Biden Has Saved More Palestinian Lives than Any Other Person

In the face of mass slaughter, that may be unsatisfying but "Genocide Joe" is the one who stopped Israeli ethnic clensing & starvation tactics

Israel had clear genocidal intent when they launched their war on Gaza.

They shut Gaza’s borders and barred all food convoys from entering, threatening in early October 2023 to bomb Egyptian aid convoys. A number of Israeli Ministers have called for expelling Palestinians from Gaza and resettling it with Israelis, using ethnic cleansing as a tool to win the war.

That this was the plan is not some leftwing conjecture. It’s backed by statements of public statements of Israeli Ministers., As the Wall Street Journal reported in February “Israeli officials initially signaled they would completely cut off food, water, electricity and fuel from the strip to force Hamas to surrender.”

So what stopped them?

Joe Biden.

Not the United Nations, not European leaders, not campus protesters.

It was Joe Biden who forced the Israelis to abandon the genocidal aspects of their invasion that would have killed orders of magnitude more Palestinians.

Again, the Wall Street Journal wrote:

under pressure from the U.S. and with the humanitarian situation in the strip worsening, Israel has relented and now says it is trying to get as much aid into Gaza as it can, though, the United Nations says aid flowing into the enclave still isn’t sufficient.

This overall argument builds on my piece in January, The Case for Biden on Gaza, with later stories in the Wall Street Journal and other statements by Israeli officials making it clearer how much Biden frustrated their war plans for even worse atrocities than they have so far committed.

It’s also clear, as developments have shown, that while people justifiably should ask why Biden didn’t do more, the murderous intent of the Israelis and likely actions by Congress would have stopped Biden from taking more dramatic action than he did.

The Biden Campaign for Humanitarian Aid for Palestinians

Biden’s opposition to Israel’s starvation war strategy began immediately after Israel launched its war in Gaza when Israel attempted to starve out the Palestinians. Within a few weeks, headlines noted that Israeli had backed down due to pressure from the Biden administration.

This would be followed up with US airdrops of aid into Gaza, then Biden negotiated the building of a pier to deliver aid by ship.

Often lost in the discussion over military aid to Israel is the fact that the Biden administration requested and received billions of dollars in humanitarian aid for Gaza in the Congressional bill passed by Congress in April.

This focus by Biden on humanitarian aid for Palestinians has not gone uncommented on by Israeli leaders. Itamar Ben-Gvir, Israel’s national security minister has denounced Biden: “Instead of giving us his full backing, Biden is busy with giving humanitarian aid and fuel [to Gaza], which goes to Hamas.”

Biden’s Opposition to Ethnic Cleansing of Gaza

Israel early on had made clear that part of the point of the bombing campaign and working to starve Gaza was to force “voluntary migration” to other countries- a polite word for ethnic cleansing and a repeat of the Nakba of 1948:

Israeli media on Monday said Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is pushing for plans to implement "voluntary migration" on the Palestinians in Gaza to other countries. 

According to the Israel Hayom daily, Netanyahu made the comment during a closed-door parliamentary session for his ruling Likud Party lawmakers.

"Our problem is the countries that are willing to absorb (them), and we are working on it," he reportedly said.

The “problem” referred to in the last line is that Biden has publicly worked with other countries in the region like Jordan and Egypt to make clear that Israel’s plan for ethnic cleansing would not be allowed and they would not faciliate the expulsion of Palestinians to surrounding counties.

Biden has reinforced this opposition to ethnic cleansing by pushing hard for reviving a two-state solution that would bring Palestinian sovereignty to the West Bank and Gaza following the end of the conflict. Notably, the Palestinian Authority has endorsed Biden’s plan for a pathway to democratic reforms and the restoration of Palestinian Authority control of a united West Bank and Gaza.

The media has reported repeated conflict between Biden and Netanyahu over Biden’s demands that Israel restore funds designated for the Palestinian Authority so there can be a functioning Palestinian government for the territories.

Israelis are Clear about How Trump’s Policies would Have Differed from Biden

Ben-Gvir and other Israelis have made clear that they believe Donald Trump would have given them a free hand to starve out the Palestinians:

Ben-Gvir also said he thought the Biden administration was hampering Israel’s war effort and said he believed Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump would give Israel a freer hand to quash Hamas…“If Trump was in power, the U.S. conduct would be completely different.”

Trump has just reinforced that view, since his major complaint about Israel’s war is that they were taking too long to “finish what they started” and has promised to wipe out and deport the pro-Palestinian protesters in the U.S.- “we’re going to set that movement back 25 or 30 years” in a promise to donors. In the recent debate he criticized Biden’s support for humanitarian aid and stopping Israel from being able to “finish the job,” saying Biden had “become like a Palestinian.”

