Joe Biden Benjamin Netanyhau
BIDEN’S TWO SPEECHES OUTLINE A POLICY
And by policy I mean a clear, systematic, coherent, intelligent approach. The two speeches, the one in Tel Aviv and the one given as soon as he returned to the White House, the first was addressed to the Israeli people and government, the second to the US nation. The first (10/18/23) will be remembered more easily, and perhaps will become as famous as Kennedy’s: “Ask not what America can do for you, but what you can do for America.”
The one in Tel Aviv says something like: we understand how angry you are, but pay attention to us after September 11th, in the grip of anger, we made a mistake.” Here is a verbatim fragment of his speech “We got justice, but we made mistakes.” The allusion was, of course, to the invasion of Iraq and the catastrophe that followed. That we can summarize those facts by saying that “we have obtained justice” seems senseless and outrageous to me.
However the emphasis is on the errors. According to some diligent and informed observers, for example the scrupulous Giuseppe Sarcina of Corriere della Serathe fear of the excesses of Netanyahu’s announced and partially implemented revenge on the inhabitants of Gaza would be what first pushed Biden to send his secretary of state Blinken to Israel, then, seeing that Blinken had achieved nothing, to go there himself.
He even said, “We can’t be like terrorists.” The problem, however, is within what limits Biden intends to contain Netanyahu. In Biden’s presence, he announced that “every member of Hamas is a dead man”, and Biden insisted that Hamas does not represent the Palestinians. But Hamas is a social and political movement as well as a terror agency. Furthermore, the first time he participated in elections, in 2006, he won.
Then the Israelis decided that there would be no more elections. It seems to me that the Israelis could take prisoners suspected of having participated in the massacres, and subject them to trials: they could take known leaders of Hamas and subject them to trials as instigators and organizers of the massacres. But don’t kill them just because they are presumed members of Hamas. It is not enough to remember that International Law exists. It is necessary to be able to indicate what is specifically enjoined and prohibited in the given situation.
For about twenty years after the terrorist attack on the Munich Olympics, the Mossad dedicated itself to the preparation and implementation of a chain of assassinations of PLO members. But then the Israelis themselves regretted it, because the PLO was impoverished by it. It would appear that Biden, like General Petraeus, believes that Hamas must be “destroyed”.
This would involve similar planning and implementation of numerous political assassinations. In the speech from the Oval Office of the White House, following the first of just over 24 hours, Biden proposed a general geopolitical framework, drawing a parallel between the two wars of recent months: «Hamas and Russian President Vladimir Putin want to destroy their neighboring democracies, and it is in the national security interests of the United States to defend Ukraine and Israel. We cannot let Putin and Hamas win, I refuse to let that happen.” He admitted that «this conflict can spread to other parts of the world, to the Indo Pacific, to the Middle East, especially to the Middle East. But when terrorists don’t pay a price, they cause more chaos and death.”
Strictly speaking, Hamas would have wanted more, not less, democracy, and it was the Israelis who did not grant it to them. The Russian invasion of Ukraine is not due to the hostility of the Russian rulers for democratic regimes and for the (very little) democratic Ukrainian one in particular, but to their opposition to an expansion of NATO in Ukraine. And about Israel, with its discriminatory legislation between Jewish and non-Jewish citizens, and its unjustified domination over millions of Palestinians who are even more discriminated against, everything can be said except that it is a democracy.
And between Allende and Pinochet, who was democratic, who was a friend of the USA? GThe examples could be multiplied. More important is to note that the US did not invade Iraq out of anger, but based on an argument similar to the one invoked by Biden: “making terrorists pay a price.” Of course they were in the wrong country, but their intent was to carry out a spectacular retaliation against the terrorists.
Their equally disastrous invasion of Afghanistan was also so motivated. One could see in the intentions stated by Biden the bewilderment of a man who passed too abruptly from the world of the Cold War to that of the neo-cons. Or one could assume – and almost hope! – that it is a mere rhetorical exercise to convince Congress not to hinder its gigantic military aid plan for Ukraine by lumping it in with less unpopular aid to Israel.
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