Biden's Dangerous Zionism

 Biden's Dangerous Zionism:

3/4/24

It's well known that Joe Biden is a staunch Zionist. He is far and away the top recipient of money from pro-Israel lobbies on record. His often highly animated speech in statements on Zionism and the importance of Israel for US interests are familiar to those who have followed his career. But recently I was reading an essay called The Shoah After Gaza, in the London Review of Books, when I came upon a truly chilling Biden anecdote. So much so, that despite the high credibility of the author, Pankaj Mishra, and the publication (LRB) I felt compelled to find corroborating evidence, which I did.  I'll begin by simply quoting the paragraph from the article that knocked me back a few days ago when I read it. Mishra writes:

In 1982, shortly before Regan bluntly ordered [Menachim] Begin to cease his "holocaust" [Reagan's term] in Lebanon, a young US senator...met the Israeli Prime Minister. In Begin's own account of the meeting, this senator commended the Israeli war effort in Lebanon, and boasted that he would have gone further, even if it meant killing women and children. Begin himself was taken aback by the blood-thirstiness of the future US President, Joe Biden. He had to insist, "No, sir. According to our values, it's forbidden to hurt women and children even in war. This is a yardstick of human civilization, not to hurt civilians. 

The source for this appears to be this article from the Times of Israel, which contains the same quote. I was able to find other sources that include additional quotes just as disturbing.

It is no small thing to try to outdo Menachem Begin when it comes to ruthless killings during times of war. There is an eerie irony in Menahem Begin's "humane" response to the sickening braggadocio of young Senator Biden. For Begin was the leader of the infamous Irgun, a terrorist group that fought both Arabs and the British from 1930 to 1948 in British Mandatory Palestine.  As far as "yardsticks" of civilization go, they employed few. For example,   on April 9, 1948, the combined force Irgun and the related Stern Gang attacked the  Arab village, Deir Yasin, several miles west of Jerusalem. Attackers killed 250 persons of whom half, by their own admission to American correspondents, were women and children.  Further, they did so despite having earlier agreed to a peace pact, and publicized the massacre as a cause for celebration. 

Irgun was also the group responsible for the King David Hotel Bombing that killed 91 people of various nationalities including Britons, Arabs and Jews. A list of other Irgun attacks can be found here . Begin himself recorded some of these incidents in his 1977 memoir, The Revolt. He was considered to be a terrorist by the UK, where he was banned for years; and fought against Israel's first PM David Ben Gurion and the IDF in 1948, before founding the opposition party, Herut,  which is the forerunner of his later Likud Party.

In 1948, when Begin planned to visit the US to drum up support for Herut, several Jewish luminaries including Albert Einstein, Hannah Arendt,  Zelig Harris, Sidney Hook, Rabbi Jesurin Cordozo et al.in the US wrote a letter of warning to the NY Times about Begin and his movement. Among other things, they wrote:

Among the most disturbing political phenomena of our times is the emergence in the newly created state of Israel of the “Freedom Party” (Tnuat Haherut or Herut), a political party closely akin in its organization, methods, political philosophy and social appeal to the Nazi and Fascist parties. It was formed out of the membership and following of the former Irgun Zvai Leumi, a terrorist, right-wing, chauvinist organization in Palestine....

Before irreparable damage is done by way of financial contributions, public manifestations in Begin’s behalf, and the creation in Palestine of the impression that a large segment of America supports Fascist elements in Israel, the American public must be informed as to the record and objectives of Mr. Begin and his movement.

The public avowals of Begin’s party are no guide whatever to its actual character. Today they speak of freedom, democracy and anti-imperialism, whereas until recently they openly preached the doctrine of the Fascist state. It is in its actions that the terrorist party betrays its real character; from its past actions we can judge what it may be expected to do in the future.

 [After detailing atrocities of the aforementioned Deir Yasin Massacre the authors add]. But the terrorists, far from being ashamed of their act, were proud of this massacre, publicized it widely, and invited all the foreign correspondents present in the country to view the heaped corpses and the general havoc at Deir Yassin...[They also describe some of the terrorist tactics employed] The Irgun and Stern groups groups inaugurated a reign of terror in the Palestine Jewish community. Teachers were beaten up for speaking against them, adults were shot for not letting their children join them. By gangster methods, beatings, window-smashing, and wide-spread robberies, the terrorists intimidated the population and exacted a heavy tribute....

