Democratic politicians and commentators in the United States have been full of praise for President Joe Biden since he dropped out of the 2024 presidential race on Sunday.
Representative Maxine Waters, for example, called Biden a “kind and honest man.” Former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi praised his “vision, values and leadership.”
But as political leaders showered Biden with compliments, bombs continued to rain down on Gaza, killing dozens and triggering a new wave of mass displacement in Khan Younis.
For many Palestinian rights advocates, the carnage and abuses in Gaza will define Biden’s place in the history books, as the United States remains committed to supporting Israel’s war in the Palestinian territory.
“He will be remembered for the hundreds of thousands of people killed, injured and displaced in Gaza,” said Abed Ayoub, executive director of the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee (ADC).
“There is no other solution. He will be remembered as ‘Genocide Joe’.”
Thank you, President Biden! I am one of your biggest supporters and was willing to stand by you throughout the Democratic Party nomination. However, you decided to resign and supported your Vice President Kamala Harris. You are a kind and honest man who is…
— Maxine Waters (@RepMaxineWaters) July 21, 2024
Since Israel’s war on Gaza began on October 7, Biden has offered Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government unconditional military and diplomatic support.
Biden has only once withheld a shipment of bombs bound for Israel on humanitarian grounds – and even then he released part of that shipment a few months later, under pressure from Netanyahu.
Israel’s war has killed nearly 39,000 Palestinians, displaced hundreds of thousands more, fueled a man-made food crisis and destroyed large parts of the territory. United Nations experts and other observers have warned of a “risk of genocide” in Gaza.
Ayoub told Tel Aviv Tribune that despite Biden’s domestic achievements, the president will go down as one of the worst in US history because of his unconditional support for Israel.
The U.S. Campaign for Palestinian Rights (USCPR) echoed that comment. “Nothing will erase the fact that Biden’s legacy is – and always will be – genocide,” the organization said in a statement.
Netanyahu gives ‘bear hug’
The US president has been a staunch supporter of Israel throughout his decades-long political career.
He often calls himself a Zionist and argues that Jews around the world would not be safe without Israel.
He has carried that worldview into his policies during his presidency, continuing former President Donald Trump’s pro-Israel doctrine. Biden has maintained the U.S. embassy in Jerusalem and refused to reverse the Trump-era decision to recognize Israel’s claims to the occupied Golan Heights in Syria.
He has also actively sought to establish formal ties between Israel and Arab states, a goal Trump pursued with the 2020 Abraham Accords.
This push toward normalization, however, has come without progress toward recognizing an independent Palestinian state or dismantling systemic anti-Palestinian discrimination.
The outbreak of the Gaza war has further underscored Biden’s pro-Israel policies.
A few weeks after the conflict began, Biden traveled to Israel and publicly embraced Netanyahu in what many critics described as a “bear hug.”
The friendly gesture was widely interpreted as an endorsement of Netanyahu’s response in Gaza, after the Palestinian group Hamas attacked southern Israel on October 7.
From the beginning of the conflict, human rights groups have accused Israel of horrific violations reaching the level of genocide – a desire to destroy the Palestinian people.
In the first week alone, the Israeli military said it launched 2,000 strikes across Gaza, a strip of land the size of Las Vegas.
Since then, Biden has authorized continued arms transfers and more than $14 billion in additional aid to support Israel’s offensive in Gaza. In addition, his administration vetoed three UN Security Council proposals that would have called for a ceasefire.
Hatem Abudayyeh, president of the United States Palestinian Community Network (USPCN), said Biden will be remembered most for enabling Israel’s “crimes against humanity.”
“He could have cut off the tap of money and weapons in October, but he allowed this genocide to happen. He is complicit, and that is what will be written on his tombstone,” Abudayyeh told Tel Aviv Tribune.
Biden and the Palestinians
After entering politics in 1970, Biden quickly moved from the local to the national level, launching a successful campaign to represent Delaware in the U.S. Senate in 1972.
After nearly four decades in Congress, he became vice president under Barack Obama and, in 2021, won the presidency himself.
The president does not come from a political dynasty and he is not an exceptional orator. His success in politics is often attributed to his interpersonal skills and his ability to empathize.
This sense of compassion, however, has never extended to Palestinians, activists say.
“For nine and a half months, President Biden has funded and armed Israel’s brutal genocide of Palestinians in Gaza, making the U.S. government directly complicit in the murder of at least 39,000 people, including more than 15,000 children,” Jewish Voice for Peace Action said in a statement Sunday.
“Americans watched in horror and outrage as Biden sent the Israeli government the weapons it used to wipe out generations of Palestinian families, to destroy hospitals, bakeries, schools, mosques, churches, universities, refugee camps, homes, and Gaza’s entire health system and electricity and water networks.”
Beyond politics, Biden’s rhetoric at times seems dismissive of Israeli atrocities and Palestinian suffering.
“I have no idea that the Palestinians are telling the truth about the number of people killed. I am sure that innocent people were killed, and that is the price of waging war,” the US president said in October.
But that position has caused problems for Biden, both domestically and internationally.
Even before Biden delivered a disastrous performance in the June 27 debate, the 81-year-old had begun to trail his Republican rival Trump in opinion polls.
A portion of the Democratic base — including young people, progressives, Arabs and Muslims — have expressed frustration and anger at his support for Israel.
Groups like the USCPR have argued that Biden’s age and debate performance were just one factor in the pressure that forced him to drop out of the presidential race.
“It wasn’t Biden’s debate failure that showed he was unfit to lead,” USCPR said. “It was the tens of thousands of bombs he sent to kill Palestinian families. It was his callous, dystopian disregard for Palestinian lives.”
Other commentators also argued that Biden had not shown enough interest in the humanitarian crisis unfolding in Gaza.
Aaron David Miller, a veteran former U.S. official, described the situation bluntly in an interview with The New Yorker in April.
“Do I think Joe Biden has the same depth of feeling and empathy for the Palestinians in Gaza as he does for the Israelis? No, he doesn’t and he doesn’t convey it. I don’t think there’s any doubt about that,” he said.
