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Israeli daily Haaretz said on Friday that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has driven Israel’s standing in the US to an “unprecedented low.”

“Anyone following the conduct of Israel and its relations with other countries, especially the United States, has for years warned of an unprecedented crisis in Israel’s strategic relations with its most important ally,” Haaretz said in an editorial. “It was clear that the damage caused by Benjamin Netanyahu and his government would bring relations with the United States to a new low.”

“He has ignored the many warnings regarding the damage he is causing to Israel-US relations,” the newspaper said.

The damage continued with his “blatant interference in American politics in favor of (President Donald) Trump and the Republican Party,” and that “Israel’s standing among Democrats collapsed.”

READ: Delegates walk out as Netanyahu defends Israel’s regional wars in UN address

The newspaper said, however, that the decline is no longer limited to Democrats. “In the past two years, the government of Netanyahu, Itamar Ben-Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich has brought Israel’s standing in the GOP to a new nadir,” Haaretz wrote. “The war in Iran and the sharp rise in gas prices that followed, the violence against Palestinians by extremist settlers and the harm to Christian communities in Gaza, the West Bank and East Jerusalem have led even Israel’s most loyal supporters to express unprecedented criticism.”

US polls from recent months, the newspaper said, show a “sharp and unprecedented decline” in favorable attitudes toward Israel, especially among younger respondents, arguing that “No bombastic speech” by Netanyahu at the UN General Assembly can “paper over this bleak reality.”

It warned about the implications for ties between the two countries, saying: “Every Israeli needs to understand the extent to which Israel’s image has deteriorated in the eyes of the American public and the implications for the future of relations between the two countries.”

READ: Protesters outside UN’s New York headquarters demand Netanyahu face war crimes charges

US President Donald Trump suggested Thursday that the war with Iran could end before the Nov. 3 midterm elections, a day after predicting it would conclude immediately afterward.

“I don’t know that they’re gonna be able to hold out. But it’ll get settled after the elections. Or maybe sooner,” Trump reportedly told broadcaster NewsNation over the phone, referring to mounting US economic pressure on Iran.

Trump also denied reports that Iran’s latest retaliatory strikes on a US base in Jordan damaged US aircraft in the region. “Nope… None whatsoever. No damage. No nothing.”

On Wednesday, Trump had said the war would “end immediately” after the midterms.

“I think the war will end immediately after the election because they can’t hold out any longer,” he told reporters ahead of a trip to Dallas, Texas.

READ: Permanent 5 members clash in UN Security Council over Iran sanctions snapback

His comments contrast with a Wall Street Journal report hours later that senior White House advisers have privately warned the conflict could continue through the remainder of his term.

The war, now in its seventh month, has killed 18 US servicemembers and raised concerns over military resources and disruptions to global energy markets.

US gasoline prices averaged $4.22 a gallon Wednesday, up from $4.01 a month earlier and $3.19 a year ago, according to the American Automobile Association (AAA).

Trump has repeatedly expressed a desire for a quick resolution while supporting a broader economic campaign against Tehran.

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent has described the strategy, dubbed “Operation Economic Outcast,” as an alternative to major combat operations.

READ: Israeli defense minister renews threat to strike Iran’s energy facilities

Last week, a prominent Saudi Sheikh, Mohammed Al-Issa, visited the Auschwitz concentration camp in Poland to commemorate the 75th anniversary of its liberation, which signalled the end of the Nazi Holocaust. Although dozens of Muslim scholars have visited the site, where about one million Jews were killed during World War Two, according to the Auschwitz Memorial Centre’s press office, Al-Issa is the most senior Muslim religious leader to do so.

Visiting Auschwitz is not a problem for a Muslim; Islam orders Muslims to reject unjustified killing of any human being, no matter what their faith is. Al-Issa is a senior ally of Saudi Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman (MBS), who apparently cares little for the sanctity of human life, though, and the visit to Auschwitz has very definite political connotations beyond any Islamic context.

By sending Al-Issa to the camp, Bin Salman wanted to show his support for Israel, which exploits the Holocaust for geopolitical colonial purposes. “The Israeli government decided that it alone was permitted to mark the 75th anniversary of the Allied liberation of Auschwitz [in modern day Poland] in 1945,” wrote journalist Richard Silverstein recently when he commented on the gathering of world leaders in Jerusalem for Benjamin Netanyahu’s Holocaust event.

