Joe Biden and the Gaza war

With his initially blanket support for Israel's war against Hamas, the US President has maneuvered himself into the domestic political sidelines. The pressure on Biden to change course vis-à-vis the Netanyahu government is growing. One reason is the shift to the left by the liberal Jewish communities in the USA.

by Eric Alterman

[This article posted on 2/8/2024 is translated from the German on the Internet, https://monde-diplomatique.de/artikel/!5974592.]

Five weeks after the Hamas attack on Israel on October 7, a pro-Israel rally was held in Washington on November 14. An estimated 290,000 people, the majority of them American Jews, traveled to the capital to demonstrate in support of Israel, for the release of the Hamas hostages and against anti-Semitism. It was probably the largest pro-Israeli demonstration in the history of the USA, but possibly also the most unnecessary in terms of its political addressee. The Biden administration had already clearly positioned itself in line with these demands.

On this day, the atmosphere was completely different from the last solidarity rallies for Israel during the Gaza war in May 2021, which were organized in part by the same groups. At that time, only 2,000 people took part; the Jewish "pro-peace" organizations boycotted the demonstration because the organizers defined any anti-Zionism as anti-Semitism.

At the November 14 rally, these groups were also in full attendance, although many of them had called on President Biden to urge Israel to end human rights violations against the Palestinians. The organization "Americans for Peace Now" had even called for this to be made a condition for further US military aid.

Many of the demonstrators certainly did not like the fact that the evangelical preacher John Hagee was also invited to the rally. The founder of the lobby group "Christians United for Israel" preached, among other things, that God had appointed Hitler as the "hunter" of the Jewish people - as punishment for their failure to obey the commandment in the New Testament "Revelation of John" to return to the Holy Land.

Generational conflict in the Jewish community

On November 14, the motto was: Solidarity with Israel and with all forces that support the Israeli war in Gaza. Black progressive CNN commentator Van Jones learned what that meant when he shouted into the crowd: "I pray for peace. No more rockets from Gaza; and no more bombs on the people of Gaza." The response was boos and chants of "No ceasefire".

There were small counter-demonstrations by Jewish dissident groups "Jewish Voice for Peace" and "IfNotNow" on the fringes of the large rally. Both, together with like-minded and Palestinian groups, had already paralyzed traffic in numerous major cities or occupied train stations and besieged the Capitol in Washington. They demanded that Biden stop military aid to Israel and use his influence to end the bombing of Gaza.

The slogans of these small counter-demonstrations largely echoed US public opinion on the Gaza war. In one poll - at a time when the death toll in Gaza was still below 10,000 - 66 percent of respondents said they "strongly favored" or "somewhat favored" the call for an immediate ceasefire. A significant percentage of this group were Jews, especially of the younger generation.1

These figures confirm the trend that Jewish Americans, especially those under the age of 24, are leaning more to the left and pro-Palestinian, while Jewish Israelis, especially younger ones, are moving further to the right. In 2022, the Israeli Democracy Institute found that 62% of the population identify with the political right, but only 24% with the political center - and a full 11% with the left.2

In Israel, a clear majority voted for illiberal or theocratic parties and for the de facto annexation of the West Bank in the last five elections - thus approving what the International Court of Justice would define as a case of apartheid. Consistently, the Israeli right has abandoned its traditional ties to the Jewish community of the

community and moved closer to the right-wing evangelical Zionists who set the tone on Israel within the Republican Party.

According to Gary Rosenblatt, the former editor-in-chief of the New York Jewish Week newspaper, Netanyahu once said in private that he was doing well "as long as he has the support of Orthodox and evangelical Christians in America, who outnumber the Jews by a large margin".

As far as the political orientation of the Jewish population in the USA is concerned, the Hamas attacks and Israel's reaction have not so much brought about a change as a deepening of existing convictions.

In early December, 500 members of more than 140 Jewish organizations pleaded for a ceasefire in an open letter to President Biden: "We know that there is no military solution to this crisis. The Jews will not be able to achieve security and the Palestinians will not be able to achieve freedom if they fight each other. "3

As early as November 20, 13 Democratic members of the Senate wrote to Biden that prolonging the suffering in Gaza was not only intolerable for the Palestinian civilian population, it also "jeopardizes the security of Israeli civilians by exacerbating existing tensions and undermining regional alliances". Her final call for Biden to push Israel harder for concessions would have been unimaginable ten years ago.

Bernie Sanders, Biden's biggest rival in the 2020 primaries, calls the Netanyahu government "right-wing extremist"; the "near total war" against the Palestinians "morally unacceptable and a violation of international law". He wants to see further financial support for Israel tied to several conditions. These include the right of displaced persons within the Gaza Strip to return to their homes, an end to violence by Israeli settlers and a settlement freeze in the West Bank, as well as a commitment to peace negotiations with the aim of a two-state solution.

