Bibi Must Go Bye-Bye

The minority extremists in the prime minister's cabinet are happy to turn Israel into an international pariah.

It was really great to see that our president still has a lot of fight left in him. The State of the Union speech was a relief to me. He seemed strong and agile-minded, where I feared he might be addle-minded. I loved the back and forth with the Republican hecklers. Now that I’m sure he’s up for it, I want President Biden to address the Israeli people, whether via television, social media, or live in the Knesset, some things have to be said. 

It’s taken too long, but the Biden Administration is finally adopting a very public stance in opposition to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s unholy war. The other day, Vice President Harris spoke for the administration, and so many of us here and across the globe when she demanded an immediate cease fire. I wish to underscore the above, because while I disdain the Prime Minister, I love Israel, where I have deep and meaningful family ties. After losing her parents, aunts, uncles and many cousins to the Nazis, my grandmother spent quite a lot of time in the Sixties and Seventies on a kibbutz with what family she had left outside of the States. Israel meant the world to her, and by extension, to us.

Domestic politics in Israel were in turmoil before the October 7th Hamas attack. Briefly, Netanyahu has been indicted for corruption, and in order to save his skin, he turned on the country (sound familiar?), and proposed putting the Supreme Court in his pocket, taking away their oversight of Cabinet appointments, and generally stripping the high court of any real power to rein him in. To stay in power, he made a deal with the religious far-right, even onboarding former felons—anyone, regardless of their desire to kill Israeli democracy, so long as they’re willing to protect him from the law (sound familiar?). Thus, he created the most right-wing, religious government in Israel’s history, all to his personal benefit, and the country’s detriment. (Last time now: sound familiar?)

President Biden has tried to keep his cool in public, but has lambasted Netanyahu in private, all to no avail. As most American Jews have watched with horror the carnage Israel is wrecking on the Gaza Strip, the president, finally fed up, sent his VP out to the cameras as he was instructing our military to build a temporary pier to land food and medicine off the Gazan coast, even as an airlift of food and medicine continues.

Benny Gantz, Bibi’s chief political rival, came to the States to discuss a ceasefire, and how to form a governing coalition in Gaza with the surrounding Arab states, now that the Palestinian Authority, always about as potent as a Nevada Boxing Commissioner, has finally admitted it is not up to any task that doesn’t involve lining its own pockets.

Foreign policy is traditionally left to the Executive, but in an unprecedented breach of protocol in 2015, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and Speaker of the House John Boehner did a foreign policy end run around the Obama administration and invited Netanyahu to speak before a joint session of Congress. He accepted, and came here specifically to undermine Obama and the two-state initiative.

Turnabout is fair play. Joe Biden should now go directly to the Israeli people, who, incidentally despise Netanyahu and how he’s clinging to power by pandering to their hard-right. The war in Gaza is an expression of how beholden he is to that faction. That he used them in his attempt to change the Supreme Court to keep himself out of the defendant’s dock on various corruption charges is not exactly a state secret.

Netanyahu’s cronies are not tone deaf, they simply don’t care that Israel is squandering seven decades of goodwill and sympathy. The irony of the oppressed becoming the oppressors doesn’t penetrate their 7^th Century sensibilities. They care not that they turning a great nation into an international pariah.

Bibi’s endless war is in reality a factory built to radicalize another generation of Palestinians, while turning the world against Israel and its American allies. That represents a continuation of the cycle of violence we’ve seen for generations. Most Israelis don’t want that, and neither do most Americans. When you’re used to being the neighborhood’s best example of modern democracy, this is a long hard fall, and one that is costing Israel the best chance ever of normalizing relations with its Arab neighbors.

The Israeli prime minister has allowed his malignant right-wing, zealously religious  cabinet, to drag the Middle East back to the Middle Ages. The West, the United States included, has seen this movie before. This is a truly painful moment for those of us who have championed Israel our whole lives.

Let our president address the Israeli public now, and restate our founding principles, while reminding Israelis of theirs.

©2024 Jon Sinton