READ: Next up, a Saudi embassy in Jerusalem 

Bin Salman uses Al Issa for such purposes, as if to demonstrate his own Zionist credentials. For example, the head of the Makkah-based Muslim World League is leading rapprochement efforts with Evangelical Christians who are, in the US at least, firm Zionists in their backing for the state of Israel. Al-Issa has called for a Muslim-Christian-Jewish interfaith delegation to travel to Jerusalem in what would, in effect, be a Zionist troika.

Zionism is not a religion, and there are many non-Jewish Zionists who desire or support the establishment of a Jewish state in occupied Palestine. The definition of Zionism does not mention the religion of its supporters, and Israeli writer Sheri Oz, is just one author who insists that non-Jews can be Zionists.

Mohammad Bin Salman and Netanyahu – Cartoon [Tasnimnews.com/Wikipedia]

We should not be shocked, therefore, to see a Zionist Muslim leader in these trying times. It is reasonable to say that Bin Salman’s grandfather and father were Zionists, as close friends of Zionist leaders. Logic suggests that Bin Salman comes from a Zionist dynasty.

This has been evident from his close relationship with Zionists and positive approaches to the Israeli occupation and establishment of a Jewish state in Palestine, calling it “[the Jews’] ancestral homeland”. This means that he has no issue with the ethnic cleansing of almost 800,000 Palestinians in 1948, during which thousands were killed and their homes demolished in order to establish the Zionist state of Israel.

“The ‘Jewish state’ claim is how Zionism has tried to mask its intrinsic Apartheid, under the veil of a supposed ‘self-determination of the Jewish people’,” wrote Israeli blogger Jonathan Ofir in Mondoweiss in 2018, “and for the Palestinians it has meant their dispossession.”

As the de facto ruler of Saudi Arabia, Crown Prince Bin Salman has imprisoned dozens of Palestinians, including representatives of Hamas. In doing so he is serving Israel’s interests. Moreover, he has blamed the Palestinians for not making peace with the occupation state. Bin Salman “excoriated the Palestinians for missing key opportunities,” wrote Danial Benjamin in Moment magazine. He pointed out that the prince’s father, King Salman, has played the role of counterweight by saying that Saudi Arabia “permanently stands by Palestine and its people’s right to an independent state with occupied East Jerusalem as its capital.”

UN expert: Saudi crown prince behind hack on Amazon CEO 

Israeli journalist Barak Ravid of Israel’s Channel 13 News reported Bin Salman as saying: “In the last several decades the Palestinian leadership has missed one opportunity after the other and rejected all the peace proposals it was given. It is about time the Palestinians take the proposals and agree to come to the negotiations table or shut up and stop complaining.” This is reminiscent of the words of the late Israeli Foreign Minister Abba Eban, one of the Zionist founders of Israel, that the Palestinians “never miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity.”

Bin Salman’s Zionism is also very clear in his bold support for US President Donald Trump’s deal of the century, which achieves Zionist goals in Palestine at the expense of Palestinian rights. He participated in the Bahrain conference, the forum where the economic side of the US deal was announced, where he gave “cover to several other Arab countries to attend the event and infuriated the Palestinians.”

US President Donald Trump looks over at Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia Mohammad bin Salman al-Saud as they line up for the family photo during the opening day of Argentina G20 Leaders’ Summit 2018 at Costa Salguero on 30 November 2018 in Buenos Aires, Argentina [Daniel Jayo/Getty Images]

While discussing the issue of the current Saudi support for Israeli policies and practices in Palestine with a credible Palestinian official last week, he told me that the Palestinians had contacted the Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro to ask him not to relocate his country’s embassy to Jerusalem. “The Saudis have been putting pressure on us in order to relocate our embassy to Jerusalem,” replied the Brazilian leader. What more evidence of Mohammad Bin Salman’s Zionism do we need?

The founder of Friends of Zion Museum is American Evangelical Christian Mike Evans. He said, after visiting a number of the Gulf States, that, “The leaders [there] are more pro-Israel than a lot of Jews.” This was a specific reference to Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince, and his counterpart in the UAE, Mohammed Bin Zayed.

“All versions of Zionism lead to the same reactionary end of unbridled expansionism and continued settler colonial genocide of [the] Palestinian people,” Israeli-American writer and photographer Yoav Litvin wrote for Al Jazeera. We may well see an Israeli Embassy opened in Riyadh in the near future, and a Saudi Embassy in Tel Aviv or, more likely, Jerusalem. Is Mohammad Bin Salman a Zionist? There’s no doubt about it.

