Last month, a reporter asked President Joe Biden about the chances for a ceasefire in Gaza. More than 10,000 people had already been killed there, most of them women and children. Food, water, and medical supplies were scarce. Still, the president did not hesitate in assessing the odds of a ceasefire that he had more power than almost anyone in the world to help bring about.
“None,” Biden replied. “No possibility.” Biden’s unconditional support for Israel as it waged one of the most devastating bombing campaigns in modern history was already at odds with most of the world and significant parts of his own political base. The president showed no sign of backing down.
It would take another month and nearly 8,000 more Palestinian deaths for Biden to criticize Israel in any meaningful way. At a closed-door fundraiser last week, he warned that Israel’s “indiscriminate bombing” was costing the country international support. But Biden’s own support for the government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu remained largely intact. After saying he favored the eventual creation of a Palestinian state, he reiterated his unwavering backing for the Jewish nation. “We’re not going to do a damn thing other than protect Israel,” Biden said. “Not a single thing.”
Much of Biden’s deference to Israel is deeply personal. As his supporters have put it, he identifies with the nation in his kishkes—his guts. That can be seen in the highly emotional and graphic way in which he has talked about victims of the Hamas attack being massacred, sexually assaulted, and taken hostage.
Both before and after October 7, the empathy Biden is known for has rarely extended to Palestinians. Rashid Khalidi, the Edward Said Professor of Modern Arab Studies at Columbia University, said such statements are missing “to the degree that I don’t really think he sees the Palestinians at all.” In contrast, Khalidi added, Biden sees Israelis “as they are very carefully presented by their government and their massive information apparatus.”
A former Biden administration official shared a similar perspective with me. “The President does not seem to acknowledge the humanity of all parties affected by this conflict,” this person said. “He has described Israeli suffering in great detail, while Palestinian suffering is left vague if mentioned at all.”
This article is based on conversations with former members of the Obama and Biden administrations, interviews with leading experts on Israel and Palestine, and a review of hundreds of mostly forgotten congressional hearings, speeches, and articles in which the president has explained how he sees the conflict. Together, they reveal instinctive sympathy for Israel contrasted by incuriosity about Palestinians; an increasingly outdated view of the domestic politics on the issue; and a deep commitment to a repeatedly disproven belief that peace will only come from there being “no daylight” between Israel and the United States. (The National Security Council did not make any officials available for an interview for this story.)
The result is that Biden has prioritized providing Israel largely unconditional support and the space to continue fighting in the face of intense international opposition. This approach is predictable in some respects. Israel has gotten almost whatever it wants from the United States for decades, and any American president would have supported Israel in the wake of a Hamas attack that took the lives of 1,200 people.
Hellbound and Down 