Angry Planet - Biden in Jerusalem

Episode Date: July 22, 2022

I think we can all assume why Joe Biden visited Saudi Arabia recently. In fact, we just did a show on why the world can’t quit Saudi oil.But it’s interesting to pull apart the other part of his journey — to Israel and, very briefly, the Palestinian Authority.Joining us to do just that is independent journalist Noga Tarnopolsky. She’s written for everyone from the New York Times to the LA Times, as well as many other international outlets.So, why visit Israel and why now? Was he just in the neighborhood?Why is Israel still so important to the U.S.?One stop on Biden’s visit was the Israeli Holocaust Memorial, Yad Vashem. There he did something that seems to have melted hardened Israeli hearts. What was the significance of the way he spoke to two of the few remaining survivors of the Holocaust.Angry Planet has a substack! Join the Information War to get weekly insights into our angry planet and hear more conversations about a world in conflict.https://angryplanet.substack.com/subscribeYou can listen to Angry Planet on iTunes, Stitcher, Google Play or follow our RSS directly. Our website is angryplanetpod.com. You can reach us on our Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/angryplanetpodcast/; and on Twitter: @angryplanetpod.Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/warcollege.Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/warcollege. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Love this podcast. Support this show through the ACAST supporter feature. It's up to you how much you give, and there's no regular commitment. Just click the link in the show description to support now. People live in a world with their own making. Frankly, that seems to be the problem. Welcome to Angry Planet. Hello and welcome to Angry Planet. I'm Jason Fields. Matthew Galt has escaped. I think we can all assume why Joe Biden visited Saudi Arabia recently. In fact, we did a show on why the world just can't quit Saudi oil. But it's interesting to pull apart the other part of his journey, to Israel, and very, very briefly, to the Palestinian Authority. Joining us to do just that is independent journalist Nogatarnapolski. She's written for everyone from the New York Times to the L.A. Times, as well as many other international outlets.

She's also been on the show for those of you have been listening for the last seven years because she joined us while the podcast was still at Reuters and we talked about what the impact of military service was on Israel. Anyway, thank you so much for joining us again. My pleasure. So why did Biden visit Israel now? Was he just in the neighborhood? Well, it's a good question. And I have to say that I feel that most of the coverage of his visit has been disappointing. There was kind of, I would say, conventional thinking or a cliche that took over the coverage,

which is that his visits to Israel and to the Palestinian Authority were a mere fig leaf to cover up for an uncomfortable visit to Saudi Arabia and especially the encounter with, you know, the pariah prince, let's call him. But if you listen to Biden himself, he made a very different statement. And he made it basically at every single public appearance he had. And what he said is the United States is not going to leave the Middle East open to become a Russian or Chinese sphere of influence. And he said it and said it and said it again. And that is really an important, I would almost say doctrine. That is an important Biden pivot from the. Obama administration that he previously served in as vice president and from a general tendency

in the United States that includes even Trump, Trump's period, of kind of trying to turn one's back, the American back on the Middle East. And he really announced a completely different vision. So I think that that explains this trip. I don't think he was thrilled about any part of it, really. But I think it was part of him as president having to make some time. decisions. One of that was that he had to go to this meeting in Jeddah Saudi Arabia. But I think another part of it was to say, well, it's one thing as the United States to feel that we don't want to be involved in forever wars in the Middle East anymore, we're going away. But look at what's happened and look at what's happening. And given the options, we want to be the superpower influencing the