The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Monitor.

George Orwell’s dystopian foresight could easily find new expressions in the ongoing Israeli wars of genocide in Gaza and Lebanon. Much like “war is peace”, the Biden administration and the European Union have contributed to creating phrases such as “aggression is self-defence,” “murder is collateral damage”, “safe areas are death traps” and “humanitarian aid is a starvation diet.”

After enduring a full year of Israeli terror, extreme torment and military occupation, fear never conquered Gazans. Despite the complete Israeli blockade – abetted with the help of the Egyptian regime – and the stark imbalance in military power, Gaza’s collective resistance, by all means necessary, remained steadfast and resilient.

Notwithstanding the above, Benjamin Netanyahu has not succeeded in achieving any of his declared objectives. For instance, less than seven per cent of the freed Israeli captives were recovered by force. Perhaps because the Israeli prime minister’s undeclared Zionist objectives, such as land grabs in the West Bank under the shadow of the Gaza genocide, took precedence over pursuing a proven venue for the release of Israeli prisoners.

Netanyahu’s war success can be only measured by Israel’s scale of vengeance, as the toll of the murdered and injured has reached 150,000. Gaza has been turned into a living hell. A war that pervasively and systematically diminished Gaza’s economic capacity, following an 18-year blockade that crippled the economy and forced upon it an ever-increasing sense of dependency.

Yet, Israel failed to bring any part of Gaza into submission. As a result, several Israeli generals, led by former national security adviser Israeli Maj-General Giora Eiland, contrived a new approach, the “General’s Plan”, to ethnically cleanse northern Gaza.

The General’s Plan is not exclusively a military strategy but rather an orchestrated noncombatant action, euphemistically termed to mask its true intention: genocide and ethnic cleansing through starvation. It calls first for the complete isolation of northern Gaza from the rest of the Gaza Strip. Second: compartmentalise northern Gaza into separate quarters and declare each section a war zone, forcing civilians to leave or become legitimate military targets.

The initial phase, which began in early October, blocked aid trucks from reaching the north and then segregated the Jabalia camp from its surroundings. In other words, genocide by attrition, one quarter at a time, in a slow motion.

READ: Israel is playing even more dirty to force people out of Jabalia

As part of the General’s Starvation Plan, Israel bombed the only UN distribution center in Jabalia camp on Monday, murdering ten civilians queuing to receive food aid. Since last October, around 400,000 civilians remain in northern Gaza out of the original 1.2 million. Many refuse to evacuate despite the unbearable conditions. They know from historical experience that evacuation is an Israeli alias for ethnic cleansing. Once they leave, they may never return, as happened in 1948. They also saw what happened to those who evacuated, many were killed as they “moved south”, while others were murdered in the Israeli death traps, otherwise known as designated “safe areas.”

The Biden administration has been whitewashing Israeli use of starvation as a method of warfare since 9 October, 2023 when the Israeli minister of war declared “no electricity, no food, no fuel, everything is closed.” However, on Tuesday, a little over a year after the minister’s declaration, the American secretaries of state and defence sent Israeli officials a letter giving them another grace period of 30 days to allow food aid into north Gaza or risk a restriction of US military assistance to Israel.

The new warning feels like a classic case of a déjà vu. In April 2024, the Biden administration issued a similar warning to Israel ahead of a report that was being prepared by American officials examining Israel’s violation of the Leahy Law, particularly subsection 6201(a). The law stipulates that the US should not provide assistance to any country that “prohibits or otherwise restricts, directly or indirectly, the transport or delivery of United States humanitarian assistance.”

Following that warning, US government agencies and officials concluded that Israel was blocking American humanitarian aid to Gaza. The US Agency for International Development (USAID) notified the State Department of Israel’s “arbitrary denial, restriction and impediments” of American aid to Gaza residents. In addition, the State Department’s refugee bureau issued a similar opinion stating that “facts on the ground indicate US humanitarian assistance is being restricted.”

Even after those palpable reports from the two US agencies, the Israeli Sayanim and American Secretary of State, told Congress on 10 May that Israel does not restrict “the transport or delivery of US humanitarian assistance” in Gaza.

Empowered by Washington, the General’s Starvation Plan aims to block the delivery of medical aid, food, fuel and water to the besieged quarter, currently Jabalia camp where more than 20,000 people live. This is part of what appears to be a gradual genocide, while creating the illusion of allowing aid trucks into the northern area, as the US ambassador informed the UN Security Council on Wednesday.

