Biden and Bibi: A Political Dumpster Fire
Both men are examples of what a prototypical politician looks like nowadays: hypocritical, contradictory, people-pleasing, self-serving, and disingenuous.
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On Tuesday, U.S. President Joe Biden spoke at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum’s Annual Days of Remembrance ceremony.
“Not 75 years later, but just seven and a half months later, and people are already forgetting that Hamas unleashed this terror, that it was Hamas that brutalized Israelis, that it was Hamas that took and continues to hold hostages,” he said.
Then, some 24 hours later, Biden proclaimed that his administration will not support Israel or provide it with offensive weapons if it launches an offensive against Hamas in Rafah, the last major stronghold of Hamas.
“I’ve made it clear to Bibi (Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu) and the war cabinet: They’re not going to get our support if they go [into] these population centers,” he told CNN — even though Israel has gone into “population centers” in other places throughout the Strip with U.S. support.
Maybe you have the ability to understand how Biden can so easily and so quickly speak out of the farthest two sides of his mouth, no less in a matter of hours, but to me, this is what a prototypical politician looks like nowadays: hypocritical, contradictory, people-pleasing, self-serving, and disingenuous.
Especially after Biden flew to Israel some 200 days ago, following October 7th, and unequivocally agreed with Israel’s explicit goal of dismantling Hamas’ political and military apparatus in the Gaza Strip.
Meanwhile, the U.S. is trying to engineer a hostage deal that will effectively bring an end to this war, giving Hamas more reason to think that there is no true threat to its survival and undermining attempts to push it to more reasonable negotiating positions.
Let’s recall that when Hamas believed the U.S. was fully behind Israel, it agreed to a temporary ceasefire last November and released 104 hostages. Since the U.S. started sending mixed signals that can be interpreted essentially as support for Hamas’ survival — and/or for one of its chief sponsors, Qatar — there has not been another truce, and no hostages were released.
“This is because the West’s closest ally in the region hosts and backs Hamas, and this whole war was orchestrated to weaken and isolate Israel and bring Hamas to power in the West Bank,” wrote Middle East security analyst Seth Frantzman. “I said this from early on and it is constantly proven correct. This is what happens when the West’s allies back extremist groups and then those groups are used against the West’s own partners. First they did it with the Taliban to destroy the Kabul government, then they decided to set their sights on Israel next, same formula basically.”1
As of writing, it is highly likely that Hamas already believes they won this war, a message they presumably received from their hosts and backers, both of whom are Western allies.
“The fact is Hamas serves a lot of interests regionally and globally,” wrote Frantzman, “so a lot of countries don’t want it eliminated.”
Among these interests could quite possibly be one Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin “Bibi” Netanyahu, who’s no different than the “prototypical politician” that is Joe Biden. In addition to managing the Israel-Hamas war, Netanyahu has been planning his reelection campaign, which is based on the premise that the State of Israel finds itself in the midst of a war which will last for many years to come — and that only he is fit to spearhead such a fight.2
This might explain why Israel has not acted with more force to achieve “total victory” — Netanyahu’s repeated words — over Hamas in Gaza, because keeping the terror group alive (even if it heavily decimated) serves the interests of Netanyahu’s reelection campaign.
As the Israeli prime minister sees it, and as he will try to sell to the Israeli electorate when elections inevitably come around, it will take Israel “many years” to root out Hamas and eliminate them; or, if Israel does not, they will redevelop their strength once more, rearm, rebuild their tunnels, and carry out even worse attacks on Israel than prior.
Had Israel taken care of Hamas in Gaza by now, which the IDF certainly has the ability and competence to do, there would be no “enemy” that Netanyahu can use to manipulate Israeli voters into supporting him. Hence why Netanyahu still has no definitive strategy for post-war Gaza seven months into this thing, which emboldens Hamas’ grip on the Strip and appears to benefit Bibi in a sick and twisted way.