Middle East and not Russia and not China. And I think that that was, you know, a big deal. That's interesting that Biden wants to do that at a time when Israel hasn't really picked aside in the Ukraine war, right? I mean, there's been some ambivalence. Can you sort of explain why they haven't jumped on the Western bandwagon? Why do you feel that there's Israeli ambivalence? Well, so from what I've read, Instead of the vociferous, like, you know, really loud condemnation of the war in Ukraine, you know, I've read that Israel has tried to balance a little bit more and has been less vocal than other Western aligned countries about what Russia has done. Maybe. I would say a few things about that. One thing I would say is that Israel's peripheral to the war in Europe. And so comparing Israeli statements to those of European countries. countries that are, especially those that are much more powerful than Israel on the global stage,

but also that are really implicated directly. I just, I'm not sure that that's the right comparison. So what I have heard is that in Washington, D.C., there was some frustration with Israel, especially at the beginning of this war. So February, March, a feeling that Israel, kind of what you just said, that Israel wasn't speaking out clearly enough. On the other hand, during the period that Naftali Bennett was still Prime Minister of Israel. He did a kind of still mysterious, I'd say, sort of shuttle diplomacy between Moscow and Kiev. He flew to Moscow. I know that all of that was intensely coordinated with the United States, like completely and totally, not something that he informed the United States about or something like that.

And Israel, in its statements, which may not have been successful statements, but Israel has been pretty unequivocal in saying we have a problem because we have Russia on a northern border and we're not the ones who invited Russia in here. This touches on our previous point, by the way, but we completely stand with Ukraine as the victim of this aggression. And Israel has between four and six major field hospitals into Ukraine filled with medical like 600 medical personnel. Israel is sending non-lethal military aid like flag jackets and helmets. So Israel's not sending weapons. But there is something else behind the question that you're asking.

And this is something that I also feel hasn't really been reported on enough. And that's that there's a kind of Jewish war behind the Russia-Ukraine war. And so the disappointment in Israel that you feel or that you're asking me about, I do think that it's a reflection of what we're hearing from the Ukrainian government. And I think in particular, President Zelensky, who has been just kind of a show-stopping superstar in terms of his public presence, I think he felt that as a Jew and as president of Ukraine, that he would inevitably get a kind of extraordinary support from Israel. And he didn't get that. Israel behaved like a peripheral country that wanted to absolutely show support that voted the right way in the UN, but that wasn't going to go out of its way in terms of provoking Russia. And I think that that disappointment and even Zelensky's anger, which more and more he has expressed openly, I think that is this vague feeling many of us have. That's what we're reflecting, that Israel hasn't done enough. So do you think there is a lot of sympathy in Israel for Zelensky?

I do think there's sympathy in Israel for Zelensky. The few public shows that there have been, you know, like when Zelensky addressed Israel, not the Knesset, but addressed Israel, when he addressed the Hebrew University, yes. I mean, I haven't seen any pro-Russian, you know, outside shows of support here, but I have seen some for Ukraine. but I think, I do think that Zelensky personally feels maybe even wounded by Israel's lack of kind of fervor in support of Ukraine. I think he feels that the gestures Israel has made are not even enough. And in Israel, there's a strange thing happening. I recently saw some friends from Argentina and they asked me, because Israel's getting elections,

so what's going on with the Russian vote? And I cracked up and I said, you know what? There are no more Russians here. What do I mean? I mean that Israelis, native-born Israelis, used this shorthand, the Russians, in quotation marks, to describe, you know, more than a million people came here, basically when the Soviet Union crashed and in the years that followed, the first few years that followed. And they all became the massive Russian immigration, a million people that Israel was able to absorb and that changed the face of the country. Fact of the matter is, few of any of these people identify as Russians, right? The ones who came here from Russia are Jews.

And if you look at their Russian ID cards, which they were forced to relinquish, but if you look at them, they would say nationality, Jew. and they came here because they felt that they're Jews. And then the others came from Georgia, from Moldova, from Ukraine, from Tajikistan, from Uzbekistan. So what you have now in Israel is this kind of massive coming out of the closet of this group of people who Israelis have always referred to as Russians, ex-Russians. And now no one in Israel or very few people, if at all, are calling themselves Russians. Now, oh, where were you born? Moldova.

Where were you born? Ukraine. Where were you born? Tajikistan? You know? And so there is a shift inside Israel. And that is a direct result of the war in Ukraine. Did Biden get what he wanted?