The entry of aid trucks does not guarantee the delivery of food to the starving population. It means that Israel retains complete control over what section is fed and who is left to starve. It also confirms that American officials continue to be Israel’s willing enablers to carry on with its General’s Starvation Plan in a systematic and phased mini-genocide.

READ: UN: 345,000 Palestinians in Gaza face ‘catastrophic’ hunger levels this winter

The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Monitor.

Syria has suffered its worst bloodshed since Bashar Al-Assad was ousted in December, with more than 1,000 people reported killed in violence that has swept the coastal region of the country since Thursday. The violence has pitted the Islamist-led government’s security forces against fighters from Assad’s Alawite minority.

The dead include hundreds of Alawite civilians, whom the a British-based organisation that reports on the conflict, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, reported were killed in reprisals after attacks on security forces.

What has driven the violence; how has interim President Ahmed Al-Sharaa reacted; and what have world powers said?

The violence began to spiral on Thursday, when the authorities said that their forces in the coastal region came under attack from fighters aligned with the ousted Assad regime. The interim government poured reinforcements into the area, which is heavily populated by Alawites, to crush what it described as a deadly, well-planned and premeditated assault by remnants of the previous regime.

As government reinforcements deployed, mosques in regions loyal to the new administration began calling on people to wage jihad, or holy struggle, in support of security forces.

By Friday afternoon, reports began emerging of scores of civilians being killed in sectarian reprisals in Alawite towns and villages. As of Sunday evening, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said that 973 civilians were killed in reprisal attacks carried out by government forces or fighters aligned with them. More than 250 Alawite fighters were killed and more than 230 members of government security forces were also killed, it added. Reuters has not been able to independently verify the tolls.

READ: Children among hundreds of civilians killed in renewed fighting in Syria, says NGO

The Alawites are the second-largest religious group in Syria after Sunni Muslims. Their faith is an offshoot of Shia Islam. The Assad regime recruited heavily from the Alawite community for its army and security apparatus, which was notorious for its brutality during more than five decades of the family’s rule.

This put many Alawites on the front lines of the civil war that erupted out of protests against Assad’s rule in 2011. The conflict took on a sectarian dimension as Sunni Muslim rebel groups sought to topple the Assad government which was backed by Shia Iran, Lebanon’s Shia Hezbollah movement and others.

Al-Sharaa led the most powerful Sunni group fighting Assad. Known as the Nusra Front, the group was part of Al-Qaeda until he severed ties with the jihadist network in 2016 and renamed his organisation. In a 2015 interview with Al Jazeera, Al-Sharaa described the Alawites as part of a sect that “moved outside the religion of God and of Islam” and urged them to renounce Assad and change their beliefs to remain safe.

Since Assad was ousted, the interim president has pledged to run Syria in an inclusive way. But while he has publicly engaged Kurds, Christians and Druze, there have been no declared meetings between him and senior Alawite figures. Many Alawites say that they suffered like other Syrians under the rule of Assad and his father, both of whom came from the sect.

Prior to Thursday’s escalation, Alawite activists had reported violence and attacks on their community following Assad’s ouster, particularly in rural Homs and Latakia.

In a speech on Sunday, Al-Sharaa said that remnants of the Assad government, supported by external parties, were seeking to create strife and drag Syria back into civil war with the aim of dividing it. He promised to form a fact-finding committee and said its findings would be made public, vowing to bring to account anyone involved “in the bloodshed of civilians” or mistreating them.

He has also announced the formation of a committee aimed at preserving civil peace, which would be tasked with communicating with the people on the coast and providing them with the support they needed to guarantee their protection.

The violence has prompted international alarm.

The United States, which imposes sanctions on Damascus, urged the Syrian authorities to hold accountable the “radical Islamist terrorists” [sic] that had killed people in Syria and said it stood with Syria’s religious and ethnic minorities.

Israeli Defence Minister Israel Katz said on social media that atrocities committed against the Alawites showed that Al-Sharaa had revealed his “true face” as a jihadist.

However, Saudi Arabia and Turkey, allies of Damascus, both signalled their backing for the interim administration as violence was escalating last week. Riyadh condemned “crimes being undertaken by outlaw groups” in Syria and their targeting of security forces.

Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan, whose country has forces on the ground in north-west Syria, has urged calm and said unnamed foreign elements were partly to blame.

Iran, which backed Assad through the war, has warned that the violence in Syria could cause regional instability.

READ: Israel urges Europe to stop ‘granting legitimacy’ to Syria’s interim authorities

The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Monitor.