There are hardly any voices in the USA that deny Israel the right to respond to the Hamas attack with military means. The only exceptions are extremist fringe groups, in whose ranks the crimes committed by Hamas on October 7 are shockingly often denied and dismissed as "Zionist propaganda".

However, the Israeli actions in the Gaza Strip, i.e. the horrendous number of civilians killed and the almost complete destruction of the infrastructure, have given Hamas a gigantic propaganda success worldwide, inspiring an even more radical resistance.

President Biden continues to present himself as Israel's best friend and prevents any discussion of the idea of making further military aid dependent on an end to Israel's strategy of destruction. This is despite the fact that Israel constantly flouts restrictive US laws when deploying weapons systems procured from the US.

Biden has clearly overestimated his influence on Netanyahu. In 2001, he revealed his opinion of his great ally in a (secretly recorded) conversation with representatives of the settler movement: "America can easily be steered in the right direction. They won't bother us."

This Netanyahu, supported by the extremists in his cabinet and among his followers, disavows the US President at every opportunity. Recently, there have been repeated signs that he is not at all opposed to the idea of a "second Nakba" - a forced emigration of the Gaza population to Egypt and elsewhere. He wants to continue the war until the goal he defined in the Wall Street Journal on 25 December is achieved: "Hamas must be destroyed, Gaza must be demilitarized and Palestinian society must be de-radicalized."

Through Biden's demonstrative closeness to Netanyahu, the US has lost much of the moral credit it earned through its support for Ukraine in the fight against Russian aggression. Biden equates the Israeli and Ukrainian struggles in principle. But in most democratic countries, the Palestinians are seen as victims of the Israelis - and Washington's policy is perceived as hypocritical.

Biden's lonely position also increases the likelihood of an election defeat in November. In mid-December, Biden's approval rating had fallen to a record low of 37 percent. His position on the Gaza war is criticized by a large portion of the Democratic electorate, including 70 percent of those under 24.4 According to a mid-January poll, 49 percent of all registered Democratic voters view Israel's military operations as "genocide" (compared to 21 percent of all respondents). Among 18 to 29-year-olds, regardless of political orientation, 49 percent see Israel's actions as genocide, while 24 percent reject the accusation.5

Biden cannot expect any support from voters of Arab origin. And his closeness to Netanyahu will also cost him many votes among people of color. The attitude of this group of voters has always been more pro-Palestinian than that of society as a whole, because many of them see parallels between the Palestinian struggle and their own fight for civil rights. As the New York Times reported on January 28, more than a thousand Black pastors, representing hundreds of thousands of parishioners, have called on Biden to work harder for a cease-fire.

Why is Biden willing to pay such a high price? For one thing, he is clearly fully embracing the Zionist political narrative. In the 2020 presidential primaries, Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren refused to appear before the main pro-Israel lobby group Aipac (American Israel Public Affairs Committee). They had also called for Washington to attach conditions to its support for Israel. Biden dismissed this as "absolutely scandalous" and a "gigantic mistake" - although the idea was shared by the vast majority of US Jews at the time.

Even as Obama's vice president in 2011, Biden told a Jewish audience that he had received "more donations from Aipac than some of the people present".6 Within the Obama administration, he regularly intervened to ease tensions with Israel that arose when Tel Aviv boycotted any efforts to make peace with the Palestinians. Today, Biden believes he is helping Israel by talking Netanyahu out of his more aggressive ideas - such as annexing the West Bank or attacking Hezbollah in Lebanon.

Another factor is the undeniable power of several conservative Jewish organizations. These well-funded groups feel mandated to punish any public figure who strays too far from the pro-Israeli line.

In 2009, shortly after President Obama took office, when he called on Israel to freeze settlement construction in the West Bank in order to restart the peace process, this lobby responded with an open letter to Obama signed by 329 (of the 435) members of the House of Representatives. In it, the Aipac called on Obama to limit himself to a "private" request, i.e. not to exert any pressure.

In his memoirs, Obama writes in retrospect: "Anyone who criticized Israel's policies risked being labeled 'anti-Israel' (and possibly anti-Semitic) and facing a well-funded opponent in the next election."

With their unconditional support for the current Israeli government, organizations such as Aipac are far removed from the views of the vast majority of Jewish US citizens, around 70 percent of whom consider themselves to be in the progressive camp. However, they collect millions from conservative donors, which they use to support the Trump camp among the Republicans and try to prevent candidates on the Democratic side whose loyalty to Israel leaves much to be desired.