He got some terrific photo ops. I mean, one at Yad Vashem in particular, where he knelt with Holocaust survivors, two women. believe. Right. So what does you come away with? That's a good question. And I'm sorry to sound monothematic, but I do have to come back to the fact that I feel that we as journalists did not cover ourselves with glory in covering this visit. I think he wanted the happy pictures of a successful visit to Israel. And I think that the White House knew that this was, you know, an easy trip. This is not a trip where he was going to be tripped up by anyone. This is a country that was delighted to welcome him. So I think he got that. But I think, again, I think there are many different threads to this,

and I'm not sure what he got. So one thread is, because of the war in Ukraine, it has suddenly become crucially important for the United States to be able to prove its metal as M-E-T-T-L-E, medal as a superpower capable of keeping coalitions together. That's not the kind of thing we've really been hearing since the Iraq war, and we know how that ended. So now, without the United States, to be honest with you, I don't think that there is a serious coalition against Ukraine. So Biden has a massive burden on his shoulders in that respect. And I think coming to Israel and even signing the Jerusalem declaration that he signed. It was easy to mock all of that as just a photo op. And in part it is a photo op. And it part, by the way, it's a photo up that the new

Prime Minister of Israel wanted to show himself as a, you know, capable diplomat. But behind that, I think there's a real necessity. And Israel became a kind of American football, I would say, as football during the Trump years, where it was used for all kinds of Trumpian needs that ended up benefiting Israel really very. very little, if at all. And I think a major reset was necessary. And Joe Biden knows that he faces anger in the progressive wing of his party about Israeli policies that he's seen as supporting. I think he's basically hearing from people in his party, why do we consider Israel our top ally? They're, you know, they're an apartheid state and we're filling them with money every year.

I think he felt the need to make a public reset on Israel. And in addition to show the world, we're still the superpower. And yes, we're stepping back into the Middle East. This unstable situation that we're in globally right now is not going to end up with China owning Haifa port and Russia owning Syria and Lebanon because we're very close to that situation. So I think he had that aim. And I think he had a difficult aim to swallow. do think he had a name of impacting gas prices by going to Saudi Arabia and also, again,

as painful as it was, showing that the United States is not withdrawing from this region. However much personal disgust he may feel at the Saudi Crown Prince, he had to show we're not gone, because that's been the feeling in the Middle East. And did he get it or not? I don't know. I really don't know what to say. And I think, you know, if you look at Israeli media coverage of his visit, there was one excellent interview done by a top-notch Israeli journalist called Yonit Levy. She did a TV interview that she recorded with him before he flew to Israel.

But the rest of the coverage, I felt, was an embarrassment. And, you know, you heard all the time, like jokes being made about Sleepy Joe by journalists who thought they were being cute and didn't really. realize that they were actually transmitting Trump propaganda by using these little phrases. And very little serious attention was paid to it. Israeli political journalism is not at its best. And the Arab world media was focused just on the Palestinian. His statements about Palestine in Israel and his visit to the Palestinian Authority. So that was a different emphasis.

That may have been, I'm less familiar, but that may have been actually higher level coverage. What did he say to the Palestinian Authority? And was it the same thing that he said to the Israelis? I think pretty much yes. And again, at risk of repeating myself, he repeated himself. So I think his number one message was the United States is back. I think his other message was the United States is going to vigorously pursue the gains made by the Abraham Accords. And that was a happy message for Israel that has benefited from these new diplomatic openings with, you know, Gulf states, with Morocco. Right now, while you and I are speaking, the chief of staff of the Israeli army is on an official state visit to Morocco, which is kind of a remarkable thing. For the Palestinians, this was not good news because for many reasons, they chose to basically boycott.