At the start of Israel’s genocide in Gaza, the Israeli government made no secret of its intention to forcibly transfer Palestinians from the enclave and urged the international community to support its plans for what it called ‘resettlement’.

“Europe has a long history of assisting refugees fleeing conflicts,” Danny Danon and Ram Ben Barak wrote in 2023 in an op-ed for the Wall Street Journal. Describing participation in forced transfer as “a moral imperative”, Danon and Ben Barak suggested that countries accept as much as 10,000 people each to “alleviate the crisis”.

Had the suggestion been accepted by enough countries, Israel would have been granted its current greatest wish – to ethnically cleanse Gaza in full complicity with the international community. As things stand, the international community refused the Israel suggestion on grounds of breaking international law, while getting on board with Israel committing genocide. The real reason behind the stance, however, was that governments would rather witness large-scale massacres of Palestinians from a distance than accept refugees.

US President Donald Trump is now promoting Israel’s strategy. “You’re talking about probably a million and half people, and we just clean out that whole thing. You know, over the centuries it’s had many, many conflicts, that site. And I don’t know, something has to happen,” Trump said during a 20-minute meeting with reporters on Air Force One.

OPINION: Israel’s use of domicide to further its colonial endeavours

“It’s literally a demolition site right now. Almost everything is demolished and people are dying there,” Trump added, in his usual vague rhetoric. “So I’d rather get involved with some of the Arab nations and build housing at a different location where they can maybe live in peace for a change.”

Trump raised the idea with Jordan’s King Abdullah II and Egypt’s President Abdel Fatah Al-Sisi. Gaza was deemed “interesting” – for real investment purposes, of course. One must not forget Jared Kushner’s plans for Gaza – beachfront properties. And, while the Biden administration dragged its feet on forced displacement, the genocide happened under its watch and with full collaboration. Which means that the previous administration paved the way for Trump to echo what Israel insisted upon since the start of the genocide – Palestinians are slated for displacement, one way or another.

Israeli Finance Minister, Bezalel Smotrich, stated he will be working “to prepare an operational plan and ensure the realisation of President Trump’s vision.” But it’s best to call it the Israel vision, even if Trump is the President promoting forced transfer as a humanitarian necessity. The Israeli vision is colonial, fits in with genocide and the concept of Zionism’s Greater Israel. Real estate investments facilitate the Zionist concept. And what better way to promote rebuilding Gaza, even if for Palestinians, rebuilding Gaza means the total opposite?

As Palestinians return to their homes, Trump’s suggestion of forced transfer should be considered incitement to ethnic cleansing. The world is obliged to heed what is happening right after the ceasefire and the gradual return of Palestinian refugees to Gaza. Palestinians want to remain – it is their right – and that is all that matters.

OPINION: Could the head of the world’s highest court be a judge with Zionist tendencies?

The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Monitor.

Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian on Saturday urged US President Donald Trump to avoid creating turmoil, saying problems could be resolved through dialogue and implementation of a memorandum of understanding, Anadolu reports.

“If we proceed through dialogue and on the basis of the memorandum of understanding, we will resolve the problems and secure our rights,” Pezeshkian said in a ceremony in Tehran, as cited by Mehr News Agency.

“It is in the interest of the country, the region and the world that Trump does not create turmoil and that Israel does not cause insecurity and aggression,” he added.

Pezeshkian said Iran does not favor war but would respond firmly to any assaults.

“We do not like war, but we will stand with strength against aggression and defend ourselves,” he said, adding that no power could force a united nation determined to defend its territory to surrender.

He said Tehran was seeking to resolve problems through dialogue, but stressed that the Iranian people, officials and military commanders would “never surrender” in the face of threats and aggression.

The president also accused Israel of seeking to sow divisions among Muslim countries, saying greater unity among Islamic nations could thwart such efforts.

READ: Iran says it agreed with Oman on Hormuz passage route, links reopening to US commitments

Turning to domestic issues, Pezeshkian said maintaining industrial production during the coming winter was a “red line,” stressing that supplies of gas, electricity and water to production facilities should not be interrupted.

He said the government would manage consumption of water, electricity, gas and fuel and, if restrictions became necessary, would first impose them on government offices and public buildings rather than shift the burden onto the public.

Pezeshkian called on the public to cooperate with the government to maintain stability, saying Iran’s adversaries should not believe that pressure would force the country to surrender.

