Ilan Goldenberg, a former aide to President Joe Biden, told Israel’s Channel 13 that the Biden administration tried to oust Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu after the October 7, 2023, terror attack by Hamas.
Channel 13 interviewed Goldenberg, noting that while Biden administration officials had been reluctant to speak in the early days of the Trump administration for fear of retribution, they are now telling their story.
Goldenberg, who led the Biden administration’s efforts to sanction right-wing Israelis, and who later was the Jewish outreach director for Vice President Kamala Harris’s presidential campaign, told Channel 13 that the Biden White House had hoped to use Biden’s temporary popularity in Israel, and Netanyahu’s post-October 7 unpopularity, to force political change in Israel, especially after Hamas broke an early hostage release deal.
Goldenberg suggested that the Biden administration was even willing to consider non-democratic means of removing Netanyahu (emphasis added):
There were a lot of people who were talking about, including in the Oval Office, at times, the idea of, like, the president going out and giving a speech. … [Opposition leader] Benny Gantz was at 37 [seats] and Bibi was at like 15 [in polls], right? Like, he was very weak. Joe Biden was still incredibly popular in Israel.
…
You can end the war, get all the hostages out, get a, get a deal that includes even, you know, maybe even trying to have elements of Hamas to leave — or you keep doing what you’re doing, and Israel’s in a forever war, you know, your sons and daughters are going to keep fighting, most of the hostages are going to come home dead. … The idea would be to either force Netanyahu to come on board with that, or scramble Israeli politics, and see if you can trigger elections, or God knows what. That’s what people were saying — like, let’s just break this up ’cause it’s not going anywhere good.
Goldenberg’s claims corroborate the historical record. In March last year, President Biden endorsed a bizarre call by then-Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) for Israelis to oust Netanyahu in new elections.
But Netanyahu’s popularity recovered in Israel as he defied Biden and launched an offensive into Rafah, a town on Gaza’s border with Egypt, rescuing hostages and ultimately killing Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar.
There was no point at which the Biden administration had sufficient commitments from Hamas to know whether the deal Goldenberg describes would actually have taken place; Hamas refused almost every deal, and it never committed to releasing all of the Israeli hostages.
Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News and the host of Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot on Sunday evenings from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET (4 p.m. to 7 p.m. PT). He is the author of The Agenda: What Trump Should Do in His First 100 Days, available for pre-order on Amazon. He is also the author of The Trumpian Virtues: The Lessons and Legacy of Donald Trump’s Presidency, now available on Audible. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.
