When reading Jonathan Martin’s Sunday report in Politico about the deep anger felt by leading Democrats, including President Joe Biden, toward Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, I couldn’t help but think that this sounded familiar.
Here’s the paragraph that did it: “Like everyone in the administration and any Democrat with a pulse, he’s [Biden is] deeply suspicious of Benjamin Netanyahu, and privately has called the Israeli prime minister a ‘bad f**king guy,’ according to people who’ve talked to the president.”
That’s a rather unflattering way to talk about the prime minister of a close ally.
Then I remembered a similar type of article written a decade ago by The Atlantic’s Jeffrey Goldberg also describing anger and frustration with the prime minister, this time from a senior administration official in then-president Barack Obama’s administration. “‘The thing about Bibi is, he’s a chickens**t,’ this official said,” Goldberg wrote.
The salty language used to describe the prime minister was not the only thing the stories had in common.“Indeed,” Sunday’s Politico story read, “It’s hard to overstate how contemptuous even staunchly pro-Israel Democratic lawmakers have become of Netanyahu.”
According to the story, Biden’s deep-seated fear is that “Netanyahu is eager to drag the US into a wider war in the Middle East, a conflict that would ensure American weapons keep flowing to the region, troops soon follow and, in the maelstrom, international pressure on him to agree to a Gaza cease-fire and his domestic political difficulties both dissipate.”
In 2014, Goldberg wrote this: “For their part, Obama administration officials express, in the words of one official, a ‘red-hot anger’ at Netanyahu for pursuing settlement policies on the West Bank, and building policies in Jerusalem, that they believe have fatally undermined Secretary of State John Kerry’s peace process.”
Exasperation and annoyance
The more things change, as the saying goes, the more they stay the same. Somebody leaked to the Politico reporter what Biden allegedly said about Netanyahu, just as someone told Goldberg that Netanyahu was “chickens**t.” They did it for a reason.
The backdrop to both comments was exasperation and annoyance with Netanyahu for frustrating American designs in the Middle East. In 2014, it signed a nuclear deal with Iran and the Kerry peace initiative. Now, it is winding up the war with Hamas and putting the region on the path toward a two-state solution.
Today, much more than 10 years ago when Netanyahu was more popular in the US, Biden dissing Netanyahu in public may have some political benefits inside a Democratic Party in which Netanyahu is considered, at least according to the piece, wildly unpopular.
What are the political benefits?
The thrust of the Politico story was that Biden’s biggest threat in a rematch with Donald Trump is that votes from the traditional Democratic base will be siphoned off toward third-party candidates – not the centrist possible third-party candidate that may be put up by the No Labels movement, but rather by candidates on the Left: Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Jill Stein of the Green Party, or far-left candidate Cornel West.
For instance, Arab-American voters in Michigan, a swing state where they hold a key role, are unlikely to vote for Trump, who pledged to bar immigrants who support Hamas from entering the US and in the past banned immigration from some Muslim-majority countries, instead of Biden. But they might, for instance, just stay home or vote for the anti-Israel West, siphoning off key votes from the president.
It was no coincidence that last Thursday, the same day Biden was to make a campaign stop in Michigan, he announced his executive order sanctioning four settlers for alleged attacks against Palestinians.
This was a transparent effort to give something to the Arab-American voters who have been very critical of Biden’s support for Israel since October 7. The administration’s ramping up talk about a two-state solution and a grand Mideast deal that would include a far-reaching security pact with Saudi Arabia, a Palestinian state, and a Saudi-Israel normalization deal should also be seen within the framework of trying to keep the Progressives and Arab-Americans in the Democratic “big tent” come November.
“People who’ve talked to the president” telling a reporter that Biden said Netanyahu is a bad f**king guy – something Biden’s representative denied – is signaling to the Progressives and those angry with the president’s Israeli policies that he feels about Netanyahu just as they do.
Though this type of characterization might not go down well with some Jewish voters – and just as Biden needs Arab voters in Michigan, he needs Jewish voters in swing states such as Florida, Georgia, Arizona, Nevada, and Pennsylvania – it is unlikely to have an impact on how they vote and push them into the Trump camp. (Trump himself said, “F**k him,” when speaking of Netanyahu in an interview with Barak Ravid in 2021.)
In short: Publicly dissing Netanyahu is for Biden, right now, not necessarily bad domestic politics. Just as standing up to Biden is not bad domestic politics for Netanyahu.
On Sunday, National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, in his first interview with the foreign press, told The Wall Street Journal that the Biden administration was hampering Israel’s war effort, and Trump would give Israel a freer hand to quash Hamas.“Instead of giving us his full backing, Biden is busy with giving humanitarian aid and fuel [to Gaza], which goes to Hamas,” he said. “If Trump was in power, the US conduct would be completely different.”That kind of criticism from a sitting minister of a US president involved in an election campaign who has shown and given Israel overwhelming support since October 7 obviously called for a response by Netanyahu.
And the prime minister did respond, though not by admonishing Ben-Gvir by name or ordering him to retract or apologize. Rather, Netanyahu responded at the outset of Sunday’s cabinet meeting, after thanking Biden for his support since the outbreak of the war, by saying that he needed no lesson from anyone on how to navigate US relations.
And then Netanyahu said this: “I would like to tell you something, from my own experience: There are those who say ‘Yes’ to everything, even when one must say ‘No.’ While they are applauded by the international community, they endanger our national security. And there are those who say ‘No’ to everything. While they are applauded at home, they also endanger vital interests. I would like to tell you something from my experience: Wisdom is knowing how to navigate – to say ‘Yes’ when it is possible and to say ‘No’ when it is necessary.”
The message was clear: “I, Benjamin Netanyahu, know when and how to stand my ground, even with the president of the United States.” That is a message that goes down well with his political base, and it is a message he will use in his future campaign, whenever that may be: “I can stand up to Biden. I can say no to a Palestinian state.”
Biden’s salty expletive about Netanyahu and Netanyahu’s using Biden to frame the message of his next campaign are both sides of the same coin: each man using the other as an electoral foil.