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Just when you thought things couldn't get worse, might the ongoing disaster in Gaza prove the boxing equivalent of a preliminary bout? Imagine that, as Israel continues to use U.S.-supplied weaponry to slaughter women and children in that devastated 25-mile strip of land. After all, there's increasing muttering in the Israeli government about the possibility of invading Lebanon to take on Hezbollah rebels there. Only recently, Chief of the General Staff Herzi Halevi claimed "that the army was ready to move to an offensive in the north." Already, the two sides there have been exchanging long-range fire.
The Biden administration, worried enough over the devolving situation in Gaza, has indeed been warning the Israelis not to invade Lebanon, lest a full-scale regional war, including with Iran, were to break out. As State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller put it recently, the Biden administration remains "incredibly concerned about the risk of escalation along the Israel-Lebanon border." And Biden's officials have indeed begun publicly insisting that a "limited war" there "would not be possible" and that any such Israeli action could escalate "beyond control."
Nonetheless, the chief of the Israeli armed forces recently suggested that "preparations" were complete and a decision to launch just such an offensive might be imminent. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu also warned of the possibility of an "intense campaign" there, while the wildly right-wing National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir has been insisting that "now the IDF's [Israeli army's] job is to destroy Hezbollah."
In other words, the possibility of the war in Gaza developing into a devastating regional conflict is increasing in a distinctly ominous fashion. And in that grim context, check out today the second of a series of pieces planned for the coming months about Joe Biden's and Donald Trump's thoughts and positions on key foreign policy issues, as the 2024 election approaches here in the U.S. Let TomDispatch regular Bob Dreyfuss once again consider the two aging men running for president and what to make of them, in this case, when it comes to Israel and Gaza. Tom
Trump or Biden on Israel?
It's No Contest
By Bob Dreyfuss
Recently, I attended a demonstration called by groups opposing the carnage in Gaza, where eight months of air, ground, and sea attacks by the Israeli Defense Forces have leveled entire quadrants of cities and killed more than 36,000 Palestinians. Many of the participants, justly outraged by the ongoing mass murder triggered by Hamas's October 7th terrorist massacre, bitterly criticized President Biden over his continuing support for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's war.
Asked about the likely choice in November between Biden and Donald Trump, the consensus among the demonstrators was that they wouldn't vote for "Genocide Joe," and that there was nothing to choose from between Biden and Trump when it comes to Middle East policy. Some would simply stay home, while some might vote for the Green Party or another third party, and even those who might eventually pull the lever for Biden pledged to vote "uncommitted" in any primary to "send a message to the White House."
Still, no matter the horrors -- and they are horrors -- of Gaza and of the low-intensity war Israel is also waging in the occupied West Bank, and despite Israel's regular artillery and bombing runs against targets in Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, and even Iran, those who argue that there's no difference between Biden and Trump when it comes to Israel are deeply mistaken.
Biden represents a long-standing mainstream allegiance to Israel as an American ally, but -- like other former presidents, including George H.W. Bush, Bill Clinton, and Barack Obama -- he disdains Israel's extremist, pro-settler far right. And as he learned during the Obama years, President Biden is all too aware that Netanyahu has long explicitly thrown in his lot with the Republican Party and, more specifically, with Donald Trump as its standard-bearer.
Trump, on the other hand -- ever transactional, with distinctly bizarre attitudes toward American Jews and, in particular, Jewish supporters of Israel -- has gone out of his way to cultivate his connection to Netanyahu and the most extreme wing of Israel's governing parties. To placate Christian Zionists, who comprise a substantial chunk of his base, he's donned the cloak of an uber-Zionist himself. During his administration, in fact, he named his son-in-law Jared Kushner as his Middle East "czar." Kushner has lifelong ties to Netanyahu, who even slept in his bedroom when Kushner was young. ("Jared Kushner once lent Benjamin Netanyahu his bed," is how the Jerusalem Post put it.)
So, while pro-Palestinian demonstrators are focusing their anger on Biden, they may, all too ironically, find themselves targeted for deportation by Donald Trump, should he win a second term in office. "One thing I do is, any student that protests, I throw them out of the country," was his comment on the Gaza protests. "You know, there are a lot of foreign students. As soon as they hear that, they're going to behave."
Trump's Record on Israel-Palestine
As a television showman, playboy, and real-estate wheeler-dealer, Trump wasn't exactly an expert on Middle Eastern politics when he lurched into his presidential campaign in 2016. His views on Israel were then, at best, a work-in-progress, leading hard-core supporters of that country to describe him as "confused." But having won the nomination, he quickly staked out a radical-right position on the topic. The 2016 GOP platform, in fact, shattered a long-standing bipartisan consensus by coming out against a two-state solution in which the Palestinians would, sooner or later, get a state of their own on territory occupied by Israel. "We reject the false notion that Israel is an occupier," declared that platform, a position that dovetailed perfectly with the views of Israel's ultra-right, including the ruling Likud Party, that the occupied West Bank -- which they refer to as "Judea and Samaria" -- belongs to Israel alone because of an ancient biblical heritage.
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