For more than a year, ever since the barbaric terrorist attack by Hamas that killed 1,200 Israelis and took more than 240 as hostages, relations between the United States and its strongest ally in the Middle East have been on diplomatic tenterhooks.
In the immediate aftermath of the horrific attack, the deadliest in Jewish history since the Holocaust, President Joe Biden declared his unqualified support for Israel and, by implication, the government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
“The United States stands with Israel. We will not ever fail to have their back,” Biden declared emphatically.
That said, from the earliest days of the crisis, Biden and Netanyahu have been at loggerheads, and many times in recent months, their private disputes have bubbled into public view.
But the publication of the book War by veteran journalist Bob Woodward has revealed just how frayed the relationship between the two leaders has become as Israel’s war against Hamas in Gaza and, more recently, Hezbollah in Lebanon has dragged on. In Biden’s view, without a plan for what comes after.
As Woodward recounts, Biden and Netanyahu have a long history going back 40 years to when Biden was a young Democratic senator from Delaware, taking office at age 30 in 1973, and Netanyahu was a junior diplomat at the Israeli Embassy in Washington.
Biden considers himself a faithful friend of Israel, but Netanyahu seems to have a knack for constantly testing the bounds of that friendship, as evidenced by an old photograph Biden held on to of him and Netanyahu, which bears the inscription, “Bibi, I love you, but I don’t agree with a damn thing you have to say.”
In the past few months, Biden and Netanyahu have been at cross purposes at almost every decision point in the war.
Biden, wary of a wider conflict that would drag U.S. troops into combat in the Middle East, including possibly with Iran, and worried about alienating Palestinian Americans, who are a key voting bloc in the swing state of Michigan, has counseled restraint. The president urged Israel to de-escalate and accept a ceasefire deal that would free the remaining hostages and allow for humanitarian relief to flow to civilians in what’s left of Gaza.
Netanyahu, his reputation tarnished by the massive intelligence failure that ignored the clear warning signs of Hamas’s long-planned massacre, as well as facing possible criminal charges of fraud and bribery, is intent on total victory over Hamas. The prime minister has vowed to kill every last member of Hamas, thereby cementing his image as a heroic wartime leader.
“President Biden told a friend that Netanyahu was now working hard to save himself politically and stay out of jail,” Woodward reports. “Why hasn’t there been an internal revolt?” Biden said. “A strong internal revolt about just voting Bibi out of office somehow, someway! Just get him out of there!”
Woodward says the relationship between the two men is now “defined by a distrust that had festered for years” and is now “so deep that it could fracture the alliance at a time when trust was most needed.”
As Israel’s largest provider of military aid, more than $3 billion a year, the U.S. should, in theory, wield immense strategic and political sway over Netanyahu. But each time Biden would try to nudge Netanyahu in a particular direction, such as when he urged Israel not to send troops into Rafah without a plan to protect civilians, Netanyahu would stiff-arm him with some version of “I hear you, but we’re going to make our own decision, and while this conversation will inform it, it will not decide it.”
In dealing with Netanyahu’s government, Biden’s team, led by Secretary of State Antony Blinken, “felt like bystanders,” Woodward writes. “Blinken was reminded of one of the central truths of foreign relations. Even with the closest ally, each country ultimately makes its own decisions.”
Biden’s frustration continued to grow as he felt Netanyahu was not just jerking him around but outright lying to him on a regular basis.
“Biden warned Netanyahu not to conduct a military offensive into Rafah. Netanyahu delayed, debated, and produced a plan to move civilians out of harm’s way. But, ultimately, Netanyahu sent Israel’s military in,” Woodward writes.
“He’s a f***ing liar,” Woodward quotes Biden saying privately. “Eighteen out of 19 people who work for him are f***ing liars.”
Last spring, Netanyahu promised Biden that Israel would “change strategy and pursue Hamas with more carefully targeted and sophisticated operations” to mitigate civilian casualties, which had climbed into the tens of thousands even by the most conservative estimates. Gaza’s Health Ministry claims more than 42,000 Palestinians have been killed and more than 99,000 injured since Oct. 7, 2023.
But ignoring Biden’s entreaties, Netanyahu continued to order the heavy bombing that was turning the Gaza Strip into something that resembled bombed-out cities in World War II.
“That son of a bitch, Bibi Netanyahu, he’s a bad guy. He’s a bad f***ing guy!” Woodward says Biden told one of his closest associates in private. “A bad f***ing guy! He doesn’t give a s*** about Hamas. He gives a s*** only about himself.”
Periodically, Biden threatened privately and sometimes publicly to withhold offensive U.S. weapons shipments to Israel, but he felt trapped.
“Biden believed if he were to firmly and publicly break with Netanyahu, it would risk Israel’s security — something he was not prepared to do after Oct. 7,” Woodward writes.
And when Israel came under attack from Iran, Biden felt he had no choice but to back Israel with the full might of the U.S. military.
The U.S. has thousands of troops and an impressive array of air, land, and sea-based assets in the Middle East committed to the defense of Israel, including the USS Abraham Lincoln Carrier Strike Group with its F-35 fighter jets, U.S. Navy destroyers equipped with missile defense systems, a guided missile submarine, the USS Wasp Amphibious Ready Group with 2,000 Marines, and F-22, F-15E, F-16, and A-10 combat planes based around the region.
And Biden recently ordered a Terminal High Altitude Area Defense, or THAAD, missile defense system, along with 100 personnel to operate it — marking the first U.S. ground troops to serve alongside Israel soldiers in the war zone.
Now, Biden again is attempting to bend Netanyahu to his will, directing his secretary of state and Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin to warn their Israeli counterparts in a joint letter that unless Israel boosts the amount of humanitarian aid flowing into Gaza by early next month, it risks being cut off from U.S. weapons funding.
The five-page letter gives Israel 30 days to take several actions, including sending at least 350 aid trucks a day into Gaza.
Netanyahu says Hamas, not Israel, is the major roadblock to getting food and medicine to desperate Palestinians in Gaza.
“Anybody who knows what’s going on around Gaza knows that Hamas and its allies are doing everything they can to use these humanitarian shipments to ship in more weapons, ammunition, and supplies that Hamas needs,” former national security adviser John Bolton said. “And further, once the material gets in, for the past year, the reports are unanimous that it is largely taken over by Hamas and that Hamas distributes it to its fighters and those that want to, and many people, many fellow Gazan citizens, are left in dire straits.”
Netanyahu does appear to have made one concession to Biden, who publicly stated the U.S. would not support an Israeli attack on Iran’s hardened, buried nuclear facilities. It’s an operation, which to be effective, would require U.S. intelligence and bunker-busting bombs.
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In an Oct. 9 phone call with Biden, Netanyahu reportedly said he is willing to limit retaliatory strikes against Iran to military targets rather than nuclear or energy infrastructure, at least for now, according to the Washington Post.
But Netanyahu’s office issued a public caveat about the private conversation: “We listen to the opinions of the United States, but we will make our final decisions based on our national interest.”