An investigative report, which will air on Sunday on the Israeli show “Hamakor” which is broadcast on Channel 13, features members of the Biden administration who acknowledge that the White House was mulling an initiative to remove Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu from office at the start of the war in Gaza.
The report will include interviews with nine central figures from the Biden administration. “Hamakor” host Raviv Drucker, previewing Sunday’s show, said that the administration officials described a feeling of ingratitude on the part of the Netanyahu government for what the Biden administration gave to Israel.
One of the senior officials interviewed was Ilan Goldenberg, who was later appointed Kamala Harris’s Jewish community liaison during her presidential campaign. Goldenberg told Channel 13 that near the start of the war, after the first hostage deal fell apart, ideas were being floated around in the White House on what could be done to accelerate a process that would lead to Netanyahu leaving office.
“There were a lot of people who were talking about, including in the Oval Office at times, the idea of the President going out and giving a speech…Benny Gantz was at like 37 [seats in the polls] and Bibi was at 15, he was very weak, Joe Biden was still incredibly popular in Israel,” Goldenberg said in a preview of the report published Thursday, adding that the idea was that Biden would present Israelis with two options: “You can end the war, get all the hostages out, get a deal that includes having elements of Hamas leave, or you keep doing what you’re doing, Israel is in a forever war, 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: ‘Let's break this up because it’s not going anywhere good,’” Goldenberg told the channel.