Democratic politicians and commentators in the United States have praised President Joe Biden since he dropped out of the 2024 presidential race on Sunday.
Representative Maxine Waters, for example, called Biden a “kind and decent man.” Meanwhile, former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi extolled his “vision, values and leadership.”
But as political leaders praised Biden, bombs continued to fall on Gaza, killing dozens of people and triggering another wave of mass displacement in Khan Younis.
For many Palestinian rights advocates, the carnage and abuses in Gaza will define Biden’s place in the history books as the US remains steadfast in its support for Israel’s war in the Palestinian territory.
“He will be remembered for the hundreds of thousands of dead, injured and displaced people in Gaza,” said Abed Ayoub, executive director of the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee (ADC).
“There’s no way around it. ‘Genocide Joe’ is how he will be remembered.”
Thank you, President Biden! I am one of your biggest supporters and was willing to stand with you throughout the Democratic Party nomination. However, you decided to resign and supported your vice president Kamala Harris. You are a kind and decent man who is…
-Maxine Waters (@RepMaxineWaters) July 21, 2024
Since Israel’s war on Gaza began on October 7, Biden has offered Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government unconditional military and diplomatic support.
Only once has Biden withheld a shipment of bombs from Israel for humanitarian reasons – and even then, he released part of that shipment a few months later, amid pressure from Netanyahu.
Israel’s war, meanwhile, has killed nearly 39,000 Palestinians, displaced hundreds of thousands of people, fueled a man-made famine and destroyed large parts of the territory. United Nations experts and other observers have warned of the “risk of genocide” in Gaza.
Ayoub told Al Jazeera that despite Biden’s domestic achievements, the president will be among the worst in US history due to his unconditional support for Israel.
The US Campaign for Palestinian Rights (USCPR) echoed this comment. “Nothing will erase the fact that Biden’s legacy is – and always will be – genocide,” the group said in a statement.
Netanyahu ‘bear hug’
The US president has been a strong supporter of Israel throughout his decades-long political career.
He frequently calls himself a Zionist and argues that Jews around the world would not be safe without Israel.
He put that worldview into policy during his presidency, while continuing former President Donald Trump’s pro-Israel doctrine. Biden has maintained the US embassy in Jerusalem and refused to reverse a Trump-era decision to recognize Israel’s claims to Syria’s occupied Golan Heights.
He has also aggressively pursued formal ties between Israel and Arab states, a goal Trump advanced with the 2020 Abraham Accords.
This push for normalization, however, has occurred without progress toward recognizing an independent Palestinian state or dismantling systemic anti-Palestinian discrimination.
The outbreak of war in Gaza further underlined Biden’s pro-Israel policies.
Weeks after the conflict began, Biden traveled to Israel and publicly embraced Netanyahu in what many critics described as a “bear hug.”
This sign of friendship was widely understood as an endorsement of Netanyahu’s response in Gaza after the Palestinian group Hamas attacked southern Israel on October 7.
Even early in the conflict, human rights groups accused Israel of horrific violations that rose to the level of genocide – an effort to destroy the Palestinian people.
In the first week alone, the Israeli military claimed to have launched 2,000 attacks on Gaza – a strip of land roughly the size of Las Vegas.
Since then, Biden has authorized continued arms transfers and more than $14 billion in additional aid to sustain Israel’s offensive in Gaza. Additionally, his administration vetoed three United Nations Security Council proposals that would have called for a ceasefire.
Hatem Abudayyeh, president of the US Palestinian Community Network (USPCN), said Biden will be remembered most of all for enabling Israel’s “crimes against humanity.”
“He could have turned off the money and weapons tap in October, but he allowed this genocide to happen. He is an accomplice and that is what will be written on his tombstone,” Abudayyeh told Al Jazeera.
Biden and the Palestinians
After his entry into politics in 1970, Biden quickly rose from local to national prominence, mounting a successful dark horse campaign to represent Delaware in the U.S. Senate in 1972.
After almost four decades in Congress, he became vice president under Barack Obama and, in 2021, he himself won the presidency.
The president does not come from a political dynasty and is not an exceptional speaker. His success in politics is often credited to his interpersonal skills and ability to project empathy.
That feeling of compassion, however, never extended to Palestinians, activists say.
“For nine and a half months, President Biden financed and armed the brutal Israeli genocide of Palestinians in Gaza, making the US government directly complicit in the deaths of at least 39,000 people, including more than 15,000 children,” said Jewish Voice for Action for Peace. in a statement on Sunday.
“Americans watched in horror and outrage as Biden sent to the Israeli government the weapons he used to exterminate entire generations of Palestinian families, to destroy hospitals, bakeries, schools, mosques, churches, universities, refugee camps, homes and the entire security system. Gaza health. electricity and water system and networks.
Beyond politics, Biden’s rhetoric sometimes seemed to disregard Israeli atrocities and Palestinian suffering.
“I have no idea that the Palestinians are telling the truth about how many people are killed. I am sure that innocent people were killed and that is the price of fighting a war,” said the US president in October.
But this stance caused problems for Biden both domestically and abroad.
Even before Biden delivered a disastrous debate performance on June 27, the 81-year-old had already begun to trail his Republican rival Trump in public opinion polls.
Parts of the Democratic base – including young people, progressives, Arabs and Muslims – have expressed frustration and anger over their support for Israel.
Groups like the USCPR argued that Biden’s age and debate performance were just one factor in the pressure that forced him to drop out of the presidential race.
“It was not Biden’s failed debate that showed he is unfit to lead,” the USCPR said. “It was the tens of thousands of bombs he sent to kill Palestinian families. It was his callous and dystopian disregard for Palestinian lives.”
Other commentators have similarly argued that Biden has not shown sufficient concern about the humanitarian crisis unfolding in Gaza.
Aaron David Miller, a veteran former US official, described the situation bluntly in an interview with New Yorker in April.
“Do I think Joe Biden has the same depth of feeling and empathy for the Palestinians in Gaza as he does for the Israelis? No, he doesn’t do it, nor does he transmit it. I don’t think there’s any doubt about that,” he said.
This story originally appeared on Aljazeera.com read the full story
