Joe Biden’s crime against humanity

Ever since he announced his decision not to stand for a second presidential term, Joe Biden has become a “lame duck”, an elected official who has reached the final months in office with nothing to plan for or look forward to. His influence is now limited, as everybody knows that the end is nigh. However, a person in such a situation who happens to be a president elected by popular vote (indirectly in the US case), is also more free-handed than a president campaigning for a second term, who must therefore ensure that no votes are lost as a result of positions or measures taken.

The truth is that Biden has so far shown that he is closer to a second-term campaigner than a retiree with regard to the genocidal war that Israel continues to carry out in the Gaza Strip with full backing from the White House. The US president’s behaviour towards Benjamin Netanyahu’s government has clearly retreated from the semi-critical approach he had begun to adopt after realising how costly his complicity in the Zionist offensive against the Palestinian people is in terms of votes, especially among traditional Democratic Party supporters. The current onslaught on Gaza is the first war waged by the State of Israel with the full participation (and not just material, political and diplomatic support) of the United States, without which an onslaught of such destructive and deadly intensity would not have been possible in the first place.

Ever since Biden faced the consequences of his support for the Zionist genocidal war, including the pressures exerted on him by a wing of his own party to at least try to stop the onslaught that reached its horrific level in its first weeks, we saw his administration adjust its position and allow the UN Security Council to issue a call for a ceasefire, after having vetoed this for months. We also saw the Biden administration make some effort to agree a “ceasefire”; in reality, a cessation of the genocidal war that the Zionist state is waging unilaterally and without any noteworthy “exchange of fire” (despite the usual media exaggeration and boasting in the camp opposing Israel, following a bad habit established by the Arab nationalist regimes in the 1960s). The US administration, with help from Egypt and Qatar, has been making strenuous efforts to reach an agreement to stop the “fighting” (more accurately to stop the killing and genocide) and facilitate an exchange of captives between the Zionist government and Hamas.

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That was until Biden succumbed to pressures from within his party, as well as from his party’s supporters and major funders, urging him to announce that he would not seek a second term in office. Since then — that is, since he was freed from having to consider the pressures related to the Gaza war that he was subjected to electorally and from within his party — his position has regressed to open collusion by the “proud Irish-American Zionist” with the “proud Jewish Zionist”, as Netanyahu put it during his farewell visit to the increasingly frail president. The regression of Biden’s position was evident in the way that he reacted to Israel’s recent assassination of Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran.

Haniyeh’s assassination was a major stab in the back for the ceasefire efforts

Biden merely said that it “doesn’t help” the ongoing efforts to reach an agreement between the Netanyahu government and the Hamas leadership. The assassination of the head of the Palestinian movement’s political bureau and key negotiator was, in fact, a major stab in the back of those efforts, which the Biden administration had prioritised in its regional diplomatic activity. Ismail Haniyeh was the resistance movement’s main interlocutor, and was betting on pressures exerted upon him so that he could, in turn, put pressure on Yahya Sinwar, the Hamas leader in Gaza, in order to get the desired ceasefire.

Haniyeh’s assassination in Tehran was also a highly dangerous escalation in the confrontation between the Zionist state and Iran. It will necessarily lead to a response from Tehran that could trigger, even if unintentionally, a downward spiral towards a large-scale regional confrontation. In other words, by giving a green light to the assassination, Netanyahu knew that he was risking getting the US involved in a war that could be worse than all the wars that Washington has fought in the Middle East to date. Instead of reprimanding his “proud Jewish Zionist” ally, Biden once again demonstrated his “ironclad commitment” to “defend” Israel by instructing his administration to rush to send military reinforcements to the region in order to protect the occupation state.

His administration’s pretence of continuing its efforts to reach a ceasefire agreement is thus totally hypocritical, since Washington knows full well that such a prospect was killed along with Haniyeh, which was Netanyahu’s goal all along. Biden acted as if he had prior knowledge of the assassination plot and did not object to it; indeed, he supported it.

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Moreover, the US president revealed that his “ironclad commitment” to apartheid Israel is actually unconditional, to the point that it remains valid even when Israel’s behaviour contradicts US interests, both material — the inevitably high cost of a war, especially since Washington is already having problems maintaining support for Ukraine against Russia — and political, damaging America’s “good guy” image around the world.

Alas, Joe Biden will not stand in the dock at the International Criminal Court, that much is sure. There is no doubt, though, that the court of public opinion, and the pages of history when they are written, will include his name prominently on the list of those guilty of crimes against humanity.

Translated from Arabic published by Al-Quds Al-Arabi on 6 August 2024.

The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Monitor.