Joe Biden plays to the home crowd on Israel’s war in Gaza

Protesters hold a demonstration in support of a ceasefire in Gaza in the Cannon House Office Building in Washington DC.

For the first time since the October 7 attacks by Hamas, the US has proposed a ceasefire in Gaza.

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken, who has spent almost as much time in the Middle East as he has at home since October 7, has been negotiating with Arab countries. He has come up with a six-week ceasefire in Gaza, in exchange for the return of Israeli hostages abducted by Hamas on October 7. He said the resolution to the UN Security Council was ready to go.

The proposal is now being considered by Israel and the Hamas leadership in Qatar.

“We actually have a resolution that we put forward right now,” he said.

The ceasefire has the backing of Arab nations, including Egypt and Saudi Arabia.

The Israel Defence Force maintains that up to four battalions of Hamas soldiers – approximately 4000 men – are in Rafah where around a million Palestinians displaced by the conflict are sheltering.

The action and rhetoric from the Biden administration has altered dramatically as the conflict has dragged on in Gaza.

On October 14, Biden visited Tel Aviv and embraced Israel’s Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu.

“Israel must again be a safe place for the Jewish people,” Biden said.

“And I promise you: We’re going to do everything in our power to make sure that it will be,” Biden said.

“We are going to make sure you have what you need to protect your people, to defend your nation.”

President Biden has put his name behind calls for a ceasefire for the first time since the war started.

While there are real humanitarian concerns associated with a further ground war in a place Netanyahu’s government urged Palestinian non-combatants to go to for their own safety, it is difficult to believe that the Biden administration’s change of heart is driven by anything else than US domestic politics.

Late last month on the day of the Michigan primary, Nihad Awad, the executive director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) delivered a speech in Arabic in Detroit where he signalled that America’s 3.45 million Muslims would deliver a blow to Biden’s prospects of re-election.

“Our message is as follows: ‘Allah willing, our votes will make you lose the presidency.”

Awad went on to disparage Biden’s mental and physical frailty.

About 240,000 Muslims live in Michigan with 150,000 in Pennsylvania and almost as many in Georgia, three swing states Biden needs to hold to retain the White House.

How much influence the peak Muslim-American body has over Muslim voters is an open question. One can’t see how those votes would go to the GOP and Trump but in a voluntary voting system, if Muslims in the US decide to stay home en masse on November 5, it could be enough to shift the needle in Trump’s direction.

In 2020, Biden won Pennsylvania by little more than 80000 votes. In Michigan, Biden won by 150000 votes. The margin was down to 11779 votes in Georgia.

The war in Gaza continues to pose problems for left wing governments around the world.

Sir Keir Starmer’s Labour Party appears on track for a landslide win In the United Kingdom when an election is called, probably in October or early November. There will be no saving the Tories who are jumping ship at an alarming rate. The only thing stopping Labour from a thumping majority, possibly of around 400 seats in the Commons, is the prospect of a Corbynite ersatz opposition or indeed George Galloway’s creepy third way putting up sufficient credible candidates to tip the balance.

People mourn as they receive the bodies of victims of an Israeli strike in Rafah.

Meanwhile, the Albanese government faced a furious protest in the parliament earlier this week. Rowdy pro-Palestinian protesters were escorted from the galleries but not before sending a shiver up the spine of Labour MHRs who hail from electorates in Western Sydney and Northern and Western Melbourne. In our preferential voting system the damage may be limited but sensible governments would ignore these protests at their peril with an election due a year from now.

But the full force of pro-Palestinian sentiment in the US be it from Muslim citizens or white progressives, threatens the Democrats’ ambitions to hold the White House and could bring more desultory results in down ticket congressional ballots.

Call me cynical but the shift in rhetoric from the Biden administration has less to do with humanitarian disaster in the Gaza than saving their own necks at the ballot box.

Last week, House Majority leader, Chiluck Schumer, a New York Jew, went a step further, essentially calling for regime change in Israel. Schumer demanded fresh elections in Israel, believing Netanyahu would be removed from power at the ballot box.

Cheap politics aside, the problem with Schumer’s argument is that Netanyahu’s political opponents also support a ground war in Rafah and will continue to push as Netanyahu has for Hamas’s foot soldiers to be excised from Gaza, dead or alive.

Will it mean an enduring change in US-Israel relations? Very possibly but the theatre acted out by Schumer, Blinken and Biden, is designed purely for domestic consumption.

The theory goes that the outrages on October 7 were part of an overall plan by Hamas to shift western sentiment against Israel. The barbarity and mass murder was contrived as part of an extended propaganda war.

Hamas knew the response to its cruelty would not go unpunished. The terrorist group understood Netanyahu would respond brutally to the October 7 attacks. Hamas continues to cheer on civilian casualties knowing the West will splinter and waver in the face of electoral backlashes in their own backyards.