Biden’s recent change of attitude toward Israel is too little, too late.
State Department insiders have long been frustrated with President Joe Biden’s support for Israel and its actions in Gaza following the Hamas massacre last October, and although the commander-in-chief has recently started to be more critical of Israel, a new report shows that Biden has known for a long time that they were bombing indiscriminately in Gaza.
According to a report from the Washington Post, the White House has known since the end of October that Israel was regularly conducting bombing campaigns against civilian targets in Gaza, even as he publicly and quite steadfastly defended the Jewish state’s military actions.
Multiple sources confirmed to the outlet that top foreign policy officials told the White House that “Israel was regularly bombing buildings without solid intelligence that they were legitimate military targets” in an Oct. 27 meeting.
The day of the meeting, White House National Security Council Spokesman John Kirby said the United States was not going to draw any “red lines” on Israel’s military response. Just two weeks earlier, Biden had visited Israel and said that they would not be alone “as long as the United States stands”.
In the meeting, officials also cautioned that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu did not have a clear plan for eradicating Hamas. One source told the Washington Post that they couldn’t see how the Israelis would be able to pull off what they said they planned to do.
Now that this meeting has come to light, it is even more difficult to understand why Biden was so eager to offer his unwavering support for Israel for so long. He has defended Israel at every opportunity, even as Netanyahu went against America’s wishes on issues ranging from letting aid into Gaza for civilians to accepting the possibility of a Palestinian state in the future.
When Israel repeatedly bombed a Gaza refugee camp in November, the president did not criticize them, and their decision to bomb the biggest hospital in Gaza, Al Shifa, received public backing from the White House.
At the time, Kirby told reporters: “We have information that confirms that Hamas is using that particular hospital for a command-and-control mode. That is a war crime.”
The IDF raided Al Shifa a few hours later, causing the hospital’s operations to collapse and leading to the death of more than 40 patients, including four premature babies. This drew condemnation from numerous human rights groups and the World Health Organization.
On Jan. 14, Biden made himself look even worse by issuing a statement expressing his sorrow and sympathy on the 100th day of captivity for the remaining Israeli hostages in Gaza while failing to mention the Palestinian death toll, which was upwards of 20,000 at the time.
Biden’s recent change of attitude toward Israel is too little, too late
It is only recently that Biden has started to backtrack to some degree. One recent issue that is a big sticking point is Netanyahu’s declaration that Israel is planning to invade the city of Rafah in southern Gaza. With 1.5 million displaced Palestinians currently sheltering there, the stakes are extremely high.
On Monday, March 18, Biden told Netanyahu over the phone that surging into Rafah would be a big mistake, while National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan told reporters that Biden insisted that Israel send a team to Washington for consultations on more acceptable strategies.
The Washington Post reported that many Biden allies have privately admitted the president’s stance on Israel has caused considerable harm to his reputation on a national and international scale and may prove to be one of the biggest foreign policy mistakes of his presidency.
Investigative Journalist Reports Live From Palestinian Genocide In Gaza
