President Biden is good for the Palestinians
25 February 2024
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The Palestinians, as well as all those who want to promote world peace and stability, should be supporting the reelection of President Joe Biden, who is working hard to bring about a nonterrorist Palestinian state and to temper the authoritarian actions of Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu.
To my knowledge, no President has worked harder to promote better conditions for the Palestinians, including the establishment of a nonterrorist State that is successful, stable and based on the rule of law.
Tom Friedman recently wrote about a Biden doctrine for the Middle East:
On the second track would be an unprecedented U.S. diplomatic initiative to promote a Palestinian state — NOW. It would involve some form of U.S. recognition of a demilitarized Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza Strip that would come into being only once Palestinians had developed a set of defined, credible institutions and security capabilities to ensure that this state was viable and that it could never threaten Israel. Biden administration officials have been consulting experts inside and outside the U.S. government about different forms this recognition of Palestinian statehood might take.
This is precisely what the Palestinians need, although neither their leaders nor Palestinians in general have, to my knowledge, spent much time working on or even talking about how this could come to pass.
President Biden should also establish a working group of Palestinians, Arab leaders and others to more fully develop these credible institutions and security capabilities. This will not be easy to bring about. Even after the difficult work is done of formulating proposals on how to do this, it will be a challenge to get Palestinians in Gaza and elsewhere to support it, since they have tolerated or even embraced terrorism for decades.
President Biden has also worked hard to push Netanyahu to support reasonable policies. Unfortunately, he has limited authority over another democratically elected official, who appears to want to prolong the war, both to preserve his and to prevent his corruption related trials. There is a limit on the pressure that the U.S. can impose on one of its strongest allies.
One wonders whether Palestinians will direct some of their protests to the government in Gaza that they voted in and which started this war. They should be pressuring the Palestinian government to release the hostages and cease the rocket attacks. Before October 7, there was no military activity in Gaza. On October 7, the Palestinians started a war that they knew would cause a massive response that would kill large numbers of Palestinians:
In the wake of Hamas’s Oct. 7 massacre, Hamas is counting on human shields and the effect of their deaths on international opinion as their best way to restrain, if not halt, Israeli military force. Hamas considers two million Gazan civilians, including children, as martyrs, whether they want to be or not.
“We are called a nation of martyrs,” said another top Hamas official, Ghazi Hamad. “And we are proud to sacrifice martyrs.” He promised more attacks: “There will be a second, a third, a fourth.” When asked whether he sought the annihilation of Israel, Hamad matter-of-factly replied, “Yes, of course.”
This is not simply terrorism, which is the use of illegal violence to achieve political objectives. It is cold-blooded human sacrifice, and on a scale that evokes the ritual slaughters of ancient times. The Hill [emphasis added]
In general, Palestinians do not appear to publicly acknowledge their mistakes in the Middle East or to take responsibility for their actions in contributing to the problems. In this, they resemble Donald J. Trump, who rants that everyone is against him without considering his own bad actions. Palestinians and their supporters seem to feel that they, like Donald J. Trump, are above the law, and are justified in any actions they take, no matter how illegal or violent. I suggest that this attitude accounts for the difficult political status of Palestinians in the Middle East.
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Nat, your writings on the Palestinians, the Gazans, Hamas, Israel, and the US should be specially-headed as "Alice in Wonderland, Part ____." They are as topsy-turvey as can be. Let's consider some of the most blatant aubsurdities in this most recent post:
"The Palestinians, as well as all those who want to promote world peace and stability, should be supporting the reelection of President Joe Biden....To my knowledge, no President has worked harder to promote better conditions for the Palestinians...."
------------> I believe you have an MD or DO degree, isn't that correct, Nat? And even though you don't see patients, you are supposed to remember the fundamental precept of medical practice: "Primum non nocere," or "First, do no harm." President Biden, while wringing his hands and crying alligator tears about the genocide that is being wrought on the Palestinians, continues to freely provide Benjamin Netanyahu with the missles and bombs and other armament which is the immediate cause of the genocide. Biden continues to provide the Netanyahu regime with literally billions of dollars to enable the murders of tens of thousands of Palestinians, mostly civilians, largely children and the sick and elderly. If Biden had "first done no harm," and stopped facilitating the slaughter of innocents after Day One of the war, a proportional toll would have been taken on the Gazans, and deaths already TEN TIMES the magnitude of 9/11 would never have occurred. In what insane multiversal reality can it be that "no President has worked harder to promote better conditions for the Palestinians" than Joe Biden?
