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The Biden-Bibi Divide & Reelection Jitters

After Biden issued a rare and searing public rebuke of Israel’s actions in its ongoing war against Hamas, Netanyahu tried to hang the thousands of Palestinian civilian casualties squarely around Biden’s neck—a hell of a thing to do as the president heads into his reelection campaign.

Joe Biden sits with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, at the start of the Israeli war cabinet meeting, in Tel Aviv on October 18, 2023, amid the ongoing battles between Israel and the Palestinian group Hamas.
Photo: MIRIAM ALSTER/POOL/AFP via Getty Images
Julia Ioffe
December 13, 2023

Today, President Biden spoke to a group of political donors in Washington and issued a rare, public rebuke of Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu. Biden told the room that he gave Netanyahu a photo, decades ago, when he was still a senator and the prime minister was a staffer at the Israeli embassy in the United States. Biden had written a greeting on the photo, he recalled. “Bibi, I love you, but I don’t agree with a damn thing you have to say,” Biden said he wrote. Then, to the room’s laughter, he added, “That remains to be the case.”