Joe Biden was asleep for much of the term of his presidency. But on October 7th and the horrific days after, Biden finally woke up.
While the moniker given by his orange-skinned predecessor was a silly one, it was given renewed substance by a presidency that was rather dull and nondescript.
Biden was just there. Little news surrounded his administration aside from a slip or gaff, and the ongoing discussions about his age that orbited them.
Everything changed on that fateful day near the Gaza border, when Biden rushed to aid an Israeli “war on terror” that became the very thing it demonized, and Sleepy Joe turned into Genocide Joe.
The Biden Administration, which wore the brand of multiculturalism and its woke ornaments of the day as an antithesis to Trumpism, shed that thin cap and showed its true self. A neoliberal war-machine, particularly in Arab lands, which would arm a far-right government in Israel with whatever it wanted, whenever it wanted it, to carry forward a genocide.
Biden was a genocidal facilitator and financier. His Administration poured billions into a “war” that was anything but, as the death toll among civilians and children in Gaza mounted.
Then billions more were given. “The total aid the U.S. will be giving to Israel in 2023 and early 2024 will be about $18 billion… That’s the $3.8 billion in normal annual aid, plus $14.5 billion in supplemental aid.”
But as bombed rained onto refugee camps and hospitals, Biden continued to make it rain on Netanyahu. At the close of the year, Biden evaded Congress to expedite “a second emergency determination covering a $147.5 million sale for equipment, including fuses, charges and primers, that is needed to make the 155 mm shells that Israel has already purchased function.”
As dead bodies mounted and moved beyond the 20,000 mark, money kept coming in.
As the death toll of children ballooned past 8,000, formal calls for a cease fire were shot down by the United States at the United Nations.
Not once, but again and again, in front of a world aghast by the images of slain babies and vivid reels of slaughter on their timelines.
Genocide Joe, however, was unmoved. And rather, sunk his feet deeper into an intractable position of not only endorsing genocide, but collaborating in one.
These were all tactic endorsements of the genocide; explicit expressions of being on board, fully, with an ethnic cleansing project hellbent on mass slaughter and mass expulsion.
Biden’s imprint was prominent on nearly every dimension of Netanyahu’s war. From the rubber-stamped funds earmarked to him to eliminate “Amalek,” a biblical call for genocide, to the direct U.S. military guidance given to Israeli ground invasion teams that penetrated deep into Gaza.
This was not the typical brand of American support of Israeli aggression on the Palestinian people. But one that was quintessentially Biden’s own, marked by dismissal of any and all calls for cease fires and open disavowal of the official death toll of Palestinians.
This was a “liberal” president (whatever that means in the popular discourse anymore), mind you, who shaped a campaign on “resisting” the violence of Trump, no less.
Biden’s violent streak, as illustrated by this genocide, was far greater. And, many believe that Trump would not have allowed this genocide to continue on for as long as it has, destroying as much as it has.
I, despite my extensive record of reviling Trump’s championing of Islamophobia, also believe he would have stopped this genocide far earlier. Perhaps out of derision for Netanyahu, a considerable segment of his base lacking the appetite for foreign war and the finances it demands, and most probably, ego.
Whatever the catalyst, the genocide would have been cut short earlier under Trump. And thousands of lives, many of them babies and children, would not have been murdered.
In a world of American hegemony, perhaps fading past its prime like its president well beyond it, genocides don’t just happen. Particularly in the Middle East, where the ghosts of empire’s past and the neocolonial boot-print of American dominance is at play.
Even Netanyahu and Israel need a dance partner. A co-conspirator to push a genocide near the three month, 30,000 murdered, and 153-10 vote at the UN General Assembly mark.
“Imperial arrogance,” in the words of Edward Said, buoyed by the bloodthirst of two white men wed to killing Palestinians already entrapped in a living hell.
War criminals. Defying every law and custom of war.
Genocide brothers. Bound to the systematic killing of a people even when the rest of the world, resoundingly and repeatedly, tell them to stop.
Genocide Joe. A new image untethered to Barrack Obama and the alias assigned to you by Trump.
It’s 2024, Joe Biden.
You finally made your own name and cemented your final legacy.
Khaled A. Beydoun is an author and law professor who publishes his daily insights on his socials at @khaledbeydoun.
And the almost 20 billion to Israel could have fixed the homelessness issue in the US. But let's keep funding a genocide instead... Makes me sick.
"And, many believe that Trump would not have allowed this genocide to continue on for as long as it has, destroying as much as it has."
Who actually believes this? Trump would have insisted to nuke Gaza on Oct 8th. Another terrible article that sorely needs proofreading.