[Finally they note] The people of the Freedom Party [Begin's Herut which is the progenitor of his later Lidud Party] have had no part in the constructive achievements in Palestine. They have reclaimed no land, built no settlements, and only detracted from the Jewish defense activity. Their much-publicized immigration endeavors were minute, and devoted mainly to bringing in Fascist compatriots

When, after serving under Golda Meir and founding Likud Party in1977, Begin was elected PM in a second act of his career, he negotiated with Anwar Sadat under intense pressure from Jimmy Carter at Camp David in 1979. Ironically, Begin (along with Arab nationalist, Anwar Sadat) won a Nobel Peace Prize.  Nobel Prize Org. states that, "When Israel's Prime Minister Begin came to Oslo to receive the Peace Prize, there were such violent demonstrations against him that the award ceremony had to be moved to Akershus fortress."  [emph added]

Biden, an avid Zionist who knew Golda Meir  and other prominent leaders in Israel,  knew-- and knows-- this history very well. He knew exactly with whom he was conversing  when he said he would have gone further in Lebanon, even if it meant killing women, children and civilians.

 Biden Meets Begin (Context):

In 1982, Reagan gave the green light to Begin's plan to invade Lebanon in order to wipe out the then-terrorist organization, PLO which had its central command there. By the time Begin met with the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, including Biden, in Washington, to shore up support, many in congress were angry about what they saw as the use of excessive force killing and displacing Lebonese civilians. Thousands of civilians would be killed by the Israelis by the time the war was over. At the time of the meeting, Ben Burgis writes the following in Jacobin:

"The specific Israeli attack that those other senators were confronting Begin about had, even according to the Israeli army, killed 460 to 470 civilians and made another twenty thousand homeless. [He notes that Palestinian figures put the numbers much higher]. That was the situation when Biden said he would have gone "further."

Shortly after the meeting, the U.S. government was shocked when Israeli General Ariel Sharon laid siege to Beirut, exceeding the plans he had shared with the Americans. Reagan, staunchly pro-Israel, was angry. The public outcry against Israel’s shelling of civilian neighborhoods added to Reagan’s alienation from Israel’s behavior. He told Begin that Israel was perpetrating a “holocaust” and he demanded that the prime minister reverse Israel’s cut-off of water and electricity to Beirut. Begin was outraged, but he complied with Reagan’s wishes.

Although a first-term president, Reagan proved willing to chastise Israel when he deemed his ally’s actions to be reckless and beyond decent bounds. He expressed concern over the deaths of Arab civilians, especially children, at least rhetorically. Reagan later succeeded in pressing the PLO to foreswear terrorism and thus brought the group into international diplomacy, helping build the path toward the Oslo Peace Accords of the 1990s.

Biden, on the other hand, had not only commended the Israeli attacks, but stated how much further he would have gone. According to Burgis, Begin's account of the meeting (rarely published in the West) includes the following quotes taken from an article in Yedioth Ahronoth a centrist Israeli paper that published Begin's account as he related it to them:

[Biden] said: “What did you do in Lebanon? You annihilated what you annihilated.”I was certain, recounted Begin, that this was a continuation of his attack against us, but Biden continued: “It was great! It had to be done! If attacks were launched from Canada into the United States, everyone here would have said, ‘Attack all the cities of Canada, and we don’t care if all the civilians get killed.”

Genocide Joe is more than an insulting epithet, it seems. Biden here states that if terrorist rockets fired from inside Canada were  to hit the US, then the US would be justified in  attacking all the cities in Canada, even if it killed all the civilians in those cities in Canada. This is by definition, GENOCIDE.

Begin had assumed that Biden's yelling and banging on the desk as reported in various sources such as this article by historian, Tevi Troy, was yet another senatorial rebuke over excessive use of force causing civilian deaths in Lebanon. He was quite surprised to find that Biden was  a cheerleader regarding what he now calls "over the top" tactics of the IDF in Lebanon at the time. Indeed, the elder statesman and former terrorist, felt compelled to recite the norms and values of international law, which he also called "our yard stick of human civilization." (see above) Who knows what he really thought. Perhaps he saw in Biden, a hunger for war that reminded him unpleasantly of his many years as the leader of a terrorist group with blood on his hands. Then again, maybe he never really changed, and inwardly continued to think that "the ends justify the means," Nobel Peace Prize notwithstanding. We will never know. What is clear, though, is that as Prime Minister of Israel, no matter how bellicose he may have been, he felt compelled to defend international humanitarian legal principles as the basis of "human civilization" in our times.  Biden, on the other hand, felt no need for such restraint. His rant was unhinged and genocidal. 

All of this gives me good reason to believe that Biden's current unconditional support of Israel's genocidal "war" (or mass slaughter and starvation), is not due to his age, or being "outsmarted" by Netanyahu (as Fareed Zakaria recently wrote in the Washington Post). It's not even explicable in terms of his being the top recipient of Israel lobby money in the US. His behavior now is exactly what you would expect from the man who said the things I've quoted above to Israel's most hawkish Prime Minister (until the present one at least). This is hard to swallow for anyone with the faintest glimmer of hope that Biden will "see the light" and, in Zakaria's phrase, "speak tough truths to Israel." I, for one, am not holding my breath.

 -Aside from the links/sources used in the OP, I recommend this Mother Jones article on Biden's relationship with Zionism and Israel over the decades: https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2023/12/how-joe-biden-became-americas-top-israel-hawk/