these new ties and to address them as a betrayal, an Arab betrayal of Palestinian cause. Now, there was a juncture at the beginning of this when the Palestinian government could have chosen a different way. The Palestinian government fully recognizes Israel, of course. There are official ties. So, you know, whenever it was a year and a half ago, two years ago, they could have said, we welcome these new ties, and we hope that our Arab brothers and sisters are now going to pressure Israel to give us our fair due. They chose a really different diplomatic path, and I think they're having a tough time coming back from that. So that was one message, but Joe Biden's other message was a very different kind of reset to normalization with the

Palestinians. He has reopened the spigots of American money to all money, except of the, except for direct donations of Palestinian government, but everything else, so $300 million in different kinds of aid, and a reset of relations. It's very important when the President of United States comes to visit you, and the President of the United States went to Bethlehem and stood next to the flag of Palestine and shook hands with Mahmoud Abbas. And I hope that that's not diminished, you know. Yeah, and it does seem like a very sharp contrast to the Trump administration policy where Trump, what seemed very suddenly, moved the U.S. embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, which was seen as incredibly provocative of the Arab world at that time.

People seem to have gotten used to it. And I know I have relatives in Israel who loved Donald Trump. Absolutely, you know, absolutely loved him and thought he was terrific for Israel, whether or not they thought about him more deeply as a leader or if they just thought about, you know, whether he was good for Israel. But how did Israel respond to Donald Trump and how do they feel about him now? I mean, would they support, not that they get to vote, but I mean, would they support him over Biden in an election? Something like that? I have no idea. It's a complicated question because Israelis got to know Donald Trump mediated through the

experience of the then Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu. And Benjamin Netanyahu, I think, it's fair to say, basically experienced Donald Trump as a four-year high. In other words, Donald Trump had no personal parameters for addressing the Middle East. And so Netanyahu, who is a very dominant and a very domineering type, had an opportunity with Trump, basically to all constantly be like the last voice in his ear. And Netanyahu got ridiculous concessions from the United States. I think it's important for us to be able to look at these rationally.

But your average Israeli citizen, your average shop owner doesn't know anything about American politics or very little. I mean, your average Afula shop owner or your average Ashkilon school teacher knows as much about the internal workings of American politics as your average Arkansas school teacher knows about the Likud primaries. And it's important to remember that. Israel is provincial in its own right. And so what happened is that Netanyahu really saw a gold mine in Donald Trump. it's important to remember, I think, that that relationship did not end well. And when the Israeli journalist Barack Ravid interviewed Trump for his book called Trump's Peace, it came out in Hebrew, the famous statement Donald Trump made about Netanyahu was

fuck him. I don't know if I could say that on your podcast. Yeah, you can absolutely say that on that. That was headlines in English on all Israeli people. So it's important to keep him perfective. But the real lived experience of Israelis was this kind of like a fever. Netanyahu was in love with the possibilities that he felt Trump afforded him. Trump is a guy who's used to taking advantage of everybody around him.

But Netanyahu saw in Trump a guy he could take advantage of, and he basically did. So he offered him a city, right? Literally, he went to a big ceremony and announced the establishment of Trump Heights on the Golan. It was, you know, it never happened. I, you know, I never heard that. That's amazing. Trump Heights. You can see the sign.

You can see the ceremony. I assume he gave the contract to the Trump organization to then build it. No. He never even pretended to build it. That there you have Trump and BB. Trump would have wanted the contract. It never crossed BB's mind to actually do it. It was it was all surface for BB.

Trump announced the Trump. the Trump tram stop or the Trump cable car stop in Jerusalem. Basically, Netanyahu really saw Trump as a goldenout. And remember that during the four years that Trump was president, Netanyahu had to run for prime minister like four times because he lost power in 2018. So this is a year and a half, almost two years into Trump's term. He lost his majority. And then he had four consecutive elections that he failed.

to win. So he was always looking for the next campaign poster, the next hook. And so Israelis experienced this kind of like, you know, the only word I can really use is a high. They experienced Trump through Netanyahu's high and including people who did not go and then vote for Netanyahu. but he was the medium. He was the person through which Israelis met that weird American president. So it's a complicated answer. I don't know who your relatives are. I do know that there were a minority,

but a significant number of American Jews living in Israel who were Trump fans. And I have to tell you that if you talk to Israeli security officials, none of them are Trump fans. and all of them will say to you, all of them. I mean, I've not met one. All of them will say to you, Israel's number one strategic asset is its connection to the United States. And if the United States is weakened, Israel is more weakened.