The US-Israeli war against Iran began on Feb. 28, with attacks targeting military, nuclear and infrastructure sites across the country. Iran responded with missile and drone strikes against Israel and US military facilities across the region.

Iran and the US reached a 14-point memorandum of understanding in June, mediated by Pakistan and Qatar, aimed at ending hostilities and opening a 60-day window for negotiations toward a broader agreement.

The memorandum also addressed the reopening of the Strait of Hormuz and lifting of the US naval blockade, as well as sanctions and Iran’s frozen assets.

​​​​​​​Tehran has maintained that further progress in talks depends on Washington fulfilling its commitments under the memorandum, while Iranian officials have said the Strait of Hormuz will not fully reopen until those obligations are implemented.

READ: Dialogue ‘only viable way out’ of US-Iran conflict, China says amid sanctions threats

The administration of former US President, Joe Biden, knowingly allowed Israel’s genocide in Gaza to continue long after it had lost any clear military objective, with senior officials in Washington privately admitting it amounted to “killing and destroying for the sake of killing and destroying”. This damning assessment, along with revelations of political manipulation, diplomatic cover-ups and sabotaged peace efforts, comes from a bombshell investigation aired by Israel’s Channel 13. Details of the investigation have been translated by Drop Site News and shared on X.

The Biden administration allowed Israel unprecedented leeway to carry out its military offensive, despite the enormous death and devastation it inflicted on Gaza. Former Israeli ambassador, Michael Herzog, made a startling admission about Biden’s support: “God did the State of Israel a favour that Biden was the president during this period. We fought [in Gaza] for over a year and the administration never came to us and said, ‘ceasefire now.’ It never did. And that’s not to be taken for granted.” His remarks encapsulated a broader sentiment that the White House gave Benjamin Netanyahu all the political space he needed to execute the military offensive, which has claimed the lives of more than 52,000 Palestinians, mainly women and children.

READ: ICC judges order prosecutor to keep arrest warrant requests confidential in Gaza probes

The investigation, which included interviews with nine current and former US officials, reveals a deeply troubling portrait of US complicity in Israel’s genocide in Gaza. Former national security aide, Ilan Goldenberg, stated that the war amounted to “killing and destroying for the sake of killing and destroying”, with no viable political alternative ever established. Despite the White House’s public messaging about restraining Israel, the internal consensus appeared to be that the administration had no intention of exerting real pressure on the Occupation state.

The Biden administration also shielded Israel from allegations of war crimes, prompting a major backlash from staffers in the State Department. Lawyer Stacy Gilbert, for example, resigned in protest after being excluded from a key report that falsely claimed Israel had not violated US arms laws. Gilbert described the report as “shocking in its mendacity”, pointing out that aid obstruction and settler attacks were well documented, yet ignored. Meanwhile, Washington continued to certify Israeli compliance with US law, ensuring the uninterrupted flow of weapons.

The investigation also revealed that Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, deliberately sabotaged hostage negotiations in order to prevent a ceasefire. US officials confirmed that Netanyahu tanked talks out of fear that a deal would compel him to halt the war.

Despite public backlash, Biden’s private approach remained deferential. Even after reportedly telling Netanyahu he was “full of shit” and hanging up mid-call, Biden ultimately maintained support. After briefly halting a shipment of 2,000-lb bombs due to concerns about their use in densely populated areas of Gaza, Netanyahu publicly accused Washington of broader arms delays. Biden, rather than escalating pressure, resumed the shipment process shortly thereafter.

The Channel 13 exposé further confirms that Biden’s reluctance to push Israel was deeply tied to a failed diplomatic initiative with Saudi Arabia. A landmark normalisation deal was in sight, but it required Israeli recognition of Palestinian statehood. These were flatly rejected by Netanyahu’s far-right coalition. Former US ambassador, Jack Lew, said he found Israel’s refusal “shocking”, while Amos Hochstein expressed disbelief that such a strategic opportunity was squandered. Sources confirmed that Netanyahu deliberately stalled negotiations in hopes that President Trump would return to office and claim the diplomatic win for himself.

These revelations lend significant weight to long-standing accusations that the Biden administration has not only provided diplomatic cover for Israel’s propaganda by repeating lies, but also actively enabled what many view as a campaign of ethnic cleansing. Critics note that Biden himself amplified false Israeli claims, such as the widely discredited allegations of Hamas beheading babies, rhetoric that helped to dehumanise a population in order to carry out genocide.

OPINION: Advisory opinions will not stop genocide

The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Monitor.