Biden's behavior is entirely against common sense, and even human nature

He should have treated Netanyahu with far more suspicion and reserve, dating from the earliest days of the Gazan offensive

“[T]here is not a living soul in any country who does not deeply resent having his passions roused, his indignation inflamed, his patriotism exploited, and his highest ideals desecrated by concealment, subterfuge, fraud, falsehood, trickery, and deliberate lying on the part of those in whom he is taught to repose confidence and to whom he is enjoined to pay respect.”

— Arthur Ponsonby, Falsehood in War-Time (1928)

→This being the case, why has President Biden not reacted with anger, dismay, and distancing after Israeli intelligence originated the first major misinformation (or possibly even disinformation) about beheaded babies?

Possibly the story was floated by Benjamin Netanyahu himself — Max Blumenthal relates the story of CNN anchor Sara Sidner who said that she had received reassurance personally from the Prime Minister that the beheaded baby story was valid. We now know that the story was never authenticated, as all instances of it traced back to the same lone IDF soldier who had relayed information without substance to an i24 reporter, who spread the comments without confirmation.

In fact, White House aides had advised Biden to not mention the claim, advice that Biden deliberately ignored. Instead, Biden came out and implied during a press conference that he had personally viewed the photos and witnessed the carnage. “I never really thought that I would see. . . have confirmed pictures of terrorists beheading children,” he said.

CNN was forced to walk back its story, after a week. Of course, by then, it had done all the damage the Israelis had intended.

If Netanyahu told the same to Biden, and Biden subsequently learned that the story wasn’t true, after Biden had spread the information himself, wouldn’t he — like any other living soul — find offense? Would he be once bitten, twice shy, and be motivated to keep Netanyahu more at arms’ length?

No: instead, Biden repeated the rumor, after it had been debunked and discredited, months after his own White House had to clarify and distance itself from the statement. Biden revived the rumor. And, when he did it, he just about had a skip in his step, if you view his face and listen to the cadence of his voice.

Biden’s behavior is entirely against human nature. Indeed, since this early day of deceit, he’s grown even more conjoined to Netanyahu — they may be sharing a kidney at this point. Why?

Biden’s actions are irrational. His policy toward Israel, according to countless foreign policy experts, does not advance American national security interests. In fact, an argument can be made that Biden’s inflexible support for Israel is endangering American interests in the region. Biden’s support for Israel in the conduct of its offensive, despite obvious and apparent war crimes and worse, has lit the global reputation of the United States on fire. We have lost so much by this unwavering stance. Why has Biden acted in this way?

I think back to an interview that author Ta-Nahisi Coates gave months ago to Democracy Now!, where he wondered openly how it is that Biden officials could endorse such wholesale slaughter, and he concluded that they must want what is happening. Just “the price of doing business,” he opined wryly.

“And so I’ve spent a lot of time trying to do the political calculus on this. And at a certain point, we have to just stop and say they believe it. They believe bombs should be dropped on children. They just think it’s okay. They think it’s okay. Or, at the very least, they think it’s the price of doing business. That’s not an ethic I can align myself from, because, as I’ve said several times in this interview, I come from a history where people once made the exact same calculus about us and took stances that we would now say are immoral.”

— Ta-Nehisi Coates, November 2, 2023

And I think of the anecdote relayed by NBC News several weeks ago, where a doctor showed Biden pictures of skeletal Gazan children, and Biden waved the images away, saying he had seen those before. The problem, NBC News reported, was that these were photos taken by the doctor on her iPhone. The photos, presumably, had never been published or otherwise circulated.

Observe:

• President Biden saying that he had seen photos of beheaded babies, seen them with his own eyes.

• President Biden, shown children starving to death in Gaza, telling the person, “Oh, I’ve seen these already,” when the photos had never been shown before.

That’s a remarkable contrast, one that succinctly illustrates not only Joe Biden’s callousness and bias that in various degrees have been apparent all along but also his open-eyed willingness to engage in this macabre game. He’s perfectly willing to hawk atrocities when doing so is instrumental, when it helps him achieve a goal. But he’s not willing to acknowledge atrocity when it truly manifests before him. Not if doing so interferes with his aims.

He aims to help Netanyahu finish his military excursion. Nothing can interfere. Not even torture will move him. The stark difference in treatment is clear — especially as that first set of children didn’t exist. That was totally imaginary, totally made up. But Biden actually had a picture of a child starving to death put in front of him, and it did not register.

Seen one starving Gazan child, seen them all?

There’s no escaping this. Biden endorses this offensive. Thus, the results we’re seeing? Those are what he wants.

Biden desires what Israel is producing.

He even wants Israel to go into Rafah. Otherwise, he would do more to stop it. He’s consigned innocents to their deaths.

I can speculate why (a shortened sea trade route, via a dedicated lane and a port that runs through the Gaza Strip — a place that soon will no longer exist, at least not in its current form and with its current inhabitants), and I can speculate when this plan met mutual agreement between Biden and Netanyahu (during that very first post-October 7th face-to-face meeting between principals), but that’s all it would be: speculation. Meanwhile, we have this mountain of evidence before us showing that Biden is A-OK with how things are going.

Disregard his protestations and his expressions of regret. Look at his actions, his approvals, his material cover-ups, vetoes, denials, minimizations, delegating the investigation of crimes to the suspected criminal, ignoring mass graves (one of the clearest signs that a genocide is taking place) — any one of these would be bad enough. All together, as a pattern — coupled with the unceasing streams of weapons and war materiel — means that Biden is perfectly comfortable. And he sees his job as selling his comfort level to the American public at large, so that Americans blind themselves to the enormity of this crime.

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Yesterday, I came across the text I highlighted at the start of this essay, Falsehoods in War-Time, written in 1928 by Arthur Ponsonby. It spoke of the size and monstrosity of rumors during what was then known as the Great War. Normally, it’s hard for us today to place ourselves back in the days of a century gone by, but when encountering the types of rumors that goaded people into war back then, one realizes that these same stories have been recirculated to incense and incite us all over again. Biden and the Israelis told us about beheaded babies; back in World War I, the tale was of Belgian babies having hands hacked off. Elementally speaking, it’s the same story.

You had the rumor of Israeli women having their breasts cut off by Hamas militants. This rumor traces back to the same time period, World War I, where a nurse was said to have been “outraged” (i.e., raped) and then removed of both of her breasts, one then the other, with time in between, just time enough to write a letter.

We’ve been treated to the same story, more than a century later! “Let’s just go through this,” Rabbi Shmuley Boteach told Piers Morgan back in February. “Four hundred women shot in the genitals, their breasts cut off as terrorists played with their bloody breasts like a football,” he said, replete with hand gestures. It’s still causing outrage today, because people believe this. And, I’m convinced, they believe it because they want to believe it. It confirms something for them; the belief puts everything in the world aright.

What does it say about us that we, the public, have been snookered by recycled war propaganda, atrocity stories meant to cause us to clamor for the spilling of blood?

And what does it say that the American people have swallowed whole Biden’s caricature of college students as hidebound anti-semites with no other motive in their protests against the Gazan offensive than to call for the extermination of Jewish folks? The entire premise is inexplicable. What does that reveal about what Americans want to believe about our own young people, the people we raised? What more will we be willing to entertain in order to preserve our cultivated thirst, our enticed and acquired taste, for slaughter in the Middle East?