US President Joe Biden's latest diatribes against Russia and Palestine reflect the waning strength of the Zionist lobby, says a historian.
An op-ed under Biden's name in a major national newspaper last week — and re-published on the White House website — has drawn criticisms of hypocrisy and dubious comparisons.
Re-asserting the old US claim to be the "essential nation" leading the world against "aggressors," Biden tried to draw a parallel between Russian President Vladimir Putin and the Palestinian Islamic resistance movement Hamas, against which Israel has declared war.
"Both Putin and Hamas are fighting to wipe a neighboring democracy off the map," Biden wrote. "And both Putin and Hamas hope to collapse broader regional stability and integration and take advantage of the ensuing disorder."
Historian and author Dr. Gerald Horne told Sputnik that it was "simple-minded and simplistic" to blame Biden's old age for the "out-of-touch and delusional" comments in his "ghost-written" article.
"The problem is that the class that he represents is out of touch and delusional and is fractured by tensions and contradictions," he argued.
"It's apparent was that this is really bombing campaign in Gaza is discrediting US imperialism, the major funder and supplier of arms to Israel," Horne said. "Already you see that there has been an eruption of consumer boycotts of US items like Coca-Cola, for example, that inevitably will spread as long as this bombing campaign continues."
He noted that Israel was even in danger of losing the support of US conservatives, traditionally its strongest allies in Washington.
"An increasingly influential wing of the US ruling class recognizes that Zionism is a liability and is becoming even more of a liability with every passing day, particularly given the challenge presented by China," Horne said.
But the historian noted that the powerful Israel lobby was still "embedded in the US ruling class" and "they refuse to yield."
"They're becoming as dogmatic as [Israeli Prime Minister] Netanyahu himself, who they tend to support all the way down the line," Horne said. "And that puts the US ruling class in a bind, because if they seemingly seek to move away from Israel and, for example, come out for a ceasefire, the Zionist lobby will turn on them with a vengeance."
The academic stressed how US pro-Israeli lobby groups were turning on figures in Biden's Democratic party who had broken ranks to demand a ceasefire in Gaza, including Michigan Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib and several of her colleagues in the House of Representatives.
"That speaks to the tensions within the US ruling elite," Horne said, "the contradictions between the narrow interests of the Zionist lobby and the overall interest of the US ruling class."
"The Zionist lobby should tread carefully because I think that they're getting ahead of themselves. They may be overstating their influence," Horne cautioned.
"They may have been unduly influenced by that demonstration they had in Washington, DC just a few days ago, where the press reports that there were hundreds of thousands. My sources tell me it was not that large."
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