Aipac has traditionally played a central role within the pro-Israel lobby. However, in the 2022 midterm elections, the organization went so far as to directly fund congressional candidates for the first time. Through its United Democracy Project, Aipac spent almost 36 million dollars on campaigns against progressive candidates. Another group, the Democratic Majority for Israel, raised 9 million dollars for certain Democratic candidates.

Right-wing anti-Semitism and left-wing criticism of Israel

For the 2024 election campaign, this lobby is expected to spend around 100 million dollars to keep the Democrats in Congress in line - it is assumed that the Republicans will remain loyal to Israel anyway. And if there is no suitable candidate, Aipac will find one. Two potential candidates from Detroit have reported that they have been offered 20 million dollars each by Jewish sponsors if they run against Rashida Tlaib, who sits in the House of Representatives for Michigan. The Democratic representative is the only member of Congress of Palestinian descent and is frequently attacked for her pro-Palestinian positions.

The debates about Israel are now inextricably linked to a second issue: a perceived alarming rise in anti-Semitism. Certain Jewish groups - first and foremost the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) - claim that "anti-Zionism" equals anti-Semitism. Even when it comes to statements made by Jews.

In this debate, it is all too often overlooked that anti-Semitic violence in the USA is almost always perpetrated by right-wing radicals. Even the ADL statistics show that in 2022, extremist-motivated murders were committed by right-wing perpetrators without exception.

The storming of the Capitol on January 6, 2021 was just the most extreme action of a movement that has been around for much longer: In August 2017, a woman was killed and 35 people injured in Charlottesville, Virginia, during a neo-Nazi march under the slogan "We will not give way to the Jews". And in October 2018, a fanatical anti-Semite killed eleven people in a synagogue in Pittsburgh.

Anti-Semitism is a real threat. This is why Matt Duss, for example, a former Bernie Sanders staffer, is calling for "the progressive left" to "fight the spread of white nationalism" as part of a broad coalition. But the "progressive left" is divided. This has less to do with support for the Palestinians, which is taken for granted in view of the Gaza war. It is more about the question of when support might go too far and where the point is at which it turns into anti-Semitism.

Since October 7, the disagreements about this term have become even more pronounced. People who are emotionally affected by the conflict sometimes also feel this in their profession.

In Hollywood, pro-Palestinian actors have been fired from their agencies and pro-Palestinian agencies have lost their clients. At the New York cultural center 92NY, which is committed to Zionism, two employees resigned after the board of directors urged the head of the literary program to cancel a reading by the author Viet Thanh Nguyen. This was because he had signed a letter published in the London Review of Books accusing Israel of the "willful killing of civilians" and calling for an immediate ceasefire.7

However, the fiercest controversies over attitudes towards Israel have been taking place at elite universities in the USA - and not just since October 7. The fact that the Gaza war is such an explosive topic here is mainly due to the fact that Jewish students are overrepresented in certain faculties. But the controversies date back to the 1980s and 1990s, when a new version of Israel's history was taught at many US colleges, strongly influenced by Edward Said's critique of "Orientalism "8 and likely to shock parents of Jewish students in conversations at home.

The elite universities thus played a decisive role in completely deconstructing the common image of Israel - as David against Goliath - after it had already undergone a thorough revision in left-wing academic and progressive political circles.

Almost all high school graduates from upper middle class Jewish families go on to university. Previously, they had usually been taught about Israel in an ideological bubble. When they go to university, they are suddenly in a different universe: here the Israelis are seen as oppressors and the Palestinians as their victims. This experience of cognitive dissonance often triggered fears.

Their parents were also gripped by panic when they realized that they were spending hundreds of thousands of dollars in tuition fees for their children to bring home views that they found wrong and personally hurtful. This effect was all the more powerful because, especially among non-religious Jews, support for Israel has now become central to their identity.

Jewish organizations, most notably the Anti-Defamation League, have long sought to impose their dogma of "anti-Zionism equals anti-Semitism" at universities where pro-Palestinian voices are heard. ADF President Jonathan Greenblatt even claims that the term "free Palestine" is anti-Semitic per se.

Such claims are widely covered by the media, especially Fox News and the New York Post (both owned by Rupert Murdoch), but are also picked up by mainstream media. In addition, right-wing agitators are calling on the sponsors of academic faculties to exert pressure through their financial commitment in order to bring the universities into line with the pro-Israeli position.

