If you are keeping score at home, you have surely noticed that the two most important defense officials in Benjamin Netanyahu’s war cabinet — Defense Minister Yoav Gallant and the former military chief of staff Benny Gantz — warned last week that Netanyahu is leading Israel into a disastrous abyss by refusing to present any plan for non-Hamas Palestinians to govern Gaza and appears to be contemplating a long-term Israeli military occupation of Gaza instead. Gantz said he would leave the government if there was no plan by June 8.
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“Netanyahu’s acquiescence to the extreme right, Smotrich and Ben-Gvir, has generally been seen as motivated out of his need to keep his coalition together and himself out of jail,” Friedman told me. “Now it seems that he has willingly sold his soul to the extreme right. One explanation is that the extreme religious right projects a Messianic image onto him that corresponds with his own sense of having been called to save Israel and the Jewish people. He has a plan for the day after and it’s very clear to anyone who listens: ‘Total victory’ — and eventually the return of Jewish settlement there. Israel is on the way to reoccupying Gaza.”
If that happens, Israel will become an international pariah and Jewish institutions everywhere will be torn between Jews who will feel the need to defend Israel — right or wrong — and those who, with their kids, will find it indefensible.
He is never going to do a 180. He is never going to admit what is happening is a genocide. I believe that will cost him the election. I believe Ben knows this and wants our government to be right-wing like his. I believe after November, we will have to forcibly remove Trump after he destroys democracy. I hope I eat these words.
He doesn’t have to do a 180 to get the anti-genocide bloc to vote for him, he just needs to be better than he is. No one is expecting him to lead the charge at the ICC, but he’s gotta stop sucking Netanyahu’s toes.
And yeah, I think Netanyahu is absolutely happy to destroy Biden’s reputation and reelection, and it’s frankly bizarre that Biden doesn’t recognize him as an antagonist. Chuck Schumer was right to directly call him out as one of the main problems. Biden’s biggest flaw is he thinks bad people will be his friend if he “hugs” them. He gets proven wrong time and again but keeps at it. But if he’s not able to get over that mistaken belief on his own, cold hard electoral math will hopefully get him to take the right position even if he doesn’t believe in it.
I’m sure his administration is rushing around like lunatics to try to orchestrate something behind the scenes. They know their shortest path to victory is being able to say “Look! We brokered a cease fire! We ended the war!” But they know they can’t throttle back one iota until that becomes a reality. He temporarily paused a bomb shipment and the media piled all over his ass in a chorus with Republicans (and some Democrats). Suddenly he was “helping Hamas”. I think that’s the true poison pill of his whole debacle. If he does anything other than full-throated support, he will be labeled an antisemite and also an ally to terrorists because the media is largely feckless and naive and can be led around by the nose. The right wing mediasphere is practically salivating at the prospect of Biden giving them a potent attack angle.
I hope he finds the goldilocks zone soon, but I’m afraid it’s vanishingly small and shrinking every day.
This is just an utter failure in leadership. The majority of his party doesn’t support Israel’s war. A smaller majority of all Americans don’t support it. If you can’t make that a winning issue and feel straightjacketed by the opinion of your enemies, that’s a you problem.
You sources are, for reference:
Biden needs to realize who his friends and allies are. Fuck the rightwing mediasphere. If they were able to dictate which position would lose Biden the election, it’s already over. The 26 Democrats are the only problem in that whole list, and they’ve been a thorn in his eye before and were brought to heel by the party machinery reinforcing that opposing your own party’s president is a bad idea.
I cited those sources specifically to show what his enemies will flood the airwaves with if he changes course. Their bias is exactly the problem I’m illuminating.
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“Don’t worry about the media that helped orchestrate this in swing states across the nation.”
Staggering strategic genius right there.