And so the Trump phenomenon, and still, what I think are still today, the threats to American stability and democracy, and also the threats to the American sphere of influence on the free world. as retro as that may sound, all of these things concern American security officials significantly. If we can talk about Netanyahu for a minute. My dude. Yeah. So it's fascinating in that he's on trial right now.

And one similarity I think people in the United States who even think about this stuff is, you know, if he kept himself in power, he was also saving himself from the trial, right? or at least he was throwing wrenches in front of it. Well, I mean, there wasn't an importance to him to stay in power also to keep himself out of legal trouble? Yes, but it's important. This trial started while he was prime minister. In Israel, due to a loophole, the prime minister is not immune from criminal prosecution. So while he should have resigned following the norms of public behavior in Israel, it's never it was never actually written down in any law that the prime minister must resign if he's indicted on criminal charges.

What is written in Israeli law is that any minister must resign. Netanyahu made the eccentric choice to interpret that, the phrase any minister, as not including the prime minister. And that has never been tested in Israeli law. And he was a very, again, more than prime minister, he was also just the most dominant political figure in this country in more than 20. years. And the reason he tried so hard to hold on to power and the reason he wants to regain power now is very specific. He believes, and this is said publicly, this is not me going off the deep end. He and his party say that if he gets clean majority of seats in the Israeli parliament in the Knesset,

they want to overthrow the judicial system, the Israeli judiciary, and basically what they call Defang the Supreme Court. And in this respect, Nisaniahu is extremely dangerous, and Israel found itself at a precipice when he left office. Now, he never had that power, even when he still had his majority. members of his own party had qualms when faced with those kind of existential decisions. But what's happening is his party is getting smaller and smaller every time it becomes more of a personal cult.

And the right wing, the kind of fractured right wing parties that have formed from ex-Likud members who are at this point, I would say a third of the Israeli polity, the party led by Lieberman, the party led by Guillaum Saar, the party formerly led by Bennett and now led by Ayelet Chiquet. All of these are formerly coup people, right? So as his party has shrunk, he's increased the opposition of people who actually share his basic kind of nationalistic philosophy, but are not willing to go along for the right of undoing the Israeli system of government. And Netanyahu very explicitly believes that if he gets even just a straight, majority, 61 members out of the 112 member house, he will be able to cancel, or maybe just to spend,

but cancel his ongoing trial, something which has never happened in the history of this country, and that he will be able to undo basically the Supreme Court of Israel. And that's what's in play in this election. So he may be speaking, sorry, he may be speaking about, you know, Arab terror lovers, or about the price of bread. But what is really in play in Israel right now is, is he going to have enough votes to undo the system of government existing in Israel? The parallels are uncanny.

I would say in the United States, the Republican Party has succeeded in subverting the Supreme Court, so they don't have to get rid of the Supreme Court. But it's, well, can we talk about Netanyahu's trial? Is he going to jail? I mean, that's the basic question. I mean, I think it's more than 50-50 if he goes to John. Many people in Israel, many close observers of the trial believe that if he doesn't get the majority he wants or a super majority, if it's not easy to undo the entire system, cover it with just a regular majority.