One of the ADL's biggest donors is billionaire Mark Rowan, CEO of investment giant Apollo Global Management. Rowan is also a major sponsor of the Wharton Business School at the University of Pennsylvania. He had already launched a campaign against university president Liz Magill before October 7. At the end of September 2023, she had approved a literary festival entitled "Palestine Writes", which was dedicated to the recently deceased Palestinian literary scholar Salma Khadra Jayyusi. A speaker there had advocated "ethnic cleansing" and "massive violence", Rowan claimed, without providing any evidence.

President Magill defended herself with a statement in which she "clearly and emphatically" condemned anti-Semitism, but once again emphasized that the university was there for the "free exchange of ideas". The criticism from politicians and university sponsors continued, however, and culminated in a huge crescendo after October 7: Magill was summoned by the Congressional Education Committee, and with her the presidents of Harvard University and MIT, Claudine Gay and Sally Kornbluth.

Magill resigned on December 9. Two days earlier, fund manager Ross Stevens had threatened to withdraw his 100 million dollar donation to the university. Following Magill's withdrawal, the House of Representatives also called on the other two presidents to resign. The corresponding resolution was passed by the Republican majority, with most Democrats voting against it.

Magill's faculty was outraged, but had nothing to counter the demonstration of power by the sponsors and politicians. The University of Pennsylvania's chapter of the Association of University Teachers was sharply critical: "Unelected billionaires without any academic qualifications now want to control academic decisions that must remain the responsibility of the faculty in order to preserve the autonomy of research and teaching over private and partisan interests."

Similar disputes are also taking place at other elite universities. At Harvard, whose president Claudine Gay was also forced to resign on January 2, billionaire fund manager Bill Ackman circulated a "Do Not Hire" list with the names of members of 34 student groups who had signed an open letter attributing "full responsibility" for the violence in Gaza to Israel. Another group also called for a professional ban, linking its list with the names of pro-Palestinian activists with the appeal: "Make sure that the radicals of today are not the employees of tomorrow."

Despite the heated disputes at many universities in the USA, there is no serious evidence for the thesis of an anti-Semitism crisis on campus. There are certainly ugly incidents, but this applies to both sides: Muslim students have also been victims of assaults. Particularly alarming is an attack in Burlington, Vermont, where three students of Palestinian descent were shot.

At several universities, the administration is doing everything it can to prevent the activities of Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP), whose groups regularly disrupt classes and personally attack teaching staff. The SJP describes the events of 7 October as a "historic victory" and a "justified" action with which "our people are realizing the revolution". Some SJP groups even distributed leaflets with photos of paragliders - an apparent heroization of the Hamas fighters who committed mass murder at the Israeli music festival on October 7.

The SJP has since been expelled from George Washington University, Brandeis University and Columbia University - the latter has also banned the group "Jewish Voice for Peace" from campus. In Florida, right-wing Governor Ron DeSantis accused state universities of providing "material support" to "terrorist" groups. This outrageous allegation was promptly seized upon by ADF President Greenblatt.

Congress in Washington is calling for a crackdown, and the White House also wants to ensure that Jewish students on campus are protected from "absurd sentiments and actions", the frequency of which is "extremely disturbing".9 All these are clear signs of a McCarthy-era style witch hunt.

In the US, as in the Middle East, the Palestinians are apparently left with only the political role of troublemaker: they refuse to remain silent and resist any plan, by whomever, that would expect them to accept their continued oppression by Israel without complaint.

Hamas claims to have similar intentions with the murder and kidnapping of Israeli civilians. But this action has made it even less likely that the Palestinians will ever be able to determine their own fate. This is a tragedy for all involved - especially for the Palestinians themselves.

1 "Jewish American Calls for a Ceasefire Highlight Divisions in the Community," Time, November 17, 2023.

2 See Dahlia Scheindlin, "The Israeli Left after October 7," LMd, December 2023.

3 "Hundreds of Jewish organization staffers call for White House to back Gaza cease-fire", NBC News, December 7, 2023.

4 "Poll Finds Wide Disapproval of Biden on Gaza, and Little Room to Shift Gears," The New York Times, December 19, 2023.

5 "More than one-third of Americans believe Israel is committing genocide, poll shows", The Guardian, January 24, 2023.

6 "Joe Biden's Alarming Record on Israel", JewishCurrents, January 27, 2020.

7 Alexander Zevin, "Gaza and New York," New Left Review, November/December 2023.

8 See Adam Shatz, "Orientalism Yesterday and Today", LMd, August 2019.

9 Emma Green, "How a Student Group is Politicizing a Generation on Palestine," The New Yorker, December 15, 2023.

Eric Alterman is a journalist and historian. His most recent publication is: "We Are Not One: A History of America's Fight Over Israel", New York (Basic Books) 2022.