Biden, the most high-profile casualty of Netanyahu’s war
Given his longstanding support for Israel and its occupation of Palestine as a military bastion and spearhead of US policy in that troubled region, there is some poetic justice and sweet irony in the fact that Biden’s electoral ship and his overall political prospects are being torpedoed and sunk in broad daylight by the very people he sacrificed his standing for.
Since October 7, Biden has openly embraced Netanyahu and his murderous policy on the world stage and has thereby shown that he is impervious to and quite out of touch — not just with the elementary precepts of international and domestic law, but — with popular US sentiment, where there is growing resentment at the outsized influence Israel and its lobby groups exercise over the US legislature and executive.
The suspicion that the White House is under the undue sway of Israel and its lobby groups is now widespread and perhaps not without merit as when one listens to Foreign Secretary Blinken, his main talking points are often indistinguishable from that put forward by Netanyahu’s government, so closely do they agree in their arguments and justification for the continuation of the war that they could have been drafted for him in Tel Aviv — despite the disastrous implications not just for the Democratic US administration but the world.
Sponsoring hourly massacres in Gaza
Besides his endorsement and generous sponsorship of Israel’s merciless response to Hamas’ attack on military settlements surrounding Gaza and its ultimately disastrous attempt to undermine the Israeli occupation on Oct. 7, Biden has offered the highest level of diplomatic support to Tel Aviv and has acted as sort of human shield by fronting Israel’s claims, whether about the alleged beheading of babies, the veracity of the casualty figures coming out of Gaza, or the justification for bombing Al-Shifa hospital. This cannot be erased from the record.
Thus, in policy and in practice Biden has been squarely behind Israel, which now stands accused before the ICJ and by a vast share of humanity of the greatest of all conceivable crimes. These facts have indubitably stained the reputation of the US and its leader, because the world witnessed — in a level of detail never seen before — the unspeakable trauma and relentless crimes against a besieged people, sponsored by the US.
These facts cannot be unseen.
How Biden’s brand became toxic
Biden is surely the highest profile casualty of Netanyahu’s war.
By ruining Biden’s electoral prospects, Netanyahu’s war in effect boosts the electoral prospects of his friend, Trump by rendering the incumbent’s policy too toxic for young Democrats, minorities and anti-racist, anti-imperialist voters. In the gutter of US politics, Biden’s brand is now so tarnished in the eyes of the world — can you imagine — that even the disgraced Trump is regarded as a more moral and safer, less senile option.
The widespread public revulsion at Biden’s policy and his implicit complicity in the one-sided and unprecedented assault on Gaza is evidenced not only in the growing mass protests across the US and the world, but is perhaps best expressed in the fact that the leader of the US, its last great hope as it were, is now widely derided as ‘Genocide Joe’.
And to be sure, that label is never going away.
Genocide Joe as grim reaper
As a reaper of souls, Biden is irretrievable tainted by the tragic memory of those thousands of screaming children, many of whom had not even received a birth certificate by the time their death certificates were issued, others would never see the light of day, of which Biden preaches, but must lay nameless forever entombed in their mother’s womb, buried alive beneath the rubble of Israel’s brutal response.
Many were buried in unmarked graves with their names unknown. Biden seems more or less to still be alive, as he is still walking about and talking, but his name has become a curse word in the mouths of people the world over. They say it is a shame when the name dies before the man.
The aging actor apparently does not realize that we are in the last act of the play with him in the lead role. Apparently half-asleep, Biden has sleep-walked us to the brink of world war and is doing little to prevent it but rather seems intent on bringing it on, exampled by his aggressive military response to the Yemeni’s attempt to uphold the Convention on the Prevention of Genocide by blocking shipping to the aggressor country.
His policy is so disastrous that Hamas and the Houthis and Hezbollah — people that the US population cared little for — now enjoy unprecedented popularity among the youth, such that they sing songs in honor of the Houthis and cheer every time they see the little red triangles of Hamas fighters in videos online, because they know those triangles promise the imminent destruction of invading Zionist forces.
If the citizens of your own country brave the winter cold to come out to chant you down and lay siege to your palace, while cheering on the barefoot people fighting your mighty war machine, surely you have a problem Mr. President.
If the people that voted for you have turned against you in great numbers and are intent on removing you from the seat of power on the charge of involvement in the most despicable crimes against humanity, you are not winning, Mr. President.
The inescapable conclusion of his handling of this war and the obvious problem for the corporatist factions of the Democratic Party is that Biden is now a spent force. He is less popular than syphilis — for which there is at least a cure — , or the deranged yet leading Republican candidate Trump, whose dismal and criminal record we do not want to rehearse here.
The fact that getting repeatedly kicked in the balls is now more popular with the electorate than voting for Genocide Joe, in terms of his political capital and viability as a candidate one must conclude that Biden has proven to be not just morally, but politically bankrupt.
He will not go into the 2024 electoral race fighting a Republican opponent but rather the vast majority of the country, which despises him to no end.
But American voters still have a major problem — which they have lately started to better appreciate — that between the two main parties’ morally decrepit candidates they are stuck and have to choose between two avowed Zionists in the final stages of mental, moral and physical decline.
In that sense, perhaps in clinging on to power at all costs, even as their hair and teeth give up the fight, Biden and Trump represent the American empire as it enters the last stage of senile decline, while trumpeting the virtues of democracy, peace and human rights — empty rhetoric that serves only to conceal the harsh reality, as cosmetics conceal the unsightly truth.
Netanyahu and the longing for world war
Netanyahu needs Iran to enter the war so that he can hang onto his job and avoid jail time by escalating the next phase of the regional conflict, one into which the US would necessarily and inextricably be drawn on Israel’s side, as we have already seen in the so-called “Red Sea ‘coalition” but clearly the world is reluctant to join this dubious alliance that hopes to ensure the non-disruption of the ongoing genocidal campaign in Gaza.
