Biden’s Bear Hug Disaster
On this episode of The Time of Monsters, Yousef Munayyer on the folly of America’s Israel policy.
The Nation Podcasts
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Biden’s Bear Hug Disaster | The Time of Monsters with Jeet Heer
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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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)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.
Project 2025 For Real w/Chris Lehmann | Time of Monsters with Jeet Heer
Running for president last year, Donald Trump disowned Project 2025, the laundry list of radical demands gathered together by right-wing think tanks. Trump claimed Project 2025 had no influence on him and was only being raised by Democrats as a political attack. But now Trump is in power, he’s enacting an agenda of dismantling the welfare state that is following Project 2025 in close detail, as my Nation colleague Chris Lehmann documented in a recent column.
Chris and Jeet Heer talk about Trump’s mobilization of Christian nationalist ideologues in the service of a making the state subservient to big business. We also take up the remarkable supine Democratic Party response, and also possible sources of resistance in the courts, the federal government and, most crucially, from outraged public opinion mobilized into protest.
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