Many people believe that if that happens, that then he's going to go for a plea deal, so is to avoid jail. And if he goes for a plea deal, the basic assumption is, that he's going to be forced to relinquish his political career. In other words, the most significant concession on his side for the plea deal will be him signing a legal document accepting guilt, A, and B, saying that he's not allowed to run for public office again. It's a moral turpitude clause. So there's that, but what's important to realize all of the

of these theories presuppose his guilt. His desire to cancel his own trial is not the actions of a guy who's convinced of his own innocence. All of the talk of him, you know, behind the scenes trying to wrangle a plea deal presupposes his own guilt. And when you go to his trial, and I think I may have said this to you already, I really wish that every single Israeli citizen could spend at least half a day at his trial. I think it's the best civics lesson anybody could get ever. There's a very strong case against him. I don't see how he's not going to be convicted, at least of a significant number of the charges against him. And we're living a schizophrenic and very dangerous reality in Israel where if you sit in trial day after day, at least I, me and other colleagues,

you get the feeling that Netanyahu is barely mounting a legal defense. What he's doing is mounting a public defense. And so his lawyer says things in court, his lawyers say things in court that have basically no legal weight. And in some cases, really no relation to the formal charges against him. And then you see these weird lines, sometimes conspiracy theories, upload online in all of the Be Beast, you know, Be Beast forums and all of his, you know, now that there's an election, all of his party activities, and there's an alternate real. So there's the reality inside the courtroom where he faces very serious charges and where he's

being treated with, you know, kid gloves. And then there's the reality outside the courtroom where the spin, the B-B-B-B-S spin is so powerful that when Israeli reporters even have a chance to make, you know, like a minute-and-a-half intervention on the evening news about what happened in trial today, they basically end up spending all their time responding to the Likud spin, saying, oh, well, the trial didn't collapse today. And you think what? And they're saying that because the Likud line that day was the trial collapsed. So I think he has excellent chances of ending up in jail. I think this. trial still limited last a few more years and then remember he can appeal. I don't think that Israelis, a majority of Israelis, find this appealing. I don't see Netanyahu's political drawing power. You know, he was known here as the magician. I don't see that growing. Currently, as things stand right now, I don't see him with a direct line back to power. So we should keep that in perspective. And what you just said before, I think is really important. In the United States, States, a multi-decade plan among the Republican leadership has had astonishing success or

astonishing for some of us. And for example, the Supreme Court, you know, the fact that a president voted in by a minority of the voting citizenry was able to appoint one full third of the current court is astonishing. To those of us looking for abroad, right? So in Israel, it's a completely different system. A committee of jurists appoints the Supreme Court. The prime minister has no say and who becomes a judge on the court. So the Israeli system has been lucky and has been able to be more resilient, but everything is up in the air right now. Can I add one more thing? Sure, sure, of course. It's just, it's kind of a little plug, but I didn't manage to weave it in. Sure. When we talk about Biden's visit here,

one question we haven't well you asked you asked me the question what did he get from it right what did he take away but there was one aspect that i didn't manage to answer and it's what did biden personally take away and there was a really interesting interlude that completely wasn't covered by the media he had two hours by himself in bethlehem when he went to pray at the church of the nativity and there was no media with him and i just found out yesterday there was only one secret service agent with him. He was really alone there. And for me, that's very interesting. This is the first incumbent Catholic President of the United States to visit the Holy Land. And he's a believer. And I managed to speak with the Franciscan priest who accompanied him, who was with him during that whole time. And so I think when we talk about what Joe Biden took away from here, it may also be important to take into account that he personally took something

of value away and that what he expressed during those two private hours that nobody saw him was really his deep attachment to this part of the world. And I think we may not want to ignore that. Well, we'll have to leave it there. Thank you so much, Noga, for coming on the show and talking us through all this. Of course, it's the Middle East, so of course it's complex. And thank you. That's all for this week, Angry Planet listeners. We're are back. As always, Angry Planet is me, Matthew Galt, Jason Fields, and Kevin O'Dell. It's created by myself from Jason Fields. If you like the show, please kick us $9 a month. It helps keep the show going. You can do that at Angry Planet pod.com or angryplanet.substack.com.

We'll be back next week. Another conversation about conflict on an Angry Planet. You're going back to Afghanistan. I'll see what the Taliban's been up to. Stay safe until then.