The Biden White House, which is mostly comprised of the remnants of the Obama White House, doesn’t like Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and since inauguration day, January 20, 2020, has gone out of its way to reject and even humiliate him. None of that is news.
On Wednesday, this White House went on the attack against Netanyahu in a manner that crossed all boundaries in terms of what allied countries can do to each other, especially when one of them is embroiled in a war for its life on four or five different fronts. Here’s what they did: they leaked to Politico that (as the resulting headline read) “Netanyahu may not last, Biden and aides increasingly believe.” And the sub-headline read: “The Israeli prime minister’s political obituary has been written before. But U.S. officials are already gauging potential successors.”
I can see the tortured spirits of Salvador Allende (Chile), whom the CIA ousted and killed in 1973, and Mohammad Mosaddegh (Iran), ousted by the CIA’s Kermit Roosevelt in 1954, and countless other poor souls removed from political life and then from life altogether by the folks at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, reading the morning papers and nodding in empathy for another democracy’s elected official who is being ousted by the most powerful country on the planet. Ask Nguyễn Văn Thiệu who watched Saigon’s fall while his allies’ choppers were taking off the rooftop of the American embassy. Or better yet, ask President Ashraf Ghani who was left to his own devices in Kabul on August 15, 2021, by the sitting US president.
Bibi is in good company.
“Joe Biden and top aides have discussed the likelihood that Benjamin Netanyahu’s political days are numbered — and the president has conveyed that sentiment to the Israeli prime minister in a recent conversation,” Politico reported on Wednesday, adding: “The topic of Netanyahu’s short political shelf life has come up in recent White House meetings involving Biden, according to two senior administration officials. That has included discussions that have taken place since Biden’s trip to Israel, where he met with Netanyahu.”
Edward Luce provided an explanation in his op-ed in the Financial Times Wednesday, under the unkind headline: “Netanyahu is an albatross around Biden’s neck.” The explanation came in the sub-headline: “Israel’s prime minister stands in the way of the two-state solution that is the US president’s goal.”
This is what it’s all about, folks: the Biden administration, which only recently administered a shot in the arm of the terrorist mastermind state of Iran, thawing billions of dollars of its assets and helping to finance its deadly grip on the Jewish State through Hamas, Hezbollah, and countless proxy militias including the Houthis way down at the foot of the Arabian Peninsula – the same Biden administration has seen the massacre of 1,400 Israelis on October 7 as an opportunity.
The adage “Don’t let a crisis go to waste” was coined by a physician, M. F. Weiner, in 1976. He meant that a medical crisis can be used to convince a patient to improve aspects of his or her lifestyle.
Joe Biden and his Secretary of State Antony Blinken are determined not to let Israel’s suffering go to waste. They will wait until Israel sheds its blood to oust the last living Hamas terrorist from the Gaza Strip and then will start pushing Israel in no uncertain terms to install the Palestinian Authority as the sovereign in Gaza, thus renewing the “Oslo peace process” where it last froze in 2014 or thereabout, under Secretary of State John Kerry and Israeli chief negotiator Tzipi Livni.
But as the Financial Times put it so eloquently: “Israel’s prime minister stands in the way of the two-state solution that is the US president’s goal.”
To rob Israel of its 1967 gift from the Divine, the lands our ancestors inhabited before another superpower (two of them, actually) removed them, the White House must get Netanyahu ousted. They want someone like Benny Gantz, or better yet, Yair Lapid to replace him. And to do that they must portray him as a tired has been, no longer currying favor with his masters in Washington.
Our sages coined the immortal phrase: The flaw that one finds in others is his own flaw (Kiddushin 70a). Joe Biden, whose favorability ratings are in the high 30s and who is considered by a large majority of Democrats to be old and feeble-minded, is portraying Netanyahu who conducts an existential war on five fronts, leading a war cabinet to an astonishing victory, as not fit to serve.
Sounds familiar? To remind you, the last time Netanyahu’s enemies took to the streets to try to oust him through cursing and screaming, it was over the amendment to the incapacity clause. They didn’t have the votes, not even close, but they had American money, lots and lots of it, just like the Shah who ousted Mosaddegh, and like Augusto Pinochet who murdered the democratically-elected Allende.
Now, guess who drank the goodies from Politico like mana from heaven? Yes, Israel’s mainstream media. Boy, you’re getting good at this…
Walla: “Report: Biden estimates that Netanyahu’s days are numbered.”
Kan 11: “Report: Biden estimates that Netanyahu will not survive the war politically.”
Maariv: “Report: Biden conducts policy discussions for the day after Netanyahu.”
Ah, yes, there was that part: the White House on Wednesday night denied the Politico report. National Security Council Spokesperson Adrienne Watson issued a statement saying, “This description is false. This topic has not been discussed by the president and is not being discussed. Our focus is on the immediate crisis.”
I have no idea whether Netanyahu will survive this, the worst crisis in his political career. He has come back from so many losses that I would hesitate to stack my chips against him. The majority of Israelis still prefer him over Gantz or Lapid, but today they are feeling betrayed and abandoned, and Netanyahu was in charge when the catastrophe happened. He needs to find ways to seduce us again, and he certainly must not listen to his wife and son who advised him a few nights ago to post a tweet that puts all the blame on his underlings. That was a rookie mistake, which was untoward coming from the most experienced politician in Israel’s history.
The right in Israel must be able to stay in government until the November 2024 presidential elections. A Republican win should make the 2-state nightmare go away. Bibi needs to hold fast for exactly one year (and three days).
And defeat Hamas.