To add insult to injury, Netanyahu has made a “very generous” hostage deal offer to Hamas, not necessarily because he genuinely wants to release the remaining hostages, but because this would lead to early elections in Israel, since it seems likely that far-Right ministers in his coalition would leave the government and move to the opposition in defiance of this “very generous” agreement, thus ending the current governing coalition.
You see, if Netanyahu’s coalition remains intact and the war inevitably comes to an end, Israeli society will probably demand early elections, which will make Netanyahu appear weak. And it would be a lose-lose for him: If he capitulates to these early election demands, that is in effect an unforgivable admission of guilt for October 7th, whereas if he defies these demands, he will be perceived as an unpopular dictator who has no chance of winning another election.
However, if far-Right ministers decide on their own volition to disintegrate the current governing coalition for whatever their reasons might be, Netanyahu saves face and gets to boast about his willingness to forge a “very generous” hostage deal, even if it means disregarding some in his coalition.
In either scenario, the results are the same — early elections — but the perceptions and reputation of Netanyahu will swing in two very diametrically opposed directions.
“Netanyahu and his confidants are certain he’ll win the elections whenever they’re held,” wrote Shalom Yerushalmi, a political analyst for The Times of Israel. “While it’s true that the most catastrophic failure in Israel’s history happened on his watch, the bottom line is that elections are a choice between candidates, and their conviction is that he can defeat any of his would-be rivals.”
From Netanyahu’s own polling and analysis, and despite national polls consistently showing Benny Gantz well-positioned to form a coalition — and more popular than Netanyahu as prime minister — Netanyahu detects a strong shift to the Right since October 7th.
“And the Right-wing majority in this country is looking at three prime ministerial candidates: Benjamin Netanyahu, Benny Gantz and [Opposition Leader] Yair Lapid. It’s hardly Netanyahu facing off against Moses,” explained a source close to Netanyahu. “As far as voters are concerned, Gantz is center-left, and Lapid is limited in terms of his capacity to run a country and stand up to international pressure.”
Unsurprisingly, Netanyahu is not planning to take personal responsibility for and thus resign because of October 7th, notwithstanding the series of blunders that Israel has made since then. The resignation of Military Intelligence Directorate chief Major General Aharon Haliva last week only serves Netanyahu’s narrative: The people who caused the disaster must and will go home, and the prime minister is not one of them.
As he and his circle see it, some interesting possibilities may also arise with the formation of new political parties.
If, for example, former Mossad chief Yossi Cohen enters politics and joins forces in a party with Gideon Sa’ar (who defected from Netanyahu’s Likud party) and former prime minister Naftali Bennett, it would draw the votes of many Right-wing Israelis who are uninterested in voting for Netanyahu and his Likud party.
“But Netanyahu thinks that this would work in his favor. Cohen was and remains an admirer of his, and would accept his leadership and join him in forming a coalition without hesitation,” wrote Yerushalmi. “That, at least, is the thinking in the Prime Minister’s Office, where Netanyahu’s next term as Israel’s leader is already being planned.”
Seth Frantzman on X
“Despite Oct. 7, Netanyahu is determined to run for reelection, and certain he can win.” The Times of Israel.
I too disagree with Mr. Hoffman's analysis of PM Netanyahu. He is under a lot of pressure from the families of hostages who want them home at the cost of Israel's not invading Rafah; from the other political parties who already sold out Israel in the past, Bennett included (see the gas field deal with Lebanon); from Gantz who goes to Washington behind Netanyahu's back and is the Trojan Horse for the despicable Blinken; and from Biden himself, not to mention Israel's other "allies". In the face of all this Netanyahu steadfastly maintains that Israel must win the war and this in the face of outrageous American treachery re withholding arms. So Jews everywhere should support his call to go into Rafah and complete the war, even encourage him to go address the American Congress; and wait to see what happens afterward once Israel is victorious and elections are called. My guess is that Netanyahu will retire. In the meantime every major American Jewish organization should ratchet up the pressure on the Biden White House. Why are they so silent? And why are Israelis so silent, letting the leftists in the country demonstrate with impunity?
The great political maxim is again reinforced. All politics is local.