THE DEAL BIDEN SHOULD NOW OFFER NETANYAHU

Failed “Savior of Israel” Benjamin Netanyahu is only getting more desperate. The IDF experienced the deadliest day for Israeli troops in Gaza on Monday, when Hamas militants fired an RPG at an Israeli military team preparing to demolish two buildings with explosives. The RPG caused the buildings to explode and collapse, killing 21 reserve soldiers, . The deaths of these soldiers underscored again that Netanyahu’s campaign against Hamas is not going well. Israeli intelligence has badly underestimated the extent of Hamas’s tunnel network; it now turns out there are some 5,700 shafts that lead to over 450 miles of layered labyrinths several stories deep. Not only that, but Hamas’ fighting force has proved itself extremely resilient.

After more than three months of battering every structure in Gaza, destroying over 80% of housing, and killing more than 25,000 Palestinian civilians - including more than 10,000 children - in a war that only daily more reminds an observer of the Waffen SS assault on the Warsaw Ghetto 80 years ago, U.S. intelligence sources estimate the IDF has only destroyed about 30% of Hamas’s forces; most of the top leadership is intact.

Meanwhile, more Israeli hostages are dying from the Israeli air asault or being executed in Hamas captivity. Family members are fed up with Nitwityahoo prioritizing the assault on Gaza over rescuing the hostages and return them to their homes. They relatives have stormed the Knesset and poured fake blood on the road in front of Netanyahu’s’s home in Caesarea.

In response, he continues his public attacks on President Biden’s stated policy of pursuing a two-state solution.

Netanyahu has said repeatedly that he is proud of preventing the creation of a Palestinian state and that Israel intends to control all the land west of the Jordan River - “between the river and the sea.”.

His public statements have infuriated a key part of Biden’s base, the progressive wing of the party. Progressives have pointed out that this is a hell of a thing to hear from an ally that takes billions of dollars in U.S. taxpayer money only for its leader to tell the U.S. president to shove it.

Democrats on both sides of the issue know that Netanyahu is an active supporter of Trump, that his baiting people over the two-state solution is the most clear evidence yet of trying to turn everything partisan, of saying ‘Fuck you’ to pro-Israel Democrats.

U.S. intelligence knows he is holding on for dear life, with increasing calls for his removal from office and holding new elections which will undoubtedly see the fascist theocrats among the American-dominated Settler Movement defeated. Polls in Israel have shown that Biden is far more popular there than is Netanyahu. The Israeli prime minister is trying to gin up Republican support for his position, which increases animosity by the party in power in the U.S.

Biden has not made any similar attempts to intervene in Israeli politics, but administration officials have warned that may not always remain the case. If the calls for turfing him out of the prime ministers office get stronger, there will be no U.S. public support for him, no political lifeline will be forthcoming.

When Netanyahu was asked about his repeated rebuffs of President Biden’s requests that he accept a two-state solution to the Israel-Palestine conflict, he said “The prime minister needs to be able to say no, even to our best friends."

There is no reason why the United States should continue supporting a government so bent on ethnic cleansing of the West Bank and Gaza that it has rejected offers made by almost every major Arab nation to recognize Israel if it agrees to the establishment of a Palestinian state.

There is no reason why the United States should continue supporting an Israeli government and leader determined to wage an increasingly-unsuccessful war when many Israeli military leaders say that the war will never get the hostages back, that the only way to do so is to declare a cease-fire - and are supported by an increasing share of Israelis.

There is no reason why the United States should continue supporting a government that is determined to rule “from the river to the sea” when doing that will extinguish Israel’s democratic character, the goal of the convicted domestic terrorists of the Settler Right who hold Nitwityahoo’s fate.

There is no reason why the United States should continue supporting an Israeli leader who is keeping the war going because he fears its end might enable Israel’s citizens to bring down his government and put him in the personal legal peril he has done everything to avoid in the past year.

Biden should condition continuing U.S. aid to Israel on the government accepting the two-state policy, the only plausible long-term solution to its relations with Palestinians, and the policy that allows it to achieve its goal of normalizing relations with the Arab states, and ceasing the block-by-block demolition of Gaza.

Support for this position is gaining strength in the Democratic Party. Last week, 15 Jewish Democratic House members, including long-standing AIPAC-backed true believers like my congressman, Brad Sherman, publicly condemned Netanyahu for rejecting a two-state solution

Bernie Sanders, the only Senator to have actually lived and worked on a kibbutz, holds a position in opposition to the proposed unconditional $14 billion aid package to Israel, stating it must have conditions such as not allowing U.S. aid to be put to such purposes as the continued destruction of Gaza and officially-sanctioned Settler attacks on West Bank Palestinians.

Taking such a position makes political sense for President Biden, since his ongoing unconditional support for the war has cost him support from voters who enabled him to beat Trump in 2020.

The administration has been busy lining up the support of Arab governments for recognizing Israel if Israel will recognize a Palestinian state. Biden has assembled an impressive coalition of diverse nations to put those proposals before Netanyahu, much as it assembled an impressive coalition of diverse nations to support Ukraine.

Netanyahu has proven himself to be as intractable as Putin—the difference being that he’s our ally.

The fact Biden is not conditioning U.S. support for Netanyahu’s government on its acceptance of his proposals, which seem to me to offer the only way that Israel can survive as a democracy, is a major mistake.

Enough with the unconditional support of Netanyahu’s malevolent stupidity, Mr. President. Put a work requirement on what he has to do to get his welfare check. It’s good for Israel, good for the Middle East, good for democracy, good for America, and good for you. Remember, there is an election coming up.

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