Biden
Excoriated Netanyahu on Israel’s Conduct in the War, Woodward Book Says
The book,
“War,” lays bare just how frustrated the president has become with Prime
Minister Benjamin Netanyahu since the war in Gaza began.
Peter Baker Ephrat Livni
By Peter
Baker and Ephrat Livni
Oct. 8, 2024
Updated 5:40
p.m. ET
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/10/08/world/middleeast/biden-netanyahu-israel-woodward-book.html
President
Biden has had a long and complicated relationship with Israel’s prime minister,
Benjamin Netanyahu — one that has taken an especially intense turn in the year
since the Oct. 7 Hamas-led attacks, as documented in a new book by the
journalist Bob Woodward.
The book,
“War,” which is set to be released next week and relies on some anonymous
sources, lays bare just how frustrated Mr. Biden has become with Mr. Netanyahu
since the war in Gaza began and Israel has bombarded the enclave, killing more
than 40,000 people and displacing most of the more than two million residents
there.
Outwardly,
Mr. Biden has voiced strong support for Israel, sometimes in the face of
withering international criticism. He has said that Israel has a right to
defend itself, although he has from time to time publicly expressed some of his
frustration with Mr. Netanyahu. Privately, the president has reacted far more
explosively, sometimes with expletives, to Israel’s moves, as multiple news
reports have indicated.
Mr.
Netanyahu and the president last spoke on Aug. 21, according to a White House
statement.
Mr.
Woodward’s book, obtained by The New York Times and other news outlets on
Tuesday, adds additional, inside-the-room details to those previous accounts,
including direct quotes from Mr. Biden speaking with his staff or with the
prime minister.
In April,
for instance, the president questioned Mr. Netanyahu’s conduct in the war in a
phone call, asking, according to the book, “What’s your strategy, man?”
When Mr.
Netanyahu insisted that the Israeli military needed to push deeper into
southern Gaza and invade the southern city of Rafah, a key border crossing with
Egypt, the president, using Mr. Netanyahu’s nickname, dismissed this response.
“Bibi,
you’ve got no strategy,” Mr. Biden replied, according to Mr. Woodward.
In May, Mr.
Biden halted a shipment of 3,500 bombs to Israel out of concern that they would
be used in the Rafah operation and cause excessive civilian casualties. After
Mr. Netanyahu proceeded with the invasion of Rafah anyway, Mr. Biden told
advisers that Mr. Netanyahu was a liar, using an obscenity, and added that “18
out of 19 people who work for him” were also liars, the book says.
He
questioned Mr. Netanyahu’s motivations, saying that “he doesn’t give” a damn
about Hamas but gives a damn “only about himself,” although he used an earthier
term than “damn.”
Mr. Biden
has also occasionally expressed his irritation with Mr. Netanyahu directly with
the prime minister as the relationship has frayed.
“Bibi, what
the fuck?” the president yelled at Mr. Netanyahu in July, the book says, after
an Israeli airstrike killed a top Hezbollah military commander, Fuad Shukr, and
several civilians in an airstrike near Beirut and an Israeli bomb killed Ismail
Haniyeh, Hamas’s political leader, during a visit to Iran.
“You know
the perception of Israel around the world increasingly is that you’re a rogue
state, a rogue actor,” Mr. Biden told him, the book reports.
“This is
Haniyeh,” Mr. Netanyahu replied, according to the book, “one of the leading
terrorists. A terrible guy. We saw an opportunity and took it.”
The New York
Times could not independently verify the specific statements reported in Mr.
Woodward’s upcoming book.
As efforts
at a cease-fire in Gaza have all but collapsed, the war has reached the
one-year mark and conflicts with other Iranian proxy groups like Hezbollah have
escalated, threatening to draw Iran directly into the conflict. Mr. Biden and
Mr. Netanyahu are facing a situation not unlike one they have faced in the
recent past.
In April,
Israel conducted a strike in Syria that killed a top general in the Iranian
Revolutionary Guards Corps, and Iran responded with a salvo of about 300
ballistic missiles, rockets and drones at Israel. The United States and its
allies helped intercept most of the projectiles and, as The New York Times has
previously reported, Mr. Biden urged Mr. Netanyahu not to respond, telling him
to “do nothing” and “take the win.”
But Israel
launched a limited, calibrated strike against Iran in response, and Mr. Biden
told his advisers he had anticipated as much. “I know he’s going to do
something but the way I limit it is tell him to ‘do nothing,’” he said,
according to Mr. Woodward.
That
statement may foretell what lies ahead in the fraught relationship. Last week,
Iran fired nearly 200 ballistic missiles at Israel in what it said was
retaliation for the Israeli assassinations of Hassan Nasrallah, Hezbollah’s
leader; Mr. Haniyeh; and a commander of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards
Corps.
Mr. Biden
has warned Israel against striking Iranian nuclear sites, saying any response
should be “in proportion.” But based on the recent past, the president may not
expect Mr. Netanyahu to take U.S. advice.
Peter Baker
is the chief White House correspondent for The Times. He has covered the last
five presidents and sometimes writes analytical pieces that place presidents
and their administrations in a larger context and historical framework. More
about Peter Baker
Ephrat Livni
is a reporter for The Times’s DealBook newsletter, based in Washington. More
about Ephrat Livni
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