Joe Biden Still Won’t Say No to Israel
Benjamin Netanyahu can hardly believe the leeway Joe Biden has given him through eight months of carnage. Biden has joined Republican attacks on his own base rather than impose any limits on an Israeli campaign that has killed over 37,000 Palestinians.
US president Joe Biden announces a proposed cease-fire between Israel and Hamas in Gaza while delivering remarks in the State Dining Room at the White House on May 31, 2024 in Washington, DC. (Chip Somodevilla / Getty Images)
The Israeli war on Gaza has now continued for eight months, resulting in massive loss of life among Palestinian civilians and a request from the International Criminal Court (ICC) for arrest warrants for Benjamin Netanyahu and his defense minister, Yoav Gallant. Yet Joe Biden has continued to channel vast amounts of military aid to Israel and provide it with political and diplomatic support, at the cost of mounting anger among voters he needs to defeat Donald Trump this fall.
Akbar Shahid Ahmed is the senior diplomatic correspondent for the Huffington Post. He has been following the Biden administration’s support for the Israeli war on Gaza since October 7 and has broken several important stories about internal dissent from US government officials.
We spoke on Thursday, June 6, before the passage of a motion at the UN Security Council endorsing a proposal for a cease-fire. This is an edited transcript from Jacobin Radio’s Long Reads podcast. You can listen to the interview here.
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