I hope it will be remembered as the hug that brought down a cowardly president.

It was mid-October. US President Joe Biden made the requisite pilgrimage to Tel Aviv to show that his strong support for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was not just rhetorical.

His grateful host, restless with excitement, waited for Biden to emerge from the bulging fuselage of Air Force One.

Aside from the loud speeches of a crowd of journalists nearby, the whir of the White House engines in the sky muffled much of the chatter below. Netanyahu nodded to his companion, President Isaac Herzog, while an army of stoic Israeli and American bodyguards stood by.

After about a minute, Biden appeared with his signature aviator sunglasses in hand. He paused for a moment at the top of the plane’s steps and reached out to Netanyahu, like an expectant bride reaching out to her groom.

Then Biden, looking pale and tired, walked down the aisle, so to speak, and toward his beaming friend. The couple hugged and Biden patted Netanyahu on the shoulder. The delighted Prime Minister said something. Biden gave a short, perfunctory answer.

As far as hugs between politicians go, this one seemed long and sincere. Israel’s indispensable patron saint had arrived in person to prove once again that America stood with and alongside its equally indispensable ally.

But whether Biden and his camp knew it or not, at that moment the president’s already precarious political fate may have been sealed by an image now embedded in consciousness and memory – the unintended consequence of an act of “Brother “-like solidarity on an airport tarmac in Israel.

The unmistakable irony, of course, is that Biden rushed to Tel Aviv to reaffirm his camaraderie with an accused authoritarian whom he had treated for years with caution and occasionally contempt.

Apparently the past was the past.

Yet weeks later, “the hug” emerged as a defining symbol of Biden’s apparent hypocrisy and obstinacy.

A president who has denounced Russia’s reckless aggression and atrocities in Ukraine now defends – unreservedly – Israel’s ruthlessness in Gaza and beyond, while remarkably extolling the necessity and virtue of the catastrophic atrocities committed largely against Palestinian children, the infirm and the disabled older people of America’s indispensable ally.

Biden’s hypocrisy and obstinacy have not only offended but also angered key constituencies – including young Democrats and Arab Americans – that the aging commander in chief will have to bear if he is to win re-election less than 12 months from today.

Recent polls suggest that Biden and his short-sighted company have underestimated the breadth and depth of the violent reaction to his unqualified support of Israel and the warm embrace of a media-savvy, calculating politician whom millions of Israelis cannot stand.

Biden’s approval rating has crashed down After the hug, the number of all registered voters rose to a treacherous 40 percent – a record low since his inauguration.

According to pollsters, this hostility is largely due to voters’ near-universal rejection of Biden’s support of Israel and Netanyahu’s goal of destroying Hamas, despite the horrific nature, scale and number of human casualties suffered by Americans and the world .

“I don’t support his support of Israel,” Meg Furey, 40, a Democrat from Austin, Texas, told NBC News.

She is not alone.

A clear majority of Democrats believe that Israel has “gone too far” with its retaliatory plans and is effectively aiming to wipe out the occupied Gaza Strip and, inevitably, the West Bank.

In fact, a staggering 70 percent of Democrats between 18 and 40 have clearly told pollsters that they “disapprove” — to put it politely — of Biden’s “handling” of the “war” between Israel and Gaza.

“This poll is stunning, and it is stunning because of the impact the war between Israel and Hamas is having on Biden,” one pollster said.

The poll is also a stunning refutation of the Biden administration’s belief that its diplomatic and military retooling of Israel in the face of Hamas’s murderous Oct. 7 attack would be met with approval and welcomed as a necessary expression of Israel’s “right to self-defense.” any restraint measures required by humanitarian conventions and international law.

Other numbers are even more sobering.

Arab American support for Biden is fading quickly. In one Opinion poll At the end of October, just 17 percent of Arab Americans supported the president, a staggering 42 percent drop from three years earlier.

As the halting images of the limp bodies of dead, bloodied, dirt-caked Palestinian children recovered from the pancake-like rubble continue to flood social media and television screens, this shocking number is certain to continue to decline.

The potential existential political consequences of this pervasive anger and alienation could be felt by Biden and his denialist campaign team.

Despite numerous federal and state indictments, Donald Trump remains a persistent, even emboldened, threat. A flood of Survey shows the former president making headway across the country, gaining significant leads in a number of swing states where Biden won in 2020.

The mood and the momentum are with Trump.

To stanch the bloodshed and confront the yawning and bitter discontent, Biden has lately sought to reposition himself as a kind of honest broker who understands and cares for the toll the “war” has taken on Israelis and Palestinians alike is sensitive.

Biden reportedly did written Two letters. One was aimed at “pro-Israel” Americans, in which Biden predictably reiterated that “the United States stands with Israel.” The other appealed to “pro-Palestinian” Americans by insisting: “We mourn the many innocent Palestinians who were killed.”

The hackneyed, almost pathetic move failed miserably.

I doubt that any young Democrat or Arab American has been moved by Biden’s stale, empty piece of performative nonsense to reconsider his pointed and strident objections to what Israel has done to Gaza.

It is too late. The damage is done and will not be undone by a cliche-riddled letter on White House letterhead.

So, fortunately, I am convinced that Biden is finished.

The other delicious, unmistakable irony is that Biden likely gave up the presidency ostensibly to “save” Israel and prop up a prime minister who, in due course and knowingly, will surely lose the position and powers he long enjoyed and abused.

Soon these strutting presidents and prime ministers will face the harsh, emasculating wrath of the citizens they supposedly lead.

For my part, I look forward to such a deserved and satisfying return.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect the editorial stance of Al Jazeera.