Biden's 'Humiliation' in Middle East Reflects Popular Contempt for US Role
17:12 GMT 19.10.2023 (Updated: 09:23 GMT 05.12.2023)
© AP Photo / Miriam Alster / U.S. President Joe Biden, center left, pauses during a meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, center right, in Tel Aviv, Israel, Wednesday, Oct. 18, 2023
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Richard Becker, author of Palestine, Israel and the US Empire and west coast coordinator of the ANSWER Coalition, and Robert Fantina, journalist and Palestine activist, discussed how US diplomacy in the Middle East has been reduced to cheerleading for its ally Israel.
US President Joe Biden's "humiliation" by Arab leaders on his visit to the Middle East is a sign of popular rage against his support for Israel.
Biden was left with egg on his face after Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas pulled out of a four-sided meeting with his US counterpart in the Jordanian capital Amman which Egypt was also set to attend. Jordanian King Abdullah II called off the summit shortly afterwards, forcing Biden to cancel his trip to Israel's eastern neighbor.
The unprecedented snub was in protest at the bombing of the al-Ahli Baptist hospital in Gaza — run by the Church of England — on Tuesday evening, which the Palestinian Health Ministry said killed at least 500 people and injured hundreds more. Most of the victims were civilians sheltering in the hospital's grounds after being driven from their homes by Israeli bombing.
In a meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Thursday, Biden endorsed Tel Aviv's claim that the massacre was caused by "the other team" when a home-made rocket launched by Islamic Jihad guerrillas fell short.
Peace campaigner Richard Becker told Sputnik that Biden had suffered a great "humiliation."
"They told him, 'No, don't come. We can't afford to have you in our country right now.' And that went for Egypt, that went for Saudi Arabia, went for Jordan," Becker underscored. "The anger is so great that that they told Biden: 'don't come.'"
The hospital attack provoked spontaneous protests that night across the capitals of the Middle East, from Egypt to Turkiye and Morocco to Iran — many of them targeting Israeli, US, British, and French diplomatic missions — as the people rejected Netanyahu and Biden's claims.
"Why against the French? Why against the British?" the activist posited. "It's really an indication and really another proof of the fact that the era of colonialism, while it's largely over, is not really over, and that the anger that still exists because the whole region was colonized by Europe and then the US after World War II."
"It's seen through the prism of the struggle against colonialism and seeing the state of Israel as the ultimate form of what is meant to be permanent colonialism," Becker stressed. "Not ending, but a colonial project emanating from Europe supported by the United States and meant to do harm to the Arab world."
18 October 2023, 13:57 GMT
The author said Biden's comment that one does not "have to be a Jew to be a Zionist" was a wake-up call to anyone still harboring the "illusion" that the US "could be the honest broker" in the Middle East.
"It's a sign of like how important Israel actually is to the United States," Becker said. "And I don't think that's out of humanitarian concerns. It's because Israel is really like a modern day Sparta, a built-up military power that really is an extension of US military power."
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken was also humiliated on his whirlwind tour of the Middle East before Biden's arrival, when Saudi Crown Prince and Prime Minister Mohammed bin Salman made him wait all night for an audience last weekend — but then returned to Israel to pledge further support to Netanyahu's government.
"It's a little bit shocking that you would have Blinken and Biden talking the way that they talk and having no sense of how inflaming that is," Becker said. "The anger, the outrage throughout the Middle East, throughout the Arab world is such that the leaders... know that this is playing with fire. What Blinken and Biden are doing is is really, really fuelling the fire."
16 October 2023, 17:39 GMT
Palestine solidarity campaigner Robert Fantina told Sputnik that Biden's intervention had only made the situation more dangerous.
"We are not moving away from escalation. The world is moving towards escalation," he said. "Biden's interference is causing it. He's telling Iran and Lebanon not to interfere in the Middle East, yet he is interfering in the Middle East. And Iran and Lebanon are in the middle."
He stressed that Middle Eastern nations "Have every right to assist their allies the same way any country does."
"But Biden is fanning the flames of war. He is doing nothing to prevent war and nothing to prevent genocide," Fatina said, and "nothing to prevent these other countries from assisting the Palestinian people."
The activist argued that Biden that an intervention on Palestine's side by Lebanon's powerful Hezbollah movement, Syria, or regional power Iran "would force him to send ground troops."
"We're talking about World War III. This is not going to be a simple little conflict," Fantina warned. "It's extremely serious now. But at this point, it's mainly genocide of the Palestinian people by the Israelis. If Biden escalates as he's threatening to do, we're going to see casualties in the millions."
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