The Debacle in the Middle East vs JFK

Part 1, by James DiEugenio

I don’t think any intelligent, informed person would think that what is happening in the Middle East today is an admirable state of affairs. In fact I think most people would actively deplore what is happening there. The godawful siege of a near defenseless civilian population in Gaza, the last vestige of Palestine, is so appalling it is almost beyond words. The TV screen is littered with pictures of children trying to find food, running through rubble to do so, and innocents being shot waiting in line. The assault on Iran by both Israel and President Trump for atomic weapons the country says it does not have was, in many ways, needless. Just consider the fact that Trump pulled out of an arrangement which guaranteed that Iran would not be building any atomic weapons. But that arrangement was fashioned by President Obama so it could not stand. Therefore, you had an exchange of plane sorties against Iran’s vast missile armada that threatened to break out into a full-fledged war. Over what? The idea that Israel wants to be the only country in the area with an atomic armada. And this asymmetrical policy goes back, as we shall see, to Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon.

But this is not a partisan opinion. Because one can literally flip a coin between who is worse on this issue: President Trump or President Biden. In fact Biden has said that due to the influence of his father depicting the Holocaust to him, he is, “A Zionist in my heart.” (AP story of 10/12/23, by Chris Megerian) Biden is also proud of the fact that he has met with every Israeli Prime Minister since Golda Meir. She told him during a photo op that Israel had a “secret weapon” since “we have no place else to go.” (ibid) And when Hamas attacked Israel in October of 2023, Biden began shipping weapons and ammunition to Israel and deployed a carrier strike group to the Eastern Mediterranean. (ibid) One might ask: an aircraft carrier for Hamas and largely homeless Palestinians? One report places the total military aid to Israel for the first year to 22.76 billion. (Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs)

Biden’s position on Israel and the stories he tells about it are contradicted by a witness to his first national campaign back in 1972. Just days before the election, a Jewish campaign volunteer resigned. This was due to a talk he had with Biden a couple of months earlier. During that discussion Biden said he needed a strong position on the Israel/Palestine issue for a simple reason: money to fund his campaign. And he would have to hew to that line forever. He told Victor Livingston, the volunteer, that he could not really disclose his personal view because it would be like committing political hari-kari.

Biden said that his personal opinion was that the USA and USSR had to negotiate a joint settlement in the Middle East, and they had to make Jerusalem an international city, plus Israel should return the areas it occupied in the Six Day War. Biden then added, “I don’t think the United States would be one bit weaker if Israel went under—we shouldn’t get tied down to countries like this.” (In These Times, 7/24/24, story by Branko Marcetic)

Needless to say, Biden and his team hit back hard against Livingston. But the journalist who broke the story stood by it. And, in fact, he later expanded on it. The late Pulitzer Prize winner Norm Lockman said that Biden thought Israel was probably expecting too much of the USA. In fact, Biden later admitted he said some of these things but insisted he was playing devil’s advocate.

But, if Lockman was correct, then Biden did become much friendlier with Zionist interests with money e.g Irving Shapiro who, in 1975, was chair and CEO of Dupont, located in Biden’s home state of Delaware. (ibid) It was fairly clear from the record that from 1975 on, Biden had found his public voice on Israel. And this is what led to his now infamous comment to congresswoman Rashida Tlaib when she asked about protection for Palestinian civilians after Israel’s attack on Gaza. Biden replied with the standard riposte: Israel has the right to defend itself. (Politico, 11/4/24, story by Giselle Ewing) Does this include over 57,000 dead in Gaza, approximately 17,000 being children?

Biden’s policy in Syria was almost as bad as his policy in Israel. There he seemed to think that the displacement of a secular leader, Bashar al-Assad, by an Islamic fundamentalist group, HTS, was a desired outcome. When in fact, the leader of that group, Abu Mohammed al -Jolani, was a former Al Qaeda agent. (Al Jazeera, “Syria’s War”, report of 12/4/24) Predicably that country has now descended into chaos, nearly rivaling what happened in Libya after the overthrow of Gaddafi.

