7 months ago
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President Biden has invited Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to the White House later this year after the two leaders met on the sidelines of the United Nations this week. The invitation is a major victory for Netanyahu and comes as his far-right government guts the power of the judiciary and moves closer to full annexation of the West Bank, with Israeli forces killing hundreds of Palestinians so far this year. We speak with Palestinian American analyst Yousef Munayyer, a scholar at the Arab Center Washington DC, as well as journalist Alex Kane, whose latest piece for Jewish Currents is headlined “Biden’s Legacy Will Be Apartheid.” The article looks at the decades-long Biden-Netanyahu relationship and how reluctant the U.S. administration has been to impose consequences despite Israel’s growing extremism. “When Biden says his support for Israel is ironclad, it basically means that his support for Israel is unconditional even as it consolidates an apartheid rule in the Occupied Territories and escalates ethnic cleansing processes that are going on right now,” says Kane. Munayyer adds that Biden’s push for normalization between Saudi Arabia and Israel — a key goal for his administration — will further legitimize Israeli repression.
