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Biden’s Bear Hug Disaster

On this episode of The Time of Monsters, Yousef Munayyer on the folly of America’s Israel policy.

Jeet Heer

December 10, 2023

Israel Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu hugs US President Joe Biden upon his arrival at Tel Aviv’s Ben Gurion airport on October 18, 2023.(Brendan Smialowski / AFP via Getty Images)

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Biden’s Bear Hug Disaster | The Time of Monsters with Jeet Heer
byThe Nation Magazine

On this episode of The Time of Monsters, I talked to Yousef Munayyer, a Palestinian-American analyst who heads the Palestine/Israel Program at the Arab Center in Washington, DC. He offered an informed perspective on the ideological origins of the bear hug strategy and how it has manifestly failed in its stated goal of trying to restrain Israel from excessive violence. We also discuss the way Biden’s strategy is bad for American national interest and hurts Biden’s re-election chances. We also take up the repression of free speech as a result of the conflict.

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The current war in Gaza has few parallels in recent decades in terms of the pace of killing. New York Times columnist Nick Kristof argues that one needs to go back to the 1994 genocide in Rwanda to find a parallel. Amid the carnage, Joe Biden’s full-throttle support for Israel has been constant. He has on occasion offered a few cautionary words about the excessive death of civilians, but in practice he has followed a ‘bear hug’ strategy of giving Israel a blank check. 

On this episode of The Time of Monsters, I talked to Yousef Munayyer, a Palestinian-American analyst who heads the Palestine/Israel Program at the Arab Center in Washington, DC. He offered an informed perspective on the ideological origins of the bear hug strategy and how it has manifestly failed in its stated goal of trying to restrain Israel from excessive violence. We also discuss the way Biden’s strategy is bad for American national interest and hurts Biden’s re-election chances. We also take up the repression of free speech as a result of the conflict.

The Nation Podcasts

Here's where to find podcasts from The Nation. Political talk without the boring parts, featuring the writers, activists and artists who shape the news, from a progressive perspective.

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Jeet HeerTwitterJeet Heer is a national affairs correspondent for The Nation and host of the weekly Nation podcast, The Time of Monsters. He also pens the monthly column “Morbid Symptoms.” The author of In Love with Art: Francoise Mouly’s Adventures in Comics with Art Spiegelman (2013) and Sweet Lechery: Reviews, Essays and Profiles (2014), Heer has written for numerous publications, including The New Yorker, The Paris Review, Virginia Quarterly Review, The American Prospect, The GuardianThe New Republic, and The Boston Globe.


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