Joe Biden Caves on Israel

By Noah Rothman

Thursday, November 02, 2023

 

In the weeks that immediately followed the 10/7 massacre, Joe Biden said all the right things. He expressed his support for Israel’s absolute right of self-defense. He gave no succor to those within his party who tried to contextualize Hamas’s depravity or mute its psychological impact on the civilized world though the liberal application of antiseptic euphemisms. He promised to “make sure the Jewish and democratic state of Israel can defend itself” against its enemies. “Israel must again be a safe place for the Jewish people,” he insisted. “And I promise you: We’re going to do everything in our power to make sure that it will be.”

 

These aspirations didn’t survive prolonged exposure to progressive agitation. Biden’s unapologetic backing for Israel’s refusal to abide the genocidal regime on its borders mightily offended what the New York Times described as the “young, diverse Left,” which has captured so much of the Democratic Party’s support structure, from academia to labor unions. Biden’s moral convictions sent his job-approval rating among Democrats into a tailspin. Muslim activists warned the president in no uncertain terms that his support for Israel would cost him their votes and, with them, crucial states like Michigan. The politics of 2024 intervened, and Biden has adapted. So, it was perhaps inevitable that Biden would cave when confronted by a bearded woman affiliated with a group of anti-Zionist Jews.

 

“Mr. President, if you care about Jewish people, as a rabbi, I need you to call for a cease-fire right now,” said Jessica Rosenberg, a heckler with the group Jewish Voices for Peace. The demand elicited hisses and boos from the crowd at the Minneapolis fundraiser the self-described rabbi had infiltrated. But Biden didn’t blow off the request. Rather, he acceded to it.

 

“I think we need a pause,” Biden replied. “A pause means giving time to get the prisoners out.” The president went on to offer a string of self-aggrandizing pronouncements about being “the guy that convinced Bibi [Netanyahu] to call for a cease-fire to let the prisoners out” and cajoling Egyptian president Abdel Fattah al-Sisi to “open the door” to the Rafah border crossing. None of this rang any bells. Perhaps the White House will soon clarify that the president was only overcome by one of his regular displays of public confusion, because his comments contradicted the careful policy his administration has spent much of the last month articulating.

 

“A cease-fire, right now, really only benefits Hamas,” said administration spokesman John Kirby on October 24. “It is ugly and it’s going to be messy, and innocent civilians are going to be hurt going forward,” he continued, but that is the nature of war. Kirby warned reporters to steel themselves for the horrors Israel’s effort to expurgate Hamas from the Gaza Strip would necessarily entail, and he informed them that the Biden administration had not imposed any “red lines” on the Israeli government.

 

Kirby did, however, attempt to synthesize this black-and-white posture with Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s endorsement of the mere consideration of a “humanitarian pause” in the conflict. What does that mean and how is a “pause” distinct from a cease-fire? Kirby struggled to say. The difference is “a question of duration and scope and size and that kind of thing,” he said. But size, scope, and duration notwithstanding, when the shooting stops, Hamas will rearm and regroup all the same. Call it a “doughnut” if you want — but a cessation of hostilities by any name will have the same effect, and it will be one the administration has already acknowledged will hurt Israel’s strategic position.

 

Moreover, a unilateral pause in the conflict on Israel’s behalf is betrayed as unnecessary by Biden’s own decision to highlight his diplomatic overtures toward Cairo. Since 10/7, the Egyptian government has dragged its feet on allowing aid to enter Gaza and civilians to leave. The Rafah crossing is in Gaza’s south, where the Israel Defense Forces have directed Gaza’s civilians in the effort to limit this stage of its operations to Gaza City and the northern parts of the Strip. The Biden administration has devoted considerable energies to convincing Egypt to change its stance, as it should. But Cairo’s ambivalence is not Israel’s burden to bear, and Jerusalem is not obliged to sacrifice its war objectives because of its Arab neighbors’ recalcitrance.

 

So, what is the point of Biden’s endorsement of a cease-fire by another name in such a highly conspicuous venue? Was it really all just politics? Is the Democratic Party’s coalition so tenuous that Israel’s just response to the 10/7 massacre must be sacrificed lest the party come apart at the seams? Joe Biden’s capitulation to the loud minority on his party’s extreme-left flank should certainly make us wonder.