In the days following Hamas’s ghastly attack upon Israel, President Biden dug into his political strengths as a vessel for empathy, comfort and humanity. He announced unflinching support for the Jewish state. He publicly hugged controversial Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Weeks later, Biden promised to push tens of billions of dollars to Israel and to continue to do so for as long as the war in Gaza lasts, affirming his support to Israel.
Biden comes alive in such moments. As a comforter of the afflicted, he is a man of great decency and dignity. It’s a shame he has abandoned those principles as they relate to the suffering of the Palestinians.
After promising aid, Biden and his Cabinet cautioned Israel against a large ground assault into Gaza. The Biden team pushed for a more surgical, intel-driven approach to drive down the risk of civilian casualties while dismantling Hamas’s battalions and targeting its leaders. Netanyahu and his defense minister, Yoav Gallant, took the American money and proceeded with a massive ground offensive anyway.
In the months since, Israel has engaged in a ruinous bombing campaign in Gaza, killing tens of thousands, including civilians. Macabre images and video of the carnage in the enclave reveal the size and scope of the death. Israeli forces have eschewed precision-guided bombs in favor of much less accurate and larger-diameter “dumb” bombs, causing significantly more devastation than necessary.
Last month, Israel Defense Forces troops opened fire on a crowd of starving Gazans waiting for desperately needed food in a slaughter that killed more than 100 and injured hundreds more. Through all the butchery, the Biden administration keeps the money flowing to Israel.
Last week saw perhaps the most duplicitous photo op of the war yet. U.S. Central Command’s public affairs team released images of American troops airdropping 38,000 meals — enough to provide a single meal for fewer than three percent of the Gazan population — into southern Gaza. Those meals were dropped on a city turned into a dystopian hellscape by bombs provided by the U.S., through weapons sales for which Biden bypassed the U.S. Congress.
In an attempt to mollify the growing number of Americans who deplore Biden’s support of Israel’s prosecution of this war, the president has lightly voiced displeasure with Netanyahu. He has referred to the war as “over the top” without further clarification. He has weakly decried Netanyahu’s plan for a ground invasion into Rafah, the southern Gazan city to which IDF troops have directed more than a million Palestinians. An assault there would doubtless result in a humanitarian catastrophe unlike any thus far seen in the war.
Brushing aside Biden’s concerns, Netanyahu said he will do it anyway. “Over the top,” indeed.
Biden’s inability to influence Israel’s conduct of the war, even as he continues to push aid to Tel Aviv, makes him look foolish, weak and ineffective. D.C.’s continued financial support for the war paints a portrait of Netanyahu leading Biden around by the nose in front of a global audience. Worse than this, however, is what all of this says about American values.
America’s abiding support to Israel over the last four months has created the impression in the Middle East that, for the U.S., the suffering of a single Israeli is not worth that of a dozen Palestinians. Note that, within the region, people are even more likely to believe the overall death toll released currently at over 30,000, which is not necessarily inaccurate just because it comes from the Hamas-controlled Gaza health ministry.
The flow of aid leaves the impression that for the U.S., Palestinians are not even considered “people” in the same sense as Israelis, Americans or Europeans. How else to consider Biden’s repeated and scathing criticism of Russian President Vladimir Putin for directing indiscriminate attacks on Ukrainian women and children, when American tax dollars are underwriting similar or even worse atrocities in Gaza?
Israel has a legitimate right to defend itself. Netanyahu has a responsibility to his people to fight until Hamas no longer constitutes a threat. And even the most thoughtful, targeted and strategic campaign would have killed many civilians — such is the nature of fighting inside a densely packed enclave against an enemy that routinely uses women and children as shields.
Yet there is no justification for what we’re seeing in Gaza. Israeli supporters of the war’s conduct, taking their cue from Netanyahu, repeatedly invoke the Allied carpet bombing of German and Japanese cities during World War II to justify indiscriminate bombing in Gaza. Considering all the advances in intelligence, missile guidance systems, and targeting over the past seven and half decades, the parallel with World War II bombing does not hold up.
Further, the internationally applied rules of war, established in the immediate aftermath of World War II, ensure that wars are no longer adjudicated with such inhumane lack of consideration for harm to civilians.
Another Netanyahu talking point parroted by Americans and Israelis supporting the appalling devastation in Gaza makes even less sense: The U.S. would react with even more force, had such an attack — on the scale of 9/11 times 20 — occurred in America. Such a hypothetical scenario is so fantastic that there is no way of knowing how we would react militarily. We can, however, hope that our leaders would not succumb to the worst animalistic urges of humanity. We can hope that, as a nation, we would retain our values and dignity and, with them, our esteemed standing in the world.
That’s not the kind of leadership offered today in D.C. or Tel Aviv. And a reckoning is coming. When the war is completely over, rebuilding Gaza will require an international coalition over many years and billions in reconstruction funds. But there will be no way for the U.S. to repair its ruined standing in the Middle East.
Col. Joe Buccino (Ret.) served as U.S. Central Command communications director from 2021 until 2023. His views do not necessarily reflect those of the U.S. Department of Defense or any other organization.
LINK: Biden’s blind-faith embrace of Israel is ruining America’s image in the Middle East | The Hill