Trump has used pretty much the same language advocating for quick ends to the wars in both Ukraine and Gaza, meaning in both cases quick surrender by those invaded and permanent occupation by the invaders.

His vision for the future of Gaza is no doubt reflected in comments by his son-in-law Jared Kushner, who was his main envoy to the Middle East during his Presidency, who praised Gaza as “valuable…waterfront property” that Israel should develop after they expel Palestinian civilians, ideally to Egypt.

The difference between a President Biden repeatedly opposing Israel’s starvation and ethnic cleansing goals versus a Trump Presidency that would endorse them in the name of “finishing the job” could not be starker.

Why Couldn’t Biden do More?

With Gaza’s Ministry of Health estimating that more than 38,000 Palestinians have been killed since Israel launched its military offensive on October 7, it is still reasonable to ask why Biden didn’t do even more to reduce Palestinian deaths, including cutting off military aid to stop the invasion altogether.

First, Israel doesn’t need either U.S. aid or U.S. weapons. Israel is now a wealthy nation with an annual GDP of $525 billion, so a few billion in aid from the U.S., while politically appreciated, doesn’t actually matter for whether they can afford to conduct a war. And Israel now has a large internal arms industry and has received arms shipment during the current war from multiple nations, including from India and Germany, so Israel doesn’t need U.S. weapons to conduct its war.

The U.S. aid may be appreciated and has given Biden negotiating leverage in areas where Israeli political opinion is divided, such as on humanitarian aid and expulsions of Palestinians from Gaza, but not enough leverage to stop the war altogether. Netanhayu couldn’t politically afford to blow off aid from the U.S. over conditions that a majority of the Israeli voters would consider reasonable, but could have easily ignored conditions - such as ending the war altogether - where Israeli public opinion solidly supports the effort.

Even if Biden wanted to end weapons delivery to Israel just for symbolic reasons, the power of AIPAC and the general Israel lobby in D.C. means that would be impossible. Only 37 Democrats voted against the Israeli aid package in November and only eight Democrats voted against the Iron Dome funding bill in 2021. If Biden tried to block military aid to Israel altogether, there would clearly be veto-proof majorities to force through delivery of weapons aid with no conditions. AIPAC’s ability to defeat Jamaal Bowman in his recent primary for daring to vote against the Israeli military aid will no doubt just further discipline US elected leaders to fall in line with the Israeli lobby demands.

So Biden was operating within a relatively narrow window of political maneuvering both within Israel public opinion and within political options here at home.

Biden Stopped Genocide in Gaza- Which Matters with the Threat of Trump on the Ballot

40,000 Palestinians dying out of a Gazan strip population of 2.1 million is a horrific number of deaths, almost 2% of their population and likely more if you include indirect deaths.

But while these are the numbers for a horrific war, one involving multiple war crimes by the Israeli government, these numbers comparable to the roughly 3.7% of the global population that died in World War II or the 2.2% of the Syrian population killed in the recent civil war there or as many as 8.5% of the Tigray population killed in the recent war by the Ethiopian government there.

But “genocide” is 69% of German Jews and 90% of Polish Jews killed in the Holocaust, the 75% of the Tutsi population killed in Rwanda in 1994, the 25% of the Cambodian population killed by the Khmer Rouge, or the nearly 25% of East Timor residents killed by Indonesia after its 1975 invasion,

I don’t usually like to engage in rhetorical fights over words, but use of the word “genocide” by some sectarian groups is being used in bad faith. They are using the word to obscure the difference between the result of Biden’s actual policies working to reduce deaths in Gaza versus the potential real genocide that would occur if Netanyahu had his way and if Trump wins office again and allows it.

That makes the misuse of the word “genocide” now incredibly dangerous. While the International Criminal Court has justifiably found war crimes committed by the Israeli Government - as well as by Hamas - it has so far refused to deem the war in Gaza to be a genocide, in fact approving German shipments of weapons to Israel as not violating the UN genocide convention

What Biden has accomplished since October is to prevent Israel from implementing either mass starvation or ethnic cleansing as tools of war - both of which would have constituted a form of genocide. That he did not prevent a brutal war may be unsatisfying but preventing deaths orders of magnitude larger and preserving the Palestinians as a people within their own borders is a real accomplishment.

Some liberals say they are supporting Biden despite his policies on Gaza, but I fully believe that pro-Palestinian progressives should be supporting Biden BECAUSE of his policies on Gaza, as obtaining probably the best results a U.S. President could have achieved given the genocidal intent of the Netanyahu Israeli regime and the political limits set by the AIPAC and Israel lobby here at home.

And given Trump’s clear intention to accommodate those genocidal Israeli intentions, the choice of Biden in November is even clearer for those who care about the Palestinian cause.