Biden's Israel support threatens US foreign policy and Democrats' future

For nearly six weeks, US President Joe Biden’s support for Israel amid its invasion of Gaza has been unrelenting. Even as Israel massacres the Palestinian population and displaces families from swathes of the West Bank in a bid to offer the land to a new batch of Israeli settlers.

The US position has largely been influenced by officials with a deep ideological affinity for Israel. US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken declared on his arrival in Tel Aviv on Oct. 12 that he had come “not only as the United States Secretary of state, but also as a Jew.”

National Security Council spokesperson John Kirby appeared to shed tears over the victims of the Oct. 7 attack on Israel, but has consistently and unreservedly offered justifications for Israel’s slaughter of women and children, bombing of refugee camps and targeting of hospitals.

This double standard has not gone unnoticed among the wider public. In recent days, videos have gone viral of comparisons between Blinken and Kirby’s rhetoric on Russia versus their rhetoric on Gaza.

In February of this year, Blinken lambasted Russia at the United Nations for its targeting of hospitals and schools, passionately arguing that it “was not normal and should not be allowed to become the new normal.” But when talking about Palestine, Blinken has adamantly refused any talk of ceasefire even as the civilian death toll surges and Israel’s bombing of refugee camps and attack on hospitals.

And last April, Kirby told a press conference that “no ethical or moral individual” could justify Russia’s slaughter of civilians. But on Oct. 26, Kirby told reporters in an attempt to justify Israel’s onslaught that “there have been civilian casualties, and there will likely be more, but that’s war.”

This unwavering support for Israel has caused a global backlash on such a scale that signs are emerging of lasting consequences for US policy abroad, and at home.

G7 diplomats have reportedly already asserted that the US “has definitely lost the battle of the Global South…Forget about rules, forget about world order. They will never listen to us again.”

Ukraine was touted by the US as a war to rescue the rules-based order of upholding international law and protecting human rights. However, with Israel’s flagrant violations of this law and openly committing war crimes such as cutting off water and electricity to Gaza, bombing the Jabaliya refugee camp knowing full well it was a densely populated area, and expressing genocidal statements through its government ministers, it will be impossible for the US to continue asserting that the war in Ukraine is anything more than a primitive clash of powers competing for hegemony.

At the United Nations, the US has found itself isolated. On Oct. 28, the US voted against Jordan’s motion for a humanitarian truce. It was joined by only Israel and 12 other nations out of 178 members. Regional allies have been increasingly vocal in their opposition as well.

When Blinken visited Ankara last week, no press conference was held after a two-hour meeting with his Turkish counterpart Fidan. Jordan’s foreign minister cancelled a quad meeting in protest of US support for Israel a day before Biden was due to arrive in Amman. Egypt’s President Sisi turned on the cameras during Blinken’s visit and proceeded to publicly rebuke the Secretary of State.

US support for Israel is also having a sweeping domestic impact. A recent Reuters poll showed that 68 percent of Americans are now in favour of a ceasefire, as perceptions shift as a result of the barrage of videos and images coming out of Gaza of the atrocities that Israel is committing. Biden has already reportedly told the Israelis that “the relentless images of Palestinian women and children being pulled from rubble could start to narrow Israel’s ability to move forward with its current operation.”

More worrying for Biden are the latest polls regarding the election next year which show former President Donald Trump leading in five of the six key battleground states. The polls suggest that voter sentiment is being affected not only by the economy, but also over US policy toward Israel’s attempts at genocide and ethnic-cleansing in Gaza.

In tightly contested states such as Michigan and Pennsylvania, Muslim voters will be instrumental in deciding which way the state goes. Many of them have already begun to campaign against Biden with hashtags of #NoToGenocideJoe and arguing that “Muslims survived four years of Trump; 10,000 Palestinians did not survive four years of Biden.

Biden’s team appear to be aware of the seriousness of this rage among Muslim voters and non-Muslim voters who are deeply concerned with the US’s aiding and abetting of what has been described as “a live streaming of genocide.”

This awareness was made apparent in an email sent by the Democratic party to supporters on Nov. 8, reminding them that Trump favours a Muslim ban and that Democrats would never allow that. Vice President Kamala Harris even announced a new program to combat Islamophobia in a bid to temper the rapidly deteriorating relations between the Democrats and their Muslim voter base.

This pressure also seems to be fueling a shift in the US position on how it supports Israel. Where Blinken once refused to entertain the idea of any pause in the fighting, he is now a loud advocate of “humanitarian” pauses that are designed to reframe and repackage ethnic-cleansing as “humane” and “merciful.”

In essence, the pause gives Palestinians two terrible choices: either leave their homes by evacuating to the South through a “humanitarian” corridor “under the protection of the Israeli army,” so Israel can import a new batch of settlers to take their land; or stay and condemn themselves to death by Israeli bombing.

The idea of the humanitarian pause reflects a concern on the part of Biden administration that the livestreaming of the genocide and ethnic-cleansing, and accompanying Israeli statements openly calling for the annihilation and nuking of the Palestinian people, is accelerating a shift in public opinion that is increasingly making it untenable for the US to continue its unfettered support.

Israel’s foreign minister implicitly acknowledged the pressure that Biden is under when he recently told journalists that Israel “only has two to three weeks” before international pressure for a ceasefire surges and that allies had already begun privately pushing Israel to accept a ceasefire.

There are concerns in Washington however that even when a ceasefire eventually materialises, the damage to the US is one of a permanent nature with lasting consequences, and that even its relationship with Israel will never be the same again.