israel has refused to do since the beginning of the war. He announced that they would allow aid for Gaza to be delivered through the Israeli port of Ashdod, and transferred directly to northern Gaza at the Erez Crossing. The Erez crossing was attacked by Hamas on October 7 and has been closed to all traffic since then. This is a concession that will spark outrage among right wingers in the government, but Netanyahu can argue that Biden left him with no choice.
There is another event that might have sparked American displeasure. This is Israel’s highly successful attack on the Iranian consulate in Damascus. The Iranians themselves announced that one of the two generals killed in that bombing was deeply involved in the planning of the October 7 atrocities. Perhaps intelligence about that is why Israel decided to take the possibly escalatory step of attacking these senior Iranian terrorists in Syria.
One of America’s objectives in its tight embrace of Israel immediately after October 7 has been to prevent the outbreak of a wider war with Iran. Americans may have seen Israel’s attack as undermining that objective. American motives for this are tied up in their own murky relationship with Iran. On the one hand American maintains damaging sanctions against the Islamic Republic and troops in Syria and Iraq which Iran would like to see gone. On the other hand there are still indirect talks going on aimed at reviving the highly unsatisfactory nuclear deal negotiated by the Obama administration.
Biden may also see the outbreak of a wider war as harmful to his electoral prospects. Republicans claim that Biden is perceived as weak and blame him for setbacks in American prestige in the world, while claiming that their candidate would inspire more respect and keep America’s enemies guessing.
The third reason could be, of course, that Biden genuinely believes that Israel is mishandling the war, and that it is no longer possible for them to reconcile Israel’s actions in Gaza with their own position. From the beginning, the American position on what should happen in Gaza has emphasized different things. While Israeli rhetoric has focused on destroying Hamas and liberating the hostages (with the emphasis on one or the other shifting over time), the Americans have always talked about the war in the context of its broader strategy of cementing an alliance between Saudi Arabia and the other gulf states as a bulwark against Iranian encroachment. A peace treaty with Saudi Arabia is part of that vision, and the Saudi price for that seems to be some sort of Palestinian State.
For Israelis, the prospect of making concessions to the Palestinians in the wake of the October 7 attack, with the appearance of rewarding the attack, is well nigh unthinkable. Indeed, there is an argument to be made that the reason for the timing of the October 7 attack was driven by Iranian fears that the American efforts to sponsor Israeli rapprochement with Saudi Arabia were about to bear fruit. Seen in this light, such a deal could be seen as a defeat, rather than a reward for Hamas.
This afternoon, when asked by a reporter about possible additional US measures against Israel, President Biden said that Israel was doing what he had asked them to do. So it seems like the situation may be contained for the moment. Of course we will have to see what else Israel does in the coming days to keep the Americans happy, and whether that will undermine the successful achievement of its own war aims.
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Biden is clearly in favor of a two state solution at any cost : Nevada & Michigan
I've read the other comments and see that I am focussed on one tree branch and not seeing the forest at all. Definitely, there is so much in this article to think about. But here is my singular focus - it is the world uproar about the tragedy of the deaths of the seven aid workers from World Central Kitchen. I'm actually furious that the world is accusing Israel of a targeted attack. Mistaken killings by friendly fire occur in War - all the time. The IDF accidentally killed 3 Israeli hostages. Wasn't there just news from the U.S. about a female taken hostage, and as she was being released from the car, by the abductor, a SWAT team failed to stand down and shot her repeatedly? But for Israel, tragic mistakes are always called out as wilfully planned and malicious. If it was viewed as the tragedy that it was, there would not have been such a complicated chain of events forcing Biden to turn on Israel.