Will President Joe Biden’s staunch support for Israel cost him the election? Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Donald Trump hope so.
There’s been quite a bit of speculation about the electoral impact of Biden’s quick, compassionate, and continuing support for Israel’s war effort following Hamas’s terror attack on October 7, in which more than 1,200 Israelis were murdered.
Strains in the relationship are now going public. Biden and Netanyahu have a long history and the president makes no secret that he doesn’t trust him, or as he once inscribed a picture, “I don’t agree with a damn word you say.” He’s not alone. Netanyahu has a Trumpian reputation for veracity.
It’s no secret the Israeli prime minister doesn’t like the American president pushing so hard for military restraint, humanitarian aid for civilian casualties in Gaza, and “day after” plans. Netanyahu repeatedly insists his goal is complete victory and everything else must wait until the war is over.
The two haven’t spoken much, if at all, since Biden hung up in frustration back in December, saying, “This conversation is over,” as Barak Ravid reported in Axios. Biden’s anger and frustration with Netanyahu’s confrontational approach toward the administration are damaging the relationship. Biden’s desire to limit the conflict – he sent two carrier battle groups to convey his message to Iran – runs up against what some in the administration fear is Netanyahu’s desire for a broader regional conflict.
Netanyahu and Trump: politics-prioritizing peas in a pod
Netanyahu’s postwar priorities are his own political survival and long-term control of Gaza. In that order.
Trump is hoping Muslim and Arab Americans are as upset as they say with Biden and that they’ll vote for him – or just stay home on election day – along with Jews who think the incumbent is pressing too hard for Palestinian statehood. For added measure, he’s looking for disgruntled progressives to vote for some meaningless third-party candidate or not to vote. Any way you stack that, he sees victory.
Jewish voters, impressed by his quick and full defense of Israel, will likely once again give Biden 75-80% of their votes.
Progressives and young voters more sympathetic to the Palestinian cause – and outraged by the high civilian casualty death toll – are highly unlikely to vote for Trump, and it’s a tossup at this point whether they’ll vote for Biden to block Trump or protest by voting third party or staying home. Either of those last two alternatives is a vote for Trump.
Foreign policy is expected to get little attention in Trump’s campaign, although he may say that if he were president, Hamas wouldn’t have attacked, just as Russia wouldn’t have invaded Ukraine, Iran wouldn’t be a nuclear threshold state, and the Icelandic volcano wouldn’t have erupted this week.
Trump may have trouble selling his pro-Israel credentials after praising Hezbollah following the Hamas attack and criticizing the Israeli defense minister. He’s apparently not a big fan of Netanyahu either these days, judging by an interview he gave Ravid: “I don’t think Bibi ever wanted to make peace.” He’s right on that count.
Trump’s campaign is expected instead to focus on his trials, his lust for retribution, and demagogic appeals to voter frustration about a broken immigration system. That issue is of high concern to Arab and Muslim voters.
If they carry through with threats to vote against Biden as punishment for his support of Israel, they’ll only be punishing themselves because it will mean electing a president who is an Islamophobe threatening to expand his first-term anti-Muslim policies.
Trump's immigration policies are hardly pro-Palestinian
JUDGING BY what he’s saying on the campaign trail, Trump’s immigration policies could help Biden retain Muslim and Arab votes. Trump has told campaign crowds that as president, he would ban all Gazan refugees, expand his first term, and (legally questionable) ban visitors from Muslim-majority countries and begin “strong ideological screening” of all immigrants.
He told an Iowa crowd last week that he would also send immigration agents to “pro-jihadist demonstrations” to make arrests and revoke student visas of Hamas sympathizers. “We will aggressively deport resident aliens with jihadist sympathies,” he threatened.
Michigan is a critical battleground state that has the highest percentage of Muslim and Arab-American voters (2.1%), and they could influence the outcome of the presidential election. However, the American Enterprise Institute contends that “Michigan’s Arab Americans will likely swing toward the GOP in 2024 but concerns that this will cost Biden the election are overblown.”
If those constituencies want to see a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, Biden may be their best hope. His support for that goal has been a major factor in his conflict with Netanyahu, who wants to see a Palestinian state as much as Hamas wants a Jewish state. He can do more to advance their cause than Trump, Vladimir Putin, Mahmoud Abbas, or Yahya Sinwar (the Hamas-Gaza leader) combined.
But he will need help from the Palestinians themselves. Arab leaders, who have normalized relations with Israel after years of holding out until the Palestinian issue was settled, say they were motivated by Palestinian maximalist demands and an unwillingness to compromise.
Biden’s two-state commitment predates his presidency, and if he is defeated in November, it will drop off the national agenda for years to come. That doesn’t mean statehood will happen any time soon – Hamas saw to that when it destroyed what was left of the Israeli peace camp – but this administration has already begun the groundwork.
That may help explain a lot of Netanyahu’s animosity toward Biden. There will be a long rebuilding process, not just infrastructure but lives and trust. Nothing will happen as long as Hamas remains, and Netanyahu and his malevolent band of extremists are in power.
The Saudis say they still want normalization with Israel but have upped the ante. They’ve gone from paying lip service to the Palestinian cause and asking for token measures, to demanding substantive progress by both sides making historic and tough decisions. That doesn’t guarantee success, but it is a step forward.
By this fall, the shooting war should be over, the hostages returned, reconstruction underway and the political wars will be in full steam. Bibi will be fighting for his political life and to stay out of jail, blaming everyone else for the failure of his policies that allowed Hamas to attack. Trump will also be fighting to stay out of jail and get back in power, and Biden will be defending democracy.
The future of the Middle East could be determined on November 5.
Like every election before it, this will be the most important in history.
The writer is a Washington-based journalist, consultant, lobbyist, and former American Israel Public Affairs Committee legislative director.