In a significant prime-time address Thursday night, U.S. President Joe Biden was talking to different audiences.
One is generally hostile to him. The other, friendlier.
The main sales pitch of his speech was aimed at his adversaries, Republican rivals in Congress whom he’s hoping to arm-twist into passing a new batch of Ukraine military funding.
He plans to achieve that by piggybacking Ukraine aid onto military aid for Israel, which Republicans are extraordinarily keen to pass.
It would all be lumped together in one big bill worth over $100 billion US, with the largest share going to Ukraine, and smaller amounts for Israeli defence systems, humanitarian aid for Palestinians, U.S.-Mexico border security and U.S. military allies in Asia.
Biden’s basic argument is that these two distant nations share common bonds: both are democracies, both are U.S. allies and both face enemies determined to wipe them off the map.
It might take a few days to establish how receptive Congress is to his argument that our children and grandchildren will inherit a safer world if Ukraine and Israel prevail.
Congress, after all, is currently on self-imposed hiatus. The Speaker’s chair has been vacant in the House of Representatives since Republicans deposed their leader then discovered they couldn’t agree on a replacement.
On Friday morning, Republican leaders were trying, and once again failing, to elect a speaker as they received Biden’s letter formally requesting this security legislation.
Another element of Biden’s speech was aimed at an audience that, in the political sense, is closer to home.
Biden spent the latter part of his address speaking to a cohort of Americans particularly worried about Palestinian civilians: notably younger, more progressive, and Arab Americans — disproportionately Democrats.
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Some are fuming at his strong pro-Israel stance.
There have been protests. There’s been a resignation from his administration, a public letter from congressional staff, a tearful speech from a Palestinian-American lawmaker, and electoral warnings that Arab-American voters might not turn out for him next year.
Featured VideoJoe Biden, in a rare primetime TV address from the Oval Office, calls on Americans to unite behind Israel and Ukraine — allies that depend on U.S. military aid.
On the left, warnings for Biden
“To my president. To our president: I’m not going to forget this,” said Rashida Tlaib, Michigan Democrat and daughter of Palestinian immigrants, in a speech to protesters.
“We will remember this.”
In his address, Biden spoke to Palestinian concerns.
He repeated that a two-state solution and Palestinian nationhood will be an objective following this war; he also mentioned a just-completed trip where he convinced Israel to restore water service to Gaza, and described how he got Egypt to open up a border crossing to test what, he hopes, will turn into a permanent route for humanitarian supplies.
And he acknowledged the fears of Muslim Americans.
After mentioning the twin scourges of antisemitism and Islamophobia, Biden talked about Wadea Al-Fayoume — a six-year-old Palestinian-American boy murdered days ago in Illinois in a hate crime.
“[You’re] saying to yourselves, ‘Here we go again with the Islamophobia and distrust we saw after 9/11,'” Biden said. “To all of you hurting, I want you to know: I see you. You belong. And I want to say this to you: You’re all American.”
The speech came after noisy protests on Capitol Hill including one that interrupted a hearing to confirm a new U.S. ambassador to Israel.
Protesters chanted things like, “Ceasefire now!” and, “Stop sending aid to Israel.”
Featured VideoPeople across the Middle East and the Arab world protested a deadly explosion at a Gaza hospital, rejecting Israel’s claims it was not responsible.
Hundreds of congressional staffers have demanded a ceasefire in the Israel-Hamas conflict, as have several Democratic lawmakers. Muslim and Arab staffers in the administration are telling journalists they’re dismayed and disheartened and some are considering quitting, according to reports by Politico and HuffPost and a Daily Beast columnist. A staffer to one Democratic congressman reportedly resigned.
“I feel like there’s a muzzle on any criticism of Israel,” Politico quoted one Arab American administration official saying.
“It’s personally frustrating to me to see Biden go to Israel and give weapons which are basically being used to slaughter Gazans.”
A State Department official quit in a public letter.
Josh Paul said he’d made countless moral compromises as director in the department’s Bureau of Political-Military Affairs, which plays a key role in arms transfers.
He stayed with the unit for 11 years, always convinced he was doing more harm than good, but, he said, he’d reached the end of that moral bargain.
While calling Hamas’s attack an epic monstrosity, he said the Israeli bombardment of Gaza, endorsed by the U.S., will only entrench what he called an unjust occupation, create more suffering and harm the U.S. national interest.
“I fear we are repeating the same mistakes we have made these past decades, and I decline to be a part of it for longer,” he wrote.
Could any of this carry a political cost?
A former Bernie Sanders spokesperson, Waleed Shahid, has been repeatedly warning on social media that not only could young voters further sour on Biden, but if too many Muslims and Arabs sit out the next election, Biden could lose close swing states — especially Michigan.
Longtime watchers of U.S. politics and the Middle East aren’t sure. Another former Sanders adviser said it could go two ways.
Watching for political fallout
“It’s rare that foreign policy issues are top of mind for most voters,” Matt Duss, a former Sanders foreign-policy adviser, told CBC News.
“But it’s possible that the disparity between Biden’s rhetoric on human rights and racial justice and his approach to Israel-Palestine are so stark that it could turn off younger voters who he needs to win.”
Eric Alterman, who’s written a book about the history of U.S. politics regarding Israel, is doubtful. He said there just simply isn’t a very large cohort of voters, in enough swing states, who would have shown up and voted for Biden, but won’t because of this issue.
Public-opinion polling is only marginally useful in addressing this question. What polls now unequivocally show, as they have for decades, is that when Americans are asked whether they sympathize more with Palestinians or Israelis, it’s primarily the latter.
Featured VideoU.S. President Joe Biden said in his Thursday night speech from the Oval Office that there’s too much hate fuelling violence and racism in the U.S., and he appealed to people to denounce that vitriol and see each other as fellow Americans.
One fresh example is a survey that says, in the current conflict, 48 per cent of respondents sympathized more with Israel; just 10 per cent with Palestinians; and 23 per cent said both.
But there’s nuance there. Democrats, for starters, and younger voters, are statistically likelier to express sympathy with Palestinians or feel equally for both sides.
The same pollster, YouGov, conducted another survey several days ago for CBS News and found a striking result.
A large majority of people — young, old, Democrat, Republican, Independent — said they support sending U.S. humanitarian aid to both Israelis and Palestinians; only 48 per cent supported sending weapons to Israel.
Biden completed his speech by arguing that military aid is, in fact, a form of economic stimulus for Americans themselves.
Those missiles and shells sent to Ukraine and Israel, he said, get replaced, with the funding he’s asking for. Factories in Pennsylvania, Arizona, and nearly a dozen other states get that funding, he said, to build new, cutting-edge armaments for the U.S. military.
“Just as in World War Two, today, patriotic American workers are building the arsenal of democracy and serving the cause of freedom,” he said.
“We are the United States of America … and there is nothing, nothing, beyond our capacity, if we do it together.”