Trump vs Biden vs the UN on Gaza
Important divisions are unfolding, important to both Gaza and the November U.S election
By Carl Davidson
LeftLinks Weekly, March 22, 2024
How will Israel's war on Gaza affect our future?
It's widely acknowledged that President Biden's embrace of Israel's Prime Minister Netanyahu following the Hamas attack on Oct. 7 and Israel's massive and unrestricted war against Gaza has driven a wedge in the democratic coalition needed for the defeat of Trump. Biden, a Catholic, has called himself a Zionist of long standing. Trump has done likewise, only more so.
What is less known are Biden's private messages to Bibi, warning him 'not to repeat our mistakes,' apparently meaning the self-defeating U.S. military 'regime change' aggression's against Iraq and Afghanistan. It's clear that Bibi has ignored this advice, given the ongoing Israeli attacks on all of Gaza that have become genocidal.
Now Biden is calling for a ceasefire of sorts, a call made more clear in Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer's recent Senate speech. Schumer, the highest ranking Jewish-American U.S. officeholder, demanded an immediate ceasefire, massive aid to Gaza, and the removal of Netanyahu and his Likud party from Israeli's Knesset in favor of a government with adifferent flavor of Zionism, one that could work with Palestinians for a 'two-state solution.' Biden called it 'a good speech,' despite Bibi's attack on it.
What's going on here? Any war or military assault on an entire population is bound to force all the latent contradictions within all the societies’s concerned to rise to the surface. One divides into two, and even more than two. Zionism in Israel, for example, has many subdivisions. The Likud holds the 'one state, from the Sea to the River' position. This means driving all Palestinians into exile or 'transfer' as the polite term for ethnic cleansing. Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, argued for this just a few days ago, telling Bibi to ‘finish it off’ in Gaza. Any few remaining Paletinians on the West bank or elsewhere,will be imprisoned or absorbed as 'Israeli Arabs' with second-class status in a Jewish theocracy. Israel has been doing this in slow motion ever since the Likud came to power soon after the 1995 assassination of Yitzhak Rabin, Israel’s prime miniters at the time..
Rabin was also very much an Israeli military leader, both in wars against Arab states and in the repression of Palestinians. Politically, however, he was secular and part of the Israeli Zionist left, including the Mapam, a labor party. In the 1990s, he turned toward finding an agreement with Palestinians, starting 'the peace process' that ended in the 'Oslo Accords,' recognizing a start toward the formation of a Palestinian state. The result was the famous handshake with Yasir Arafat. Rabin recognized the PLO and thus won the Nobel Peace Prize, along with Arafat, for the both of them.
Immediately after Rabin's assassination, Labor's Shimon Perez held power for only six months, to be replaced by Netanyahu and the Likkud in 1996, a far right coalition that included Rabin's assassins. The Likud lasted three years, and the governing coalition see-sawed back and forth with a variety of labor, centrist and far-right groups. Netanyahu was elected two more times, the last in 2022 to the present.
Netanyahu's right-wing politics still holds a majority in Israel today. But the other Zionist trends have not gone away. Given Bibi's many failures leading up to Oct.7--backing Hamas against the PLO in the West Bank to keep Palestinians divided, and the inability of the IDF to respond promptly to the Hamas attack--and his indictments and pending trials for corruption, all means his support is dwindling rapidly.
The important point here is that the divisions among Zionists in Israel are also reflected among Israel's supporters in the U.S. political class. Schumer's speech represents an emerging center-left coalition in Israel that is soon likely to dump Bibi and try to start a new 'peace process' aiming at the much-touted 'two-state solution.'
Bibi's top U.S. defender is Donald Trump, who Bibi backs in our upcoming election (See our cartoon above). Together with Bibi, Trump denounced Schumer's position. Trump even went further, asserting that any U.S. Jew who voted Democrat should be 'ashamed' and were not really Jewish. Following Trump, House Speaker Mike Johnson wants to bring Bibi to address the House, to make the case against Biden, a ceasefire, and any positive state building prospects for Palestinians in their homeland.
This division matters a great deal. It not only spotlights Trump's reactionary views on both Israel/Palestine and Jews in the U.S. It also shows a Biden rupture with the Likud and the movement of the Democrats toward a position more in tune with the UN.
Summarizing the UN positions, China's representative to the UN, Zhang Jun, said that 'only a ceasefire can prevent greater civilian casualties in Gaza and prevent the conflict from spiraling out of control.' Noting that the international community has repeatedly and overwhelmingly called for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza, he said that 'Israel continues to bomb and shell schools, hospitals, mosques, churches and refugee camps.'
'Causing more civilian casualties in Gaza is not the solution for rescuing hostages,' Zhang added. 'Israel must immediately reverse its course of action and stop its indiscriminate military attacks and collective punishment against the people of Gaza. Every effort must be made to prevent the West Bank situation from spiraling out of control. In the West Bank, Israel must cease all settlement activities and effectively curb settler violence. China further calls for greater international and regional diplomatic efforts to reaffirm the parties’ commitment to a two-State solution.' Both China a Russia sent a puny U.S. Security Council ceasefire effort of it own, one with far to many caveats, back to the drawing board. We can demand Biden submit a new measure that can unite the UN around prinples the UN has already adopted.
Meanwhile the U.S. movement for a ceasefire in Gaza and for self-determination for Palestine can find a tactical ally in Schumer and his speech and a strategic ally in the UN majority. Moreover, the broad common project to defeat Trump in November can use these developments to win back many Palestinian and other voters who chose 'none of the above' in the Democratic primaries. Watch closely, and work wisely on the matter.
Schumer welcomed the RP's invitation for Netanyahu to address Congress. Biden refuses to stop the genocidal way in Gaza by withholding military, financial, and diplomatic support to Israel. The vast majority of Israelis support the war and are profoundly anti-Palestinian. All the surface political maneuvering is to deflect blame for the genocide away from Biden onto Netanyahu, when in reality this has been a U.S./Israel war. A war that did not begin on October 7th but with the establishment of Israel as a Jewish colonial-settler state, the Nakba, the occupation, apartheid, and now a monstrous war in Gaza aimed at a final solution at ethnic cleansing that began in 1948. Your political "pragmatism" supports a Biden win over Trump no matter what. Ironically, it's both morally and politically bankrupt.