Is Biden Really Going to Let Netanyahu Lose Him the Election?

Finally, the Biden administration appears to be starting to get serious with Benjamin Netanyahu. The president’s 30-minute phone call with the prime minister on Thursday was tense. The same day, Secretary of State Antony Blinken said with respect to Israel’s Gaza actions: “If we don’t see the changes that we need to see, there’ll be changes in our own policy.”

It’s sad that it takes the tragic killing of seven workers for the great global humanitarian José Andrés, as opposed to the piles upon piles of dead Palestinian babies, to spur this change. And, of course, it’s not even really a change yet. It’s a threat of a change down the road if certain behaviors continue. As has been widely noted, on the same day the World Central Kitchen workers were killed by the Israel Defense Forces, the Biden administration approved sending more than 2,000 additional bombs to Israel. But this new tone from the White House is already yielding some results: Israel took immediate steps to increase the flow of aid to Gaza.

The invasion of Gaza is first and foremost a moral calamity. Alongside the wanton death, there is the imminence of massive famine (well, it was declared “imminent” in a March 18 report; it may be happening right now). A recent U.N. report calculated that the destruction of Gaza has been so severe that it will be—get this—2092 before Gaza is returned to its 2022 GDP levels.

But it is also a potential political calamity for Joe Biden. If this war is still happening in October, he will lose the election. Democrats right now very strongly back a cease-fire. In a March 27 poll, both Democrats and independents disapproved of Israel’s actions; just 18 percent of Democrats and 29 percent of independents approve of how Israel is prosecuting the war.

Biden has stuck with Israel, and with Netanyahu, through all this. Partly this is sincere, driven by a combination of horror at Hamas’s savage attacks last October and views on Zionism formed decades ago when Israel was a liberal democracy surrounded by hostile, mostly illiberal neighbors.

But it’s probably part political calculation too, based on another reflex that goes back many decades in Washington: that to oppose an Israeli government’s actions is to risk being tagged as “anti-Israel” by the American Israel Public Affairs Committee and thereby to risk losing Jewish votes.

That may still be true. AIPAC is still very powerful. But there are also a lot of reasons to think that the politics of this situation among Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents have changed dramatically in the last decade, especially among young people. And between 2020 and 2024 alone, eight million new voters are aging into the electorate.

But this isn’t just about people’s views on Israel. It’s about their views of Biden. He risks being seen here as not his own man. An old Bill Clinton quote has been kicking around in the media in recent weeks: After his first meeting in 1996 with an arrogant Netanyahu, Clinton asked his aides, “Who’s the fucking superpower here?”

Netanyahu has only grown more arrogant over the years, which is astonishing. Consider: He’s extremely unpopular in Israel. He’s running a hard-right government that was the target of massive demonstrations since the time it was formed. He’s holding onto his office—and thus prolonging the war—to stay out of jail. His government and military let October 7 unfold for hours with no response. Beyond that, he’s been fine with Hamas running Gaza and letting Qatar finance that for years.

And on top of all that, between now and November, he’s going to be playing a game of chicken with Biden. Cut me off, he’ll taunt, and I’ll be more open about my presidential preference (which, obviously, is Donald Trump).

Biden needs to show Netanyahu, to go back to Clinton’s question, who the superpower is here. It will be risky, sure. But I think at this point the greater risk is in the president of the United States looking like the prime minister of a country of fewer than 10 million people can push him around.

Presidents have stood up to Israeli prime ministers before. It’s not like it’s some outlandish, radical idea. As I write these words Friday morning, I just saw former TNR editor Peter Beinart on Morning Joe pointing out that Dwight Eisenhower, Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan, and George H.W. Bush all attached conditions to aid to Israel when they felt Israel wasn’t acting in America’s interests—and that it usually worked.

In that last case, it was 1991 when Bush Sr. and his secretary of state, James Baker, held up $10 billion in aid that right-wing Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir wanted to use for resettlement of Soviet Jews in the occupied territories. Bush and Baker said no. Things got intense. One Israeli Cabinet minister called Bush a “liar” and even an “antisemite.” But Shamir backed down. (Yes, Bush lost the next election, but it wasn’t remotely because of Israel.)

People are questioning Biden’s ability to lead at his age. He may lose some Jewish votes in standing up to Netanyahu—although it’s hard to see a state where any such losses would make a difference in Electoral College terms (Biden is not going to lose New York or California, and no, despite this week’s little hypelet, he’s not winning Florida). But if he doesn’t draw a line, and this war is still happening and the United States is still seen as complicit in all this come the fall, he’ll likely lose a lot more.

This article first appeared in Fighting Words, a weekly TNR newsletter authored by editor Michael Tomasky. Sign up here.