President Joe Biden continues to wage a political war against Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu by holding high-level meetings in Washington Sunday with Benny Gantz, Netanyahu’s main likely political rival in future elections.
Gantz leads the opposition Blue and White Party, and currently serves with Netanyahu in an emergency government of national unity. However, according to Israeli media, Gantz accepted or arranged the trip without telling Netanyahu.
The Times of Israel reported:
War cabinet minister Benny Gantz was set to travel to Washington for talks with senior officials on Sunday, reportedly infuriating Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu who did not authorize the trip and was said to chastise him that the country has only one premier.
Among those Gantz will meet are US Vice President Kamala Harris, US National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan, and Republican and Democratic members of US Congress, his office said in a statement Saturday.
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His visit to the US comes as the Biden administration has grown increasingly frustrated with Netanyahu and his government which is seen as beholden to its far-right members.
The visit was first reported by the Israeli news website Ynet.
Biden has been trying to undermine Netanyahu since the Israeli leader was elected in late 2022. He briefly showed solidarity with Netanyahu in September 2023, when there was the possibility of a Saudi-Israeli peace deal, and in the immediate aftermath of the Hamas terror attack of October 7. But he and his administration continued to work to find a replacement for a leader who has resisted Democrat pressure on the conduct of the war and on nuclear deals with Iran.
The image of the Biden White House meeting with Netanyahu’s main opponent in the middle of the war serves to divide the Israeli public, and encourages Hamas to exploit those divisions, both in propaganda and in military planning.
Biden couches his opposition to Netanyahu, and to members of Netanyahu’s right-wing coalition government, as concern for Israel’s well-being, saying that Israel will lose international support if it veers to the political right.
But international criticism of Israel does not depend on the government in charge, and Americans remain solidly behind Israel, and Israelis behind Netanyahu’s policies, despite attempts by the White House to pretend otherwise.
Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News and the host of Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot on Sunday evenings from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET (4 p.m. to 7 p.m. PT). He is the author of the recent book, “The Zionist Conspiracy (and how to join it),” now available on Audible. He is also the author of the e-book, Neither Free nor Fair: The 2020 U.S. Presidential Election. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.