Moving on:
"President Biden has also worked hard to push Netanyahu to support reasonable policies"
-----------> Yes, he has done everything - except what could and would make a difference: Cut off the supply of war material. Cut off the ongoing flow of funds, tax dollars which the majority of Americans do not want to see used in the way Biden is using them.
"Unfortunately, he has limited authority over another democratically elected official"
-----------> He doesn't need "authority" over Netanyahu (whose name you seem to wish to avoid uttering) to alleviate the genocide of the Palestinians. He has all the authority he needs to moderate the behavior of the Netanyahu government, the authority to stop being Netanyahu's willing supplier.
"who appears to want to prolong the war"
-----------------> "APPEARS to want to prolong the war? You choose a phrasing which implies that Netanyahu has perhaps considered, or is considering, or may someday consider, a policy other than a savage blood lust for unlimited revenge. Are you not seeing or not understanding Netanyahu's many, many statements about prolongation of this war, Nat? They are not hidden, and they are not ambiguous.
"There is a limit on the pressure that the U.S. can impose on one of its strongest allies."
----------> First, THAT limit has not even remotely been reached. Second, the pressure Netanyahu is able to impose on Biden (or that Netanyahu's American running dogs, like AIPAC, impose) apparently has no limits.
"One wonders whether Palestinians will direct some of their protests to the government in Gaza that they voted in and which started this war."
-----------> Knowing that Hamas would regard such protests inside Gaza as treason worthy of immediate summary execution, and that such protests in the Palestinian diaspora are of zero importance to Gaza, why do you waste your words on such nonsense?
"Before October 7, there was no military activity in Gaza."
-----------> No military activity is needed inside a jail. Was Gaza not a jail, Nat?
"On October 7, the Palestinians started a war that they knew would cause a massive response that would kill large numbers of Palestinians"
------------> Blame the victims all you want, Nat. The world sees and knows otherwise. There was a long history of illegal incarceration and oppression that preceded October 7th, a long history about which you have nothing to say. Just as you have nothing to say about the war crimes and crimes against humanity that the Israelis have chosen as the hallmarks of their response.
"In the wake of Hamas’s Oct. 7 massacre, Hamas is counting on human shields and the effect of their deaths on international opinion as their best way to restrain, if not halt, Israeli military force."
--------------> Hamas is not responsible for Israel's order for the Gazans to concentrate themselves in the south, where they continue to bomb shelters, hospitals, schools without restraint. Those orders were a blatant example of the intent to assure that the maximum number of civilians would be killed in every action. Who put the "human shields" where they are? Who is causing the deaths of the thousands? What other interpretation could possibly inform international opinion?
"This is not simply terrorism, which is the use of illegal violence to achieve political objectives. It is cold-blooded human sacrifice, and on a scale that evokes the ritual slaughters of ancient times."
------------> Your words ring true, Nat. But the "illegal violence" is overwhelmingly that of Israel. The "political objectives" are those of the criminal Netanyahu. The "cold-blooded human sacrifice" of Palestinians is being carried out by Israel.
"In general, Palestinians do not appear to publicly acknowledge their mistakes in the Middle East or to take responsibility for their actions in contributing to the problems. In this, they resemble Donald J. Trump, who rants that everyone is against him without considering his own bad actions. Palestinians and their supporters seem to feel that they, like Donald J. Trump, are above the law, and are justified in any actions they take, no matter how illegal or violent."
----------> To bring this paragraph in line with actual reality, I will make appropriate CAPITALIZED substitutions:
"In general, THE ISRAELIS AND THEIR US BACKERS DO not appear to publicly acknowledge their mistakes in the Middle East or to take responsibility for their actions in contributing to the problems. In this, they resemble Donald J. Trump, who rants that everyone is against him without considering his own bad actions. NETANYAHU AND HIS AMERICAN supporters (HE HAS NO SUPPORTERS ANYWHERE ELSE) seem to feel that they, like Donald J. Trump, are above the law, and are justified in any actions they take, no matter how illegal or violent."
" I suggest that this attitude accounts for the difficult political status of Palestinians in the Middle East."
-------------------> Their "difficult political status" is not unlike the "difficult political status" of the Jews in Germany under the Nazis. The "Jewish problem" of those times has led, in the course of 75 years, to the "Palestinian problem" of our own times. And that is how history will see the matter. Netanyahu, Biden, and Pernick are of their own choice on the wrong side of history.