But one can argue that Trump has been even worse than Biden. In his first term he assigned his son-in-law, Jared Kushner, to find a solution to the Israel/Palestine problem. Thus partially sidelining his Secretary of State Rex Tillerson. (Bob Woodward, Rage, pp. 64-66) When Kushner presented versions of his plan to Tillerson, Rex did not buy them; they were too reliant on economics. Tillerson insisted one could not ignore the difficult and complex historical issues involved and toss them away for money. The other problem was that Tillerson thought Kushner was biased in his approach. This was due to his 20 year long relationship with prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who actually used to sleep in his bedroom in New Jersey. (Jerusalem Post, 2/14/17, story by Ron Kampeas)

During Trump’s first international tour in 2017, he went to Tel Aviv and met with Netanyahu at the King David Hotel. Once the Israeli presentation started, Kushner ran out of the meeting to grab Tillerson. Trump was watching a video prepped by Netanyahu about the Palestinians. Kushner said, “It’s awful...you’ve got to go in there and calm the president down.” (Woodward, p. 65)

Tillerson watched the video. He quickly figured that the Israelis had spliced together outtakes of Mahamoud Abbas of the Palestinian Authority in order to make it look like he was advocating the murder of children. Netanyahu then said, “And that’s the guy you want to help?” After the prime minister left, Tillerson studied the video. He turned to Trump and said, “Mr. President, you realize that that whole thing was fabricated?” This was clearly the intent since Trump had at first expressed the view that Netanyahu was the problem for peace, not Abbas. The video had done the trick. Trump denied to Tillerson it was a fabrication. (Woodward, p. 66)

The next day, when he met with Abbas in Bethlehem, Trump went ballistic on him. He called him a murderer and a liar. He said he once thought he was an avuncular figure he could trust, but “Now I realize you’re nothing but a murderer. You tricked me!” (ibid) Although they were civil in public after, this was a turning point for Trump. He was clearly not well served by Kushner. In a short time, Trump ordered :

1.) The closure of the PLO office in Washington DC;

2.) Canceled nearly all aid to the West Bank and Gaza;

3.) As well as 360 million in yearly aid given to the United Nations for Palestinian refugees.(Woodward, p. 67).

A deceptive video, likely prepared by the Mossad, was enough to spin Trump in a circle.

But while he was out of office, Trump did a slight retake on Netanyahu. He was disappointed because the Prime Minister had called Joe Biden after the 2020 election to congratulate him, when Trump thought he had not really lost the election. (Axios, 12/10/21, story by Barak Ravid) Trump also said that in addition to the above, he had recognized the occupied Golan Heights, canceled the Iran atomic deal, and moved the American embassy to Jerusalem. But he did not think he was appreciated enough by the prime minister.

Today, that feeling is justified objectively. Because perhaps due to a hundred million dollar campaign donation from Miriam Adelson, Trump is even more one sided toward Israel now than he was in his first term.

President Biden did not even come close to saying some of the things that Trump has uttered about the Israeli assault and demolition campaign in Gaza that his been going on now for well over a year. In February of this year, Trump said that Gaza will be given to the US by Israel after the war, and this will involve a permanent relocation of the Palestinians. (The Hill, story by Alex Gangitano, 2/7/25) He added that Gaza should be “cleaned out.” He also said that he would back the resettlement of Palestinians into Egypt and Jordan. Without getting those nation’s approval on this in advance. Nor answering the question if this would take American troops stationed on the ground there.

About a week later, Trump seemed to double down on this pitch. He said Gaza would be emptied of its 2 million Palestinians and they would not have the right to return. Trump then tried to say he was going to make them a “beautiful new land” elsewhere. (AP Story, by Lee Keath, 2/12/25). Once that was done the US would then take over the territory and rebuild the strip as a Riviera for the people of the world.

The problem is the Palestinians do not want to go. Despite the devastation, they want to stay and rebuild with international help promised in the US brokered cease fire. And they still think they can get back the territory lost in the 1967 war. But Trump insisted in a TV appearance on Fox that they were going to better housing and would not want to return. (ibid). One of the problems in any truce is how the strip would be governed after hostilities stopped.

Working against Trump is the fact that the Geneva Convention forbids ‘mass forcible transfers’ from occupied lands, “regardless of their motive”. The International Criminal Court also deems forced removals a crime. Amnesty International also states such a forced movement a crime, a kind of ethnic cleansing. But Trump insists they will be going to a “beautiful location, where they will have new homes and can live safely.”

Even under the atrocious conditions that have been created by both Biden and Trump allowing for the indiscriminate bombing of Gaza, many of the Palestinians want to return. Hatem Mohammed has set up a tarp to shelter his family from cold rain on the ruins of their home. “This is our land, this is our identity and that of our fathers and grandfathers he said. Trump wants to deny our identity. No, our identity remains.”