To Joe Biden on Leveraging Netanyahu

Dear President Joe Biden,

Since you and Kamala took over the Executive branch of government after the 2020 elections, national unemployment rates have fallen considerably to pre-pandemic levels, the stock market has reached record highs, and wages have risen while inflation rates have drastically dropped.

Congress, with you and Vice President Kamala Harris’s support, passed landmark legislation, including comprehensive Covid relief for free vaccines, masks, and home testing kits, and payments to struggling businesses and individual households.

For the first time since the Eisenhower administration, Congress passed your wide-ranging bi-partisan infrastructure bill to repair outdated and crumbling highways, bridges, sewage and water systems, airports, improve mass transit and install electric charging stations, and extend internet access.

You helped to pass substantial funding to deal with the climate crisis, to produce computer chips in the United States, to pay for the healthcare of servicemembers exposed to “burn pits,” to extend the “cancer moon project” for the purpose of finally curing this deadly disease, and also, you helped to deliver a firearms reform package.

Mr. President, you and Vice President Harris have shown true leadership in bringing back the Western alliance of nations to counter the unwarranted and brutal invasion of Ukraine, a sovereign nation, by the Russian Federation’s totalitarian regime under Vladimir Putin, and you strove tirelessly to limit China’s aggression of Taiwan.

And yes, still more work needs to be done, but at hardly any other time since the New Deal under President Franklin Delano Roosevelt have we seen such an accomplished presidential term.

Though there are many MAGA detractors, I can speak with assurance that you are truly loved by a grateful nation for being of the people and for the people. I admire your human qualities of modesty, charity, ethical professionalism, kindness, an open heart, and trust in others. I even find your public gaffs somewhat endearing.

Unfortunately, your apparent trust of Benjamin Netanyahu, long-standing Prime Minister of Israel, backfired and has turned out not to be well founded.

Following Hamas’s terrorist invasion and attack in southern Israel during a youth concert for peace on October 7, 2023, killing over 1200 people of several nationalities, wounding many more, and kidnapping an estimated 250 hostages, you alerted Netanyahu.

You compelled the Prime Minister not to make the same type of unforced errors the leadership of our country made after the terrorist strikes on the US, September 11, 2001, by overreacting militarily, which resulted in the overthrow of the leader of Iraq. This brought about a civil war in which hundreds of thousands of mainly innocent Iraq citizens paid with their lives.

The US invasion of Iraq strengthened the power in the region of one of our primary rivals, Iran. It drained the US treasury and caused the subsequent deaths of over 4400 American military and civilian personnel.

Since the incursion on Israel on October 7, however, Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) have killed a reported 30,000+ Palestinians within the Gaza Strip and on the occupied West Bank of the Jordan River, including mainly innocent civilians who were not involved in the attack. This has caused severe conditions related to the bombing of medical facilities, homes, schools, and other shelters, depletion of food, drinking water, and fuel, and rampant disease including now an outbreak of polio.

Mr. Biden, why would you even imagine that Netanyahu would consider your request for restraint, a man who is under indictment and was previously on trial on multiple corruption charges, including fraud, bribery, and breach of trust?

The trial was placed on temporary pause by an emergency order from the country’s justice minister after Hamas’s attack on October 7, but it is due to resume soon. If found guilty, he could serve up to 10 years in prison.

Like former President Donald Trump who has been charged with multiple felony counts, Netanyahu also claims to be the victim of politically motivated “witch-hunts” by his political rivals and by the media to remove him from office.

Unlike Trump, however, Netanyahu is very bright and thinks strategically. While Trump is a day trader who operates on emotion and instinct, Netanyahu is more cunning and thinks ahead, seeing the whole picture and the possible steps to employ in his three-dimensional chess match with the Israel people.

Even prior to his far-right coalition government giving the order for the Israel Defense Forces to enter the Gaza strip, Netanyahu envisioned his way to checkmate the judicial community from holding him accountable for his alleged crimes.

Netanyahu pushed a set of five changes in 2023 to the judicial system intended to alter the balance of powers in Israel. The changes were intended to reduce the judiciary’s power over lawmaking and public policy by severely limiting the Supreme Court‘s power to exercise judicial review. This would be accomplished by turning over control to the government for judicial appointments and limiting the authority of its legal advisors.

The changes would effectively take away the right of the Supreme Court to declare Israeli Parliament (Knesset) legislation unconstitutional. This would allow the Knesset to override Supreme Court rulings by reintroducing the legislation and passing it by a simple majority of Knesset members.

In addition, though criticized and sanctioned for violating international law by such countries as the United Kingdom, European Union nations, and the United States, Netanyahu and his government, with the full support from the World Zionist Organization, has taken over and has plans to annex an ever-increasing amount of Palestinian land and property on the West Bank.

Plans are being finalized in Israel to increase the number of so-called Jewish “settlers” (a.k.a. land and property thieves) to one million in the West Bank by 2050. Currently, approximately half a million Jews are living illegally on the West Bank.

So, Mr. Biden, it should be apparent to you now that Netanyahu has no intention of negotiating in good faith to end the war against Hamas and to bring the over 100 still remaining hostages home. All along, he has played Russian roulette with the hostages’ lives and cares very little about the fate of civilians trapped by war in the Gaza strip.

And, unfortunately, Mr. Biden, Netanyahu has played you too.

Netanyahu understands that when the war finally ends, there will be new elections held. Since his party and others in his coalition have lost support, Netanyahu will inevitably be tossed out of office. A commission of inquiry will be assembled to investigate the failures of his government to predict and interrupt the October 7 attack. In addition, the cases of fraud against him will continue unimpeded.

President Biden, in your remaining four months in office, please step up and speak out much more forcefully against the terror – yes terror – that Netanyahu and his government have wrought on the Palestinian people, the people of Israel, and the world community, people wishing for peace and a final resolution to the longstanding conflict between Israelis and Palestinians.

For in the inimitable words of Dr. Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.

“There can be no justice without peace. And there can be no peace without justice.”