Biden’s legacy is Gaza genocide, Palestinian rights advocates say

Democratic politicians and commentators in the United States have heaped praise on President Joe Biden since he dropped out of the 2024 presidential race on Sunday.

Representative Maxine Waters, for instance, called Biden a “kind and decent man”. Former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, meanwhile, extolled his “vision, values and leadership”.

But while political leaders showered Biden with compliments, bombs continued to rain down on Gaza, killing dozens and sparking another wave of mass displacement in Khan Younis.

For many Palestinian rights advocates, the carnage and abuses in Gaza will define Biden’s place in the history books, as the US remains steadfast in its support of Israel’s war in the Palestinian territory.

“He’ll be remembered for the hundreds of thousands killed, injured and displaced in Gaza,” said Abed Ayoub, the executive director of the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee (ADC).

“There is no way around it. ‘Genocide Joe’ is what he’s going to be remembered as.”

Israel’s war, meanwhile, has killed nearly 39,000 Palestinians, displaced hundreds of thousands, fuelled a man-made hunger crisis and destroyed large parts of the territory. United Nations experts and other observers have warned of a “risk of genocide” in Gaza.

Ayoub told Al Jazeera that, despite Biden’s domestic achievements, the president will rank among the worst in US history due to his unconditional support for Israel.

The US Campaign for Palestinian Rights (USCPR) echoed that comment. “Nothing will erase the fact that Biden’s legacy is — and always will be — genocide,” the group said in a statement.

Netanyahu ‘bear hug’

The US president has been a stalwart supporter of Israel throughout his decades-long political career.

He frequently calls himself a Zionist and argues that Jews across the world would not be safe without Israel.

He put that worldview into policy during his presidency, as he pushed on with Former President Donald Trump’s pro-Israel doctrine. Biden kept the US embassy in Jerusalem and refused to reverse the Trump-era decision to recognise Israel’s claims to the occupied Golan Heights in Syria.

He also aggressively pursued formal ties between Israel and Arab states, a goal Trump advanced with the 2020 Abraham Accords.

That push for normalisation, however, came without progress towards the recognition of an independent Palestinian state or the dismantling of systemic anti-Palestinian discrimination.

The outbreak of the war in Gaza further underscored Biden’s pro-Israel policies.

Weeks after the conflict started, Biden travelled to Israel and publicly embraced Netanyahu in what many critics have described as a “bear hug”.

That sign of friendliness was widely understood to be an endorsement of Netanyahu’s response in Gaza, after the Palestinian group Hamas attacked southern Israel on October 7.

Even early in the conflict, human rights groups accused Israel of horrific violations rising to the level of genocide — a push to destroy the Palestinian people.

Within the first week alone, the Israeli military said it had unleashed 2,000 strikes across Gaza — a strip of land roughly the size of Las Vegas.

Biden has since authorised continuous arms transfers and more than $14bn in additional aid to sustain Israel’s Gaza offensive. Moreover, his administration has vetoed three United Nations Security Council proposals that would have called for a ceasefire.

Hatem Abudayyeh, the chair of the US Palestinian Community Network (USPCN), said Biden will be remembered above all for enabling Israel’s “crimes against humanity”.