Biden decided to ‘smother Netanyahu with love’ during 2021 Gaza conflict, new book claims
Then-Vice President Joe Biden with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on March 9, 2016. Photo by Debbie Hill/AFP via Getty Images
By Jacob Kornbluh August 31, 2023
A new book shows President Joe Biden bucking convention in his dealings with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu — a softer approach exemplified during the May 2021 conflict between Israel and Hamas.
“Smother Netanyahu with love.” That was Biden’s directive to his senior national security advisers as the administration sought to end heavy airstrikes on the Gaza Strip in response to 4,000 rockets fired at Israel, journalist Franklin Foer writes.
The Forward obtained a copy of Foer’s The Last Politician: Inside Joe Biden’s White House and the Struggle for America’s Future, which is scheduled for release on Tuesday and billed as the first insider account of Biden’s first two years in office.
‘In the spirit of friendship’
Foer, a journalist with The Atlantic, writes that Biden spoke with Netanyahu six times in the 11 days of intense fighting between Hamas and Israel, which resulted in the deaths of 243 Palestinians, including 66 children, and 12 Israelis. Historically, during such conflicts, American presidents have urged restraint and publicly called for a ceasefire. But according to Foer, Biden told his advisers that he would hold off to build trust with the Israeli leader, knowing from experience that criticism would push Netanyahu away. He was going to “hug Bibi tight,” Foer writes in a chapter by that name.
In one of their phone conversations, after Israel bombed a 12-story building in Gaza City that served as a home base for journalists, including some working for the Associated Press and Al Jazeera, Biden withheld criticism, and instead asked Netanyahu to help him understand his strategy. “Biden spent more than an hour conducting his inquiry in the spirit of friendship,” Foer writes. “But he was also trying to expose the shortcomings in Bibi’s thinking.”
Foer added that Netanyahu “inadvertently” admitted he had no defined objective in ending the airstrikes, “but Biden held his tongue.”
Political calculus
At the time, Netanyahu, after 12 consecutive years as prime minister, faced a serious political threat. After four elections in two years without conclusive results, his opponents were trying to oust him by building a governing coalition with conservatives and an Arab party. Biden aides feared that Netanyahu would prolong the war to stymie the challenge.
Congressional Democrats criticized Biden’s approach, displeasure the president conveyed to Netanyahu. “Bibi, I gotta tell you, I’m coming under a lot of pressure back here,” Netanyahu quoted Biden as saying in his recent memoir, Bibi: My Story.
Netanyahu reluctantly agreed to a ceasefire after Biden expressed greater skepticism about the goals of continued strikes and signaled that his patience had run out, Foer writes. It came after then-defense minister Benny Gantz, a political rival of Netanyahu, told the administration that Israel was starting to run out of targets.
“Hey, man, we are out of runway here,” Biden said in the fourth phone call on May 19 when Netanyahu insisted he needed to accomplish more. “It’s over.”
A poll of 800 registered voters commissioned by GBAO Strategies for the non-partisan Jewish Electorate Institute in July 2021 showed that 74% of Jewish voters approved Biden’s handling of the U.S.-Israel relationship and 62% supported the way he managed the Israel-Gaza conflict.
A longstanding relationship
Biden’s relationship with Netanyahu goes back four decades, beginning when Netanyahu first visited Washington in the early 1980s. On Biden’s Israel trip last year, Netanyahu — as opposition leader — was the first dignitary Biden shook hands with during the welcome ceremony at Ben Gurion International Airport, despite the White House’s earlier assertion that Biden would only fist bump with Israeli leaders because of a spike in coronavirus cases. “You know I love you,” Biden told Netanyahu. The comments aired live on Israeli television.
In the early 2000s, Biden signed a photograph of the two of them, using Netanyahu’s nickname: “Bibi, I don’t agree with a damn thing you had to say, but I love you.”
In his memoir, Netanyahu wrote that at the start of the Obama administration, under pressure to endorse a two-state solution and resume negotiations with the Palestinians, Biden told him he would serve as his backchannel ally. “You don’t have too many friends here, buddy,” he recalled Biden saying during a meeting at the vice president’s Washington residence. “I’m the one friend you do have. So call me when you need to.”
Biden in the Oval Office
Foer writes that in the first phone call Biden placed to Netanyahu as president he “launched into a nostalgia trip” about Israel and how the two leaders first met in the ’80s. “Did you ever imagine we’d be sitting where we are today?” Biden remarked.
But Biden again pulled his punches when Netanyahu returned to power last December. The president conveyed his frustration over the Israeli government’s judicial overhaul, which has inspired hundreds of thousands of Israelis to protest in the streets. For months Biden withheld an invitation for Netanyahu to visit the White House. And he repeatedly pushed the Israeli leader to seek “broad consensus” over the judicial controversy. Still, Biden hasn’t imposed any significant costs on Netanyahu or Israel. He has also declined to respond to pleas by some of his supporters for a more aggressive approach toward the Israeli government.
Netanyahu’s Oval Office visit with Biden is expected next month when he visits the U.S. to address the United Nations General Assembly in New York.
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