Biden’s legacy is Gaza genocide, Palestinian rights advocates say

Democratic politicians and commentators in the United States have heaped praise on President Joe Biden since he dropped out of the 2024 presidential race on Sunday.

Representative Maxine Waters, for instance, called Biden a “kind and decent man”. Former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, meanwhile, extolled his “vision, values and leadership”.

But while political leaders showered Biden with compliments, bombs continued to rain down on Gaza, killing dozens and sparking another wave of mass displacement in Khan Younis.

For many Palestinian rights advocates, the carnage and abuses in Gaza will define Biden’s place in the history books, as the US remains steadfast in its support of Israel’s war in the Palestinian territory.

“He’ll be remembered for the hundreds of thousands killed, injured and displaced in Gaza,” said Abed Ayoub, the executive director of the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee (ADC).

“There is no way around it. ‘Genocide Joe’ is what he’s going to be remembered as.”

Since Israel’s war on Gaza started on October 7, Biden has offered the government of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu unconditional military and diplomatic support.

Only once did Biden withhold a shipment of bombs to Israel over humanitarian concerns — and even then, he released part of that cargo a couple months later, amid pressure from Netanyahu.

Israel’s war, meanwhile, has killed nearly 39,000 Palestinians, displaced hundreds of thousands, fuelled a man-made hunger crisis and destroyed large parts of the territory. United Nations experts and other observers have warned of a “risk of genocide” in Gaza.

Ayoub told Al Jazeera that, despite Biden’s domestic achievements, the president will rank among the worst in US history due to his unconditional support for Israel.

The US Campaign for Palestinian Rights (USCPR) echoed that comment. “Nothing will erase the fact that Biden’s legacy is — and always will be — genocide,” the group said in a statement.

Netanyahu ‘bear hug’

The US president has been a stalwart supporter of Israel throughout his decades-long political career.

He frequently calls himself a Zionist and argues that Jews across the world would not be safe without Israel.

He put that worldview into policy during his presidency, as he pushed on with Former President Donald Trump’s pro-Israel doctrine. Biden kept the US embassy in Jerusalem and refused to reverse the Trump-era decision to recognise Israel’s claims to the occupied Golan Heights in Syria.

He also aggressively pursued formal ties between Israel and Arab states, a goal Trump advanced with the 2020 Abraham Accords.

That push for normalisation, however, came without progress towards the recognition of an independent Palestinian state or the dismantling of systemic anti-Palestinian discrimination.

The outbreak of the war in Gaza further underscored Biden’s pro-Israel policies.

Weeks after the conflict started, Biden travelled to Israel and publicly embraced Netanyahu in what many critics have described as a “bear hug”.

That sign of friendliness was widely understood to be an endorsement of Netanyahu’s response in Gaza, after the Palestinian group Hamas attacked southern Israel on October 7.

Even early in the conflict, human rights groups accused Israel of horrific violations rising to the level of genocide — a push to destroy the Palestinian people.

Within the first week alone, the Israeli military said it had unleashed 2,000 strikes across Gaza — a strip of land roughly the size of Las Vegas.

Biden has since authorised continuous arms transfers and more than $14bn in additional aid to sustain Israel’s Gaza offensive. Moreover, his administration has vetoed three United Nations Security Council proposals that would have called for a ceasefire.

Hatem Abudayyeh, the chair of the US Palestinian Community Network (USPCN), said Biden will be remembered above all for enabling Israel’s “crimes against humanity”.

“He could’ve turned the tap of money and weapons off in October, but he allowed this genocide to happen. He is complicit, and that’s what will be written on his tombstone,” Abudayyeh told Al Jazeera.

Biden and Palestinians

Following his entry into politics in 1970, Biden quickly rose from local to national prominence, mounting a successful dark-horse campaign to represent Delaware in the US Senate in 1972.

After nearly four decades in Congress, he became vice president under Barack Obama, and in 2021, he won the presidency himself.

The president does not hail from a political dynasty, and he is not an exceptional orator. His success in politics is often credited to his interpersonal skills and ability to project empathy.

That sense of compassion, however, never extended to Palestinians, activists say.

“For nine and a half months, President Biden has funded and armed the brutal Israeli genocide of Palestinians in Gaza, making the US government directly complicit in the killing of at least 39,000 people, including over 15,000 children,” Jewish Voice for Peace Action said in a statement on Sunday.

“Americans have watched in horror and outrage as Biden sent the Israeli government the weapons it used to wipe out entire generations of Palestinian families, to destroy hospitals, bakeries, schools, mosques, churches, universities, refugee camps, homes and Gaza’s entire health care system and electricity and water grids.”

Beyond policy, Biden’s rhetoric at times seemed dismissive of Israeli atrocities and Palestinian suffering.

“I have no notion that the Palestinians are telling the truth about how many people are killed. I’m sure innocents have been killed, and it’s the price of waging a war,” the US president said in October.

But that stance caused Biden troubles both domestically and abroad.

Even before Biden delivered a disastrous debate performance on June 27, the 81-year-old had started to trail his Republican rival Trump in public opinion polls.

Parts of the Democratic base — including young people, progressives, Arabs and Muslims — voiced frustration and anger with his support for Israel.

Groups like the USCPR argued that Biden’s age and debate performance were only one factor in the pressure that forced him from the presidential race.

“It was not Biden’s failed debate that showed he is unfit to lead,” USCPR said. “It was the tens of thousands of bombs he sent to kill Palestinian families. It was his callous, dystopian disregard for Palestinian lives.”

Other commentators likewise argued that Biden failed to show enough concern for the humanitarian crisis unfolding in Gaza.

Aaron David Miller, a veteran former US official, described the situation bluntly in an interview with the New Yorker in April.

“Do I think that Joe Biden has the same depth of feeling and empathy for the Palestinians of Gaza as he does for the Israelis? No, he doesn’t, nor does he convey it. I don’t think there’s any doubt about that,” he said.