By John Pickard
As a direct result of the intransigence of the Netanyahu government, the USA is effectively organising against him. Benny Gantz, who was formerly the leader of the Israeli opposition, and who was drafted into the ‘war cabinet’ after October 7, is today in Israel discussing a way forward with leading members of the Biden administration. The visit of Gantz has reportedly gone ahead at the invitation of the USA and it has enraged Netanyahu, who has been completely by-passed.
It was only a matter of time before the US administration began to organise against the Israeli government. Biden and the US administration have not changed their fundamental outlook. They will continue to support Israel financially and militarily, but in the face of a huge, and still growing, swing of opinion across the globe at Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza, they have felt compelled to change course.
Within a day of the massacre of over a hundred starving Palestinians in Gaza City, for the ‘crime’ of mobbing a food convoy, the USA organised an air drop of food over Gaza and announced that more were planned, with even the possiblity of sea-borne aid. This drop will not have made a serious impact in terms of the tonnage of food and other necessities delivered, but it was a clear political gesture and a rebuke to Netanyahu for his conduct of the war. As this was happening, arrangements were also quickly put in place for Gantz to visit Washington. The US administration has run out of patience with Netanyahu.
Vice-president Kamila Harris was sent out over the weekend to say out loud and more bluntly what her boss, Biden, couldn’t say. Speaking in Alabama, at a memorial event for the incident when US state troopers beat up civil rights marchers, she condemned Israel for “not doing enough” to ease the “humanitarian catastrophe” in Gaza. She did what the craven Keir Starmer has failed to do up to now, and called for an immediate ceasefire and the release of hostages.
The shift in the US administration has not come about by accident. There is a global swing of opinion against the one-side war in Gaza, the more than 30,000 deaths, the more than 10,000 dead children and the bombing that has turned so much of Gaza into rubble. The tide of opinion across the West as a whole, including the USA is an unstoppable political force in its own right and it is clearly becoming a major concern to the Democratic Party that is heading into a presidential election later on this year.
A commentary in the liberal Israeli newspaper, Haaretz, has noted that Biden’s support for Israel “is a steady and increasing electoral liability, according to several recent polls over the past several days”. The reason for this is a poll conducted by the New York Times in conjuction with Sienna College.
Support for Israel declining in the USA
According to this poll, support for Palestine is increasing as support for Israel is declining, especially among younger voters. The poll results, the New York Times suggests, “hold portents not only for Mr. Biden as he enters the 2024 re-election year but also for long-term relations between the Jewish state and its most powerful benefactor, the United States”.
What does the poll tell us? That only 22 percent of those who claim to support Biden for 2024 said they had more sympathy for Israel, compared to 39 percent who backed the Palestinians. Of those who voted Biden in 2020, only 25 percent had more sympathy for Israel, against 39 percent who had more sympathy for the Palestinians.
Overall, an astonishing 60 per cent of voters disapproved of Biden’s handling of the war, a big increase on the last poll in December. As many as 42 percent believed Israel has “gone too far”. A third of voters thought the USA had “not done enough” to help the Palestinians.
According to Haaretz, “a Wall Street Journal poll conducted days later by Donald Trump’s longtime pollster Tony Fabrizio alongside Democratic pollster Michael Bocian found similar evidence of growing voter empathy toward the Palestinians”. For polls conducted in the USA, historically the main financier and armourer of Israel, these are very significant. Nor should we underestimate the impact of these notable changes in sentiment within Israel itself, because between the two states there is a continuous interaction and exchange of people, ideas, news, information and opinions. What happens in the USA will echo around Tel Aviv and Jerusalem.
We would not suggest for one moment that there is a genuine change of heart within the US administration, but the savagery of the Israeli assault on a defenceless Gaza population is changing politics profoundly. The close entanglement of US and Israeli strategic interests are unravelling, as US diplomates scurry around the Middle East in an effort to shore up political support for various undemocratic Arab governments.
As we are heading into the Muslim Holy month of Ramadan, the last thing these Arab governments want – or any Western powers, for that matter – is a new Arab Spring, a mass, popular movement in support of Palestine and against the weakness and pusillanimity of their own governements.
We cannot predict in advance what will happen to the current war coalition in Israel, or US-Israeli relations – but we can be sure that the visit of Benny Gantz to Washington is the beginning of the end for Netanyahu. There will be an election in Israel sooner or later – most Israelis want it sooner – and the inevitable defeat of Netanyahu, will open up a new period of change and turbulence in Israeli politics.
[Picture top, Benny Gantz (left) and Netanyahu, from Wikimedia Commons]
