Since Hamas attacked southern Israel in October 2023, Joe Biden has shown nearly absolute support for Israel and its leaders. His administration has sent hundreds of weapons shipments that have enabled the Israeli military to sustain its brutal war on Gaza; used US veto power at the UN security council to block multiple resolutions demanding a ceasefire; and undermined the legitimacy of both the international court of justice and the international criminal court because of their criticisms of Israeli actions. Biden has been willing to destroy the façade of an international rules-based order to protect Israel and the extremist government of its prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu.
You would think that Netanyahu would show deep gratitude to an ally like Biden who demonstrates such unconditional backing for nearly nine months, often acting against his own and larger US interests. Instead, Netanyahu has consistently ignored and defied Israel’s most important ally – and paid no price for it. Now the Israeli premier is openly mocking Biden and his administration: on 18 June, Netanyahu released an English-language video claiming the US was withholding weapons that Israel needs to continue its war. On 23 June, Netanyahu continued venting his contempt of Biden and overall US support, telling the Israeli cabinet that the Biden administration has dramatically decreased arms supplies in recent months.
In fact, Biden suspended a single munitions shipment to Israel, consisting mostly of 2,000-lb bombs that can cause devastating casualties when dropped on population centers, as the Israeli military has consistently done in Gaza. But less than a week later, Biden changed course and resumed sending far more weapons than the single delivery he had delayed. In mid-May, the administration told Congress that it would proceed with more than $1bn in new arms deals for Israel, even as it became clear that Netanyahu had defied months of warnings from Biden and was moving ahead with a ground invasion of Rafah, Gaza’s southernmost city, where more than 1 million Palestinians had taken shelter.
Biden failed to use the most effective leverage he has over the Israeli government: stop US shipments of weapons and force Netanyahu to accept a ceasefire deal that the Biden administration has been trying to broker for months. Instead, Biden showed weakness and squandered any influence he could have had over Netanyahu and Israel’s war, which has killed more than 37,000 Palestinians and brought Gaza to the brink of famine.
Gaza has turned into Biden’s most perplexing moral and foreign policy failure as president: why has he allowed Netanyahu to undermine him, and why does the Biden administration continue to respond so ineptly to a foreign leader who is far more dependent on the US than the other way around?
Biden built his so-called “bear hug” strategy on the idea of keeping Netanyahu close from the start of the war – the US president literally hugged the Israeli leader during a visit to Tel Aviv in October. Biden and his aides argued that he could have more influence over Israel’s actions by being supportive in public, while privately restraining Netanyahu and his extremist allies. But that approach never worked, and Netanyahu has been playing Biden since the beginning, as both friends and foes of the Israeli premier have tried to tell the US administration. Inexplicably, Biden hardly adjusted his strategy: he publicly criticized Netanyahu, but when the Israeli leader ignores or defies the US, Biden continues his unconditional aid with a steady flow of weapons and diplomatic cover to protect Israel from accusations of committing war crimes and genocide in Gaza.
In fact, Netanyahu is not only showing a remarkable lack of gratitude to Biden with his latest complaints about delayed weapons shipments – the prime minister is trying to destroy Biden’s ability to use US arms as leverage over Israel. And because Biden quickly wavered after suspending a single package of bombs in May, Netanyahu is succeeding. The Biden administration is no longer threatening to delay or cancel other arms deliveries to force Israel to change its tactics. Instead, the administration is spending its energy defending itself against Netanyahu’s calculated claim that the US is not providing Israel with enough weapons.
The Israeli defense minister, Yoav Gallant, visited Washington last week and met with US officials who went through a line-by-line description of the hundreds of American arms shipments to Israel since October. To further rebut Netanyahu’s accusation, the Biden administration for the first time publicly revealed the price tag of US support to Israel since the Hamas attack: $6.5bn in weapons and other security assistance, with nearly $3bn of that sum approved in May. And it’s all paid for by US taxpayers, since Israel is the largest aggregate recipient of American foreign aid in the world, having received about $310bn (adjusted for inflation) since the state was founded in 1948.
The Washington Post reported that an internal memo circulated to Democratic members of Congress explained that the single batch of heavy munitions that Biden suspended in May represented “less than 1% of the total military support provided by the US to Israel since the beginning of this conflict”.
Still, Netanyahu is ignoring the massive deliveries of US weapons to Israel since October and successfully using that one delayed shipment to undermine Biden and question his commitment to the Jewish state. Biden and his aides are now worried that Netanyahu will use an address to a joint session of Congress on 24 July to attack the president once again – playing into the hands of House Republicans who invited Netanyahu to speak over the administration’s objections. Democratic leaders in Congress initially resisted, but then they buckled and joined the Republican-led invitation.
In 2015, Netanyahu used a similar speech in Congress to criticize the sitting US president, Barack Obama, and his administration’s efforts at the time to negotiate a deal to limit Iran’s nuclear program. It seems Netanyahu will use his platform this time to attack Biden during a US presidential election for being insufficiently supportive of Israel’s war – despite all evidence to the contrary. The prime minister and his allies are trying to undermine Biden and would prefer Donald Trump to be president again.
It’s been clear for months that Netanyahu does not want to end the Gaza war, and he has worked to sabotage US-brokered negotiations for a ceasefire and an agreement to release the remaining hostages held by Hamas. Once the war ends, Netanyahu and his far-right allies rightfully worry that they would confront early parliamentary elections and numerous investigations into the Israeli government’s intelligence failures leading up to the Hamas attack. If he’s forced out of power, Netanyahu would also face a long-delayed trial on bribery and other corruption charges for acts he allegedly committed during his earlier stints as prime minister.
Netanyahu is a political survivor and he’s willing to prolong a war to stay in power and avoid accountability. It’s clear that Netanyahu would undermine Biden – and wider US interests – to save himself. All of this makes Biden’s weak response and helplessness in confronting Netanyahu all the more baffling: why does the US president risk his own political future by continuing to support a foreign leader who is working to destabilize him?
Biden and his administration have fallen into a kind of magical thinking: they demand that Netanyahu and his government stop a ruthless war, but continue providing the weapons and political cover that enable Israel to prolong the bloodshed.
Mohamad Bazzi is director of the Hagop Kevorkian Center for Near Eastern Studies, and a journalism professor at New York University