Joe Biden's Crimes Against Humanity

Gilbert Achcar

Since announcing his withdrawal from running for a second presidential term, Joe Biden has become a "lame duck", as the popular expression in the United States refers to an elected official who has reached the final months of his term without any room for extension. The meaning of this term is that the official's influence has become limited, as people know that he will not remain in office for long. However, a person in such a situation in a presidential political system in which the president is elected by popular vote (indirectly in the American case) is also, in contrast, more free-handed than a president campaigning for an additional term, and must therefore ensure that he does not lose votes as a result of the positions or actions he takes.

The truth is that Biden has so far shown that he is closer to the second case than to the first with regard to the file of the war of extermination that Israel continues to carry out in the Gaza Strip. The US President’s behavior towards Benjamin Netanyahu’s government has clearly retreated from the quasi-critical approach he had begun to adopt after realizing how costly his complete complicity in the Zionist aggression against the Palestinian people is in the electoral field, especially among traditional Democratic Party voters, and even resented within the party itself. The current aggression on Gaza is the first war waged by the State of Israel with the full participation (and not just defensive support) of the United States, without which an aggression of such destructive and deadly intensity would not have been possible in the first place. Since Biden faced the consequences of his position supporting the Zionist war of extermination, including the pressures exerted on him by a wing of his party to at least make an effort to stop the aggression that has reached a horrific level since its first weeks, we have seen his administration adjust its position and accept the issuance of a call for a ceasefire by the United Nations Security Council, after having prevented such a call for months (see the article “In the Secret of Biden’s Transformation into a Dove” 6/11/2024). We have also seen the Biden administration make some efforts to turn things into a “ceasefire” that is in fact a cessation of the war of extermination that the Zionist state is waging unilaterally and without any noteworthy “exchange of fire” (despite the usual media exaggeration and boasting in the camp opposing Israel, following a bad habit established by the Arab nationalist regimes in the 1960s). The Biden administration has been making strenuous efforts, with the help of Egypt and Qatar, to reach an agreement to stop the “fighting” (i.e. stop the killing and extermination, rather) and exchange prisoners between the Zionist regime and Hamas.

As for the US administration’s pretense of continuing efforts to conclude an agreement, it is completely hypocritical, knowing that the assassination ended it and that Netanyahu’s goal was precisely to eliminate it.

That was until Biden succumbed to pressure from within his party and from his party’s supporters and major financiers to announce that he would stop seeking a second presidential term. We have seen his position since then, that is, since he was freed from having to take into account the special pressures of the Gaza war that he was subjected to electorally and partisanly, we have seen his position return to the collusion of the “proud Irish-American Zionist” with the “proud Jewish Zionist,” as Netanyahu put it during his last farewell visit to the old American president. Biden’s regression was clearly evident in his reaction to Israel’s assassination of Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran. The American president, commenting on the assassination, simply said that it was an act that “does not help” the ongoing efforts to conclude an agreement between the Netanyahu government and the leadership of Hamas, which is a very euphemistic statement. The assassination of the head of the political bureau of the Palestinian movement is in fact a major stab in the back of the aforementioned efforts, which the Biden administration has made a priority in its regional diplomatic efforts recently. Ismail Haniyeh was the administration’s main interlocutor, and the latter was betting on him being pressured to pressure Yahya Sinwar, the Hamas leader in Gaza, in order to achieve the desired truce. The assassination of Haniyeh in Tehran had a more serious impact than its impact on the negotiations regarding the war on Gaza, as it constituted a very dangerous escalation in the confrontation between the Zionist state and the Iranian regime, which would necessarily lead to a response from Tehran that could be part of, even if unintentionally, a spiral that could lead to a comprehensive regional military confrontation. In other words, by giving the green light to his agencies to carry out the assassination, Netanyahu risked involving the United States in a potential war that could be more dangerous than all the wars that Washington has fought in the Middle East to date. Instead of reprimanding his “proud Jewish Zionist” ally for what he did, Biden once again demonstrated his “iron-clad commitment” to defending Israel by his administration rushing to send military reinforcements to the region to defend the Zionist state. As for the US administration’s pretense of continuing efforts to conclude the agreement, it is completely hypocritical, knowing that the assassination ended it and that Netanyahu’s goal was precisely to eliminate him. Biden acted as if he had prior knowledge of the assassination plot and did not object to it, but rather supported it. The US president even revealed that his “iron-clad commitment” is not conditional, but is valid even when Israeli behavior contradicts the interests of the US government, whether material (the high cost of a potential war, especially since Washington is already facing great difficulties in continuing its support for the Ukrainian government in confronting the Russian invasion) or political (America’s image in a large part of the world and among a large part of humanity). Of course, and unfortunately, Joe Biden will not stand in the dock before the International Criminal Court, but there is no doubt that the court of history, the most fair of criminal courts, will include his name prominently on the list of perpetrators of crimes against humanity.