Imagine vilifying those who oppose racism and genocide as the bad guys, but that is the heart of Israel’s argument: apparently South Africa and the leaders of the UN — indeed the majority of the people of the world — are anti-Semitic Hamas supporters for not letting Israel do what it wants.
It has been his life’s work to build Greater Israel over the graves of the Palestinian natives, while ignoring their claims to any right to exist. Given that he is in legal difficulty, all indications are that Netanyahu needs a bigger war to stay out of court and to remain relevant on the world stage.
All his justificatory talk of “the children or light” destroying the Amalek and of him representing civilization against barbarians are indications not only of his racism, but that he lives in a type of parallel universe where things become true by virtue of him saying so, but psychiatrists have more precise terms for this type of disorder or inability to accept self-evident facts. This disconnect is reflected for example in the fact that often his public statements contain no single grain of truth in them.
His stated goals in his war on Gaza are vague, undefined and unattainable — and perhaps intentionally so, considering how the vaguely defined ‘war on terror’ gifted the West an opportunity to attack any nation’s sovereignty and to strip their own citizens of their civil liberties with impunity.
It is therefore to Netanyahu’s unstated goals, as reflected in his actions and de facto policies, that analysts should look, for these imply that he aims at the extermination and/or expulsion of the Palestinians and the seizure and settlement of their lands, as well as the extension of Israeli dominance over the wider region, presumably with himself at the apex.
The problem when making its case for the right to do what it wants because they are “God’s Chosen People”, is that the truth is not kind to Israel, because in the West Bank and Gaza, the truth often casts the occupation forces in a very bad light, so that one cannot really tell the difference between the Zionists and the behavior of loathsome Nazis.
The truth makes them appear as common racists and ruthless fascists, mainly white people from Europe and America who are allowed to emigrate to Palestine to rob and plunder, kidnap and murder the natives with impunity. This is why Israel must principally rely on lies to advance its cause, even at the ICJ, where it claimed not to be committing genocide or having any such intent: clearly an egregious and easily disproven lie.
This disconnect with reality and world opinion is reflected in the fact that Israel hopes to persuade the ICJ and the world that it is actually South Africa that is supporting genocide by not letting the Zionists continue unhindered with their war on the Gazans. There is a base presumption in this lowly argument: that the intended audience is stupid enough to accept it.
But since, all nations are interdependent to greater or lesser extent, an attack on one invariably has implications for the interests of other states. World War I started in the Balkans but soon sucked all the major powers into its vortex, including South Africa. Netanyahu knows it and has spent his life planning this. How to maneuver your way to a world war.
The assault on Gaza would predictably draw neighboring countries into the conflict, setting the world on edge. With Lebanon, Yemen and Iran unable to withstand the provocations quietly anymore, the pieces on the board are now falling in a somewhat predictable pattern.
A great war that consumes the world for years would see Netanyahu freed from all immediate legal scrutiny, as the visibility of his crimes would recede against the backdrop of world war, and would allow for unprecedented imperial violence across West Asia, possibly the wider world, as there is no guarantee such a global war would be contained in West Asia, thereby producing a crisis that will make Netanyahu’s current legal problems pale in significance and possibly even fade from view in light of the greater catastrophe brought on by the collision of nuclear powers.
Has he not shown that he can make Biden do his bidding and read from his script? Has he not shown that he is the master of the US congress and can bend it to his will? Has he not demonstrated the tight control of the Zionists over US foreign and domestic policy? Has he not drained that country of its wealth and reduced their standing in the world with a knowing grin? Has he not shown that he can humiliate Biden and Blinken on the world stage and destroy their electoral hopes, while securing their cooperation and directing US defense policy? So, who is in charge here, you might ask?
The unholy sacrifice
The war party has to date effectively sacrificed over 30,000 Gazan souls, including over 12,000 children to their political ambitions. Yet, it seems to outsiders that the US President goes along— sometimes happily, sometimes reluctantly — with Tel Aviv’s murderous plans as if he himself were a hostage to their ruinous policies, even as his own staffers and campaign volunteers are abandoning him ”in droves”. This unconditional support for Netanyahu spells electoral hara-kiri for the US President. But why?
It seems counter-intuitive, but since it will likely lead to his electoral defeat, the question must arise why Biden would knowingly act against his own political interests. Is he foregoing his chance of re-election and his legacy due to his strongly held Zionist beliefs, his mindset, due to some cognitive deficiency, or some form of compulsion that he may be under?
Why would the man, reputed to be the most powerful in the world, sacrifice everything for Netanyahu? That is a question future historians and biographers will have to wrestle with. For now, the hopes of humanity hang on the slim prospects of an imminent ceasefire and a humane ruling from the ICJ that compels Israel to cease and desist from killing any Palestinians.
What if?
If the ICJ as the highest legal body of the UN shows that it — like the UN Security Council — cannot advance the cause of peace, we can expect public outrage and ‘mass unrest’, as agitated people the world over will have exhausted all legal means to end the war, so activists will consider themselves freed from the legalistic forms of resistance they adhered to up this point and will feel justified, for the sake of saving lives, to resort to what Martin Luther King Jr. called “the language of the unheard”.
The problem for Biden is that a ruling at the ICJ that finds Israel guilty of genocide would place him in a legal quandary. So, either way, whether the ICJ rules for or against a ceasefire, as an accomplice in Netanyahu’s plot to destroy Gaza, it would seem his goose is well and truly cooked.
Now, the question is whether Biden and the butcher in Tel Aviv get to cook the whole world before they have to say goodbye to it.
