Its hard to know whether to cry or laugh reading the highlights of the hour-long conversation Joe Biden had with the New York Times Thomas Friedman on Tuesday, after meeting President Isaac Herzog.

One can cry over the impotence and uselessness of the strongest superpower in the world when it comes to its protg, Israel. And one can laugh at the reversed roles of the ant and the elephant.

One can cry that America has learned nothing and forgotten nothing about the only way Israel can be dealt with, if one really wants to influence it, and one can roll over laughing at how Israel continues to make a fool of the United States.

The outcome is the same: Israel cancontinue doing anything it wants, enact anti-democratic laws,carry out pogromsagainst the Palestinians and continue with the apartheid the United States wont lift a finger.

Even when Washington grumbles, rages, fumes, condemns and evendelays inviting the prime minister the most awful doomsday weapon Israel doesnt have to take it seriously. America talks and never shoots. If it ever wants to influence Israel, something that has yet to happen, it will have to start shooting, as the American saying goes.

The terrible Biden, who isnt inviting our Netanyahu, despite all the suffering of the Jewish people, pleads with Israel. Pleads. Friedman may have written that Bidenconveyed a clear messagethat the legislation must stop, but this message is hollow, as were most of those that preceded it.

Over the years Israel has learned to ignore these messages. Nothing bad happened to it. This can only mean that the pleader himself doesnt really want to see the side hes pleading with change its ways. Biden is paying lip service to Israeli democracy and isnt saying a word about what his country will do if Israel doesnt heed his plea.

Without a price tag, Mr. President, nothing will change. Havent you yet learned this, after so many years of assessment and reassessment? And how easy it is to influence Israel with deeds: You want a visa waiver, treat Arab Americans decently. And lo and behold, Israel does as it is told. Enough with the carrots, its time for the sticks, especially if America holds Israel dear.

Just as it led the longest (and most sterile) peace talks in history, so the United States is doing with the regime coup. In both cases its not only Americas right to intervene, it is its duty, and in both cases its betraying that duty. All the rights blather about these being internal Israeli affairs is absurd.

The occupation is certainly no internal matter, and changing the regime inIsrael requires the United States intervention, as long as it finances and supports Israel by virtue of those shared values.

Those who believe Israel must solve its problems by itself must also admit that this experiment has failed and is hopeless. The superpower has responsibility for the regional reality here. Wed have had a different Middle East and a different Israel had America been different.

No other country has the power to change reality like America, and no other country has so betrayed its duty. Endless peace plans, empty talk about the two-state solution, which Biden keeps promoting shamelessly, knowing its leading nowhere. And Israel is further than it has ever been from ending the apartheid.

It is Americas right to gorge Israel with its taxpayers money, to arm it to the teeth and support it blindly in international institutions. But why not condition all this support on something? On something in return? On a change of direction?

It can only mean that the entire business isnt really important to the U.S. either neither peace, nor some justice for Palestinians nor the danger to democracy. Its only lip service the U.S. is paying to look good to itself and some of its voters. The day America really wants to exert influence, it will know exactly what it must do: Cut the bullshit.

First published in HAARETZ July 20, 2023