Biden Has Leverage Over Netanyahu. It’s Stupid and Criminal Not to Use It.

Cutting off military funding for Israel’s genocidal war machine isn’t just the morally correct choice, it's the politically & strategically correct course for the US & the Biden-Harris Administration.

(Handout/GPO/Anadolu via Getty Images)

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By Omar Baddar

We’re nearing a year into Israel’s genocide in Gaza, which is conservatively estimated to have killed 40,000 Palestinians, including nearly 16,500 children. President Biden has expressed subtle frustration on occasion, criticizing what even he admitted was “indiscriminate” Israeli bombing in Gaza (a war crime by the way), and leaking to the press news of his “tough” phone calls with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu over the latter’s endless appetite for escalation and disinterest in a ceasefire.

And here we are, with Netanyahu bringing us to the edge of a massive regional war, having carried out a strike in a Suburb of Beirut that killed several women and children in addition to its Hezbollah target, and an assassination of Hamas’s leader in Tehran on the eve of Iran’s presidential inauguration. Both Hezbollah and Iran have vowed serious retaliation unless a ceasefire is reached in Gaza to end the slaughter of Palestinians.

The US seems eager to avert a regional war that could get out of control, so the Biden administration has been pushing to get that ceasefire. The obvious obstacle here is Benjamin Netanyahu. He doesn’t want a ceasefire because he knows that the failed end of his genocidal war on Gaza is likely the end of his political career, and the final nail in the coffin of his legacy as the Prime Minister who failed to prevent the worst attack on Israel, and failed to deliver victory or the safe return of the hostages, or even the restoration of “deterrence” for Israel.

But how many more Palestinian parents must collect the torn body parts of their children in defense of Netanyahu’s career and legacy? How many more children must lose their parents? How much more devastation and despair must we continue arming and enabling? And are we prepared to risk a major regional war that could literally (not figuratively) cost millions of deaths?

There is a way to put an end to all of this madness. It doesn’t require Biden or Blinken or anyone else to get on the phone and convince Benjamin Netanyahu to put an end to the slaughter, it merely requires that Biden put an end to US funding of the slaughter, and that will bring it to an end fairly quickly. Israel simply cannot sustain its war on Gaza without direct U.S. participation.

Cutting off military funding for Israel’s genocidal war machine isn’t just the morally correct choice, or just the strategically correct course for US standing in the world and to avoid a regional war that harms US interests, it is also politically beneficial on the domestic front. Recent polling in Pennsylvania, George, and Arizona shows that Kamala Harris GAINS from calling for the withholding of weapons to Israel and from the Biden administration securing a ceasefire in Gaza. It is utterly stupid and criminal to miss an opportunity to take a step that makes sense on every level.

One may wonder: Why on earth haven’t US policymakers moved in a direction that makes sense morally, strategically, and morally? The answer to that lies in the outsized influence of the Israel lobby, and in an outdated mindset in Washington where the “blank check for Israel” didn’t carry the costs it does today, with a fanatical Israeli government carrying out worse atrocities than ever before, and with a progressive US base that better understands what’s wrong with this blank check.

The symbolic significance of letting Biden ride into the sunset for a younger and more energetic Harris to take over at the helm of the Democratic ticket needs to be matched with a substantive policy change. It’s time for the blank check for Israel to fade into irrelevance and for the U.S. to start holding Israel accountable, because that’s politically smart, strategically necessary, and morally non-negotiable.

Omar Baddar is a progressive political analyst, digital producer, and human rights advocate based in Washington, DC.