Biden's Attempt to Oust Netanyahu After October 7

A secret effort to undermine in Israel's democracy is revealed

President Biden has always claimed he had Israel’s back. An explosive new report confirmed by nine of his top national security officials refutes that claim.

The most disturbing revelation is that only months after the October 7 attack, Biden and his aides secretly sought to interfere in Israel’s politics and dethrone Israel’s democratically elected prime minister.

One former Biden official says there were discussions to “scramble Israeli politics, and see if you can trigger elections, or Gd knows what.”

The revelation is based on extensive interviews with former top Biden administration officials that aired on Israeli Channel 13 on April 27.

The new report was delivered by Raviv Drucker, the host of Israel’s Channel 13 “Hamakor” investigative program.

Unfortunately, the show and its deeply troubling revelations have received scant attention in the United States.

But Drucker’s wide-ranging investigative report showcases the Biden administration’s deep antagonism towards Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, even as Israelis were reeling from the brutal October 7 attack.

Drucker is a nationally known Israeli journalist who has broadcast many investigative reports. He also has published many brutally critical accounts of Netanyahu and his family. He’s not a fan of the current Prime Minister. And Channel 13 has aired many other anti-Netanyahu programs.

Sure, it’s true that President Biden’s hostility towards the Israeli head of state was never quite a secret. But former Biden officials decided to publicly admit this truth.

It’s interesting that they did so on Israeli national television, not on American TV. Did they do so to advance their own previous animas against Netanyahu?

It is vital to understand their comments came as anti-Netanyahu organizers are escalating their political attacks on the prime minister.

Last Saturday, former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak called for a “civil insurrection” to topple the Netanyahu government, according to the Jewish News Service. His call came even as Israel is calling up reserves and the country is facing active wars in Gaza, Lebanon, Yemen and possibly a war with Iran.

“We need to get to a civil insurrection,” he proclaimed also on Channel 13. Barak is calling for hundreds of thousands to take to the streets for “the shutdown of the country until the government falls.”

The sense that Biden wasn’t fully in Israel’s corner have certainly rumbled below the surface since October 7, including charges that Washington withheld key weapons from Israel during the war.

But it’s his administration’s anti-democratic maneuvering against a major ally that’s most alarming.

Tablet, the highly regarded Jewish investigative publication reported in August 2024 about President Biden’s anti-democratic ploys against Netanyahu. “The Biden administration has assembled an interagency team of targeteers…to weaken if not. Topple the government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu,” they reported.

Here's a little bit of information people should know about Netanyahu and democracy. In 1996 at the age of 47, he became Israel’s youngest prime minister. Netanyahu also became the first Israeli prime minister elected directly by popular vote.

He was re-elected to the country’s highest post in 2009, 2013, 2015, 2020 and in 2022.

The former Biden officials on Channel 13 described their efforts to remove him from office. Hamakor reports that internally, Biden administration openly discussed the idea of forcing out Netanyahu.

One of the nine former Biden officials on his show was Ilan Goldenberg, who served in national security positions for Presidents Obama and Biden and in 2023 became Vice President Harris’ Middle East advisor. Goldenberg also served as Harris’ Jewish liaison during her 2024 Presidential run.

I reached out to Goldenberg, who now is a senior executive at J Street, an organization that for years has been highly antagonistic towards the Israeli prime minister. He did not return my call.

Not well known is that Goldenberger was born in Jerusalem as an Israeli citizen. He renounced his Israeli citizenship to work for President Obama in his first term. The Jewish critic originally focused on advancing the administration’s controversial Iran policy.

In the Channel 13 interview, Goldenberg was quite candid about Biden. He suggested the administration was considering measures to trigger new elections and force Netanyahu out even as the October 7 atrocities were still fresh in Israeli minds.

Goldenberger explained the former President’s strategy, saying, “The idea would be to either force Netanyahu to come on board (with the Biden policy), or scramble Israeli politics, and see if you can trigger elections, or Gd knows what.”

The idea that Biden would “scramble Israeli politics,” supposedly a staunch American ally, shows its deep disrespect for Israeli democracy. And it deeply tarnishes Biden’s image in Israel.

In the Channel 13 program, Tom Nides, Biden’s former U.S. Ambassador to Israel continued the narrative of the former President’s antagonism toward Netanyahu saying the former President regularly demonized Netanyahu. He said Biden considered the Israeli leader to be “a manipulator, a magician.”

Biden, who in public tried to appear softspoken, frequently used coarse and ugly language behind the scenes. And his antipathy towards Netanyahu often was on full display to his aides.

Nides shed a little bit of light on Biden’s use of ugly language towards the Israeli leader, saying in the program that the former President used “colorful language” when he talked about Netanyahu. But incongruously, the former Ambassador didn’t blame Biden for his use of obscenities. Instead, he blamed the Israeli leader.

“President Biden likes to use colorful language and occasionally [Netanyahu] was able to extract that language from the president,” the former Ambassador said.

“Hamakor” also reported that during one of their conversations during the war, Biden hung up on Netanyahu in the middle of a conversation.

During another, he told the prime minister that he was “full of shit.” Netanyahu was offended, but didn’t react, according to the program.

In a commentary, Victor Davis Hanson, a senior fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution posted comments about these ugly revelations. “This startling disclosure…raises critical concerns about the Biden administration’s respect for Israeli democracy, particularly during one of the darkest periods in the nation’s modern history, when Israel was reeling from an unprecedented terrorist onslaught that claimed over 1,200 lives and left hundreds kidnapped into Gaza.

Hansen added, “At a time when Israel was battling for its very survival against genocidal terrorism, the Biden administration, according to Goldenberg’s account, was actively seeking to leverage the crisis for political ends, rather than offering unconditional support to an ally under siege.”

I suspect we can expect more details to emerge of how the former president – and his fellow Democrats – aggressively tried to subvert America’s biggest democratic ally in the Middle East.

Stay tuned as other “tell-all” books emerge.