President Joe Biden on Tuesday warned that Israel was losing international support because of its “indiscriminate bombing” of Gaza, speaking out in unusually strong language just hours before the United Nations demanded a humanitarian cease-fire in the Israel-Hamas war.
“Israel’s security can rest on the United States, but right now it has more than the United States. It has the European Union, it has Europe, it has most of the world supporting them,” Biden said to donors during a fundraiser Tuesday.
“They’re starting to lose that support by indiscriminate bombing that takes place,” he said.
The president said he thought Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu understood, but he wasn’t so sure about the Israeli war cabinet.
Biden offered a harder-than-usual assessment of Israel’s decisions since the Oct. 7 attack by Hamas and the moves by his conservative government. Meanwhile, Biden’s top national security adviser, Jake Sullivan, is heading to Israel this week to consult directly about timetables for ending major combat.
The president also renewed his warnings that Israel should not make the same mistakes of overreaction that the U.S. did following the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.
He recounted a familiar anecdote about inscribing on a photo with Netanyahu decades ago, “Bibi, I don’t agree with a damn thing you have to say.” This time, the president added to his retelling of the story: “That remains to be the case.”
The 2024 campaign fundraiser was part of a gathering of Jewish donors, many of whom attended a White House Hanukkah reception on Monday evening; Biden’s fundraisers are open to some reporters on the condition that no audio or video be shared.
Hours later, during a press conference with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, Biden refrained from offering the same public criticism again, but said that he had made it clear to Israel “the safety of innocent Palestinians is still of great concern.”
“The actions they’re taking must be consistent with attempting to do everything possible to prevent innocent Palestinian civilians from being hurt, murdered, killed, lost,” Biden said, adding, that it was important to remember “what we’re doing here.”
“We’re here to support Israel because they’re an independent nation and the way in which Hamas treated Israel is beyond comparison,” the president said.
Biden’s rhetoric to donors tracks his more candid and private messaging to Netanyahu on their frequent calls, according to two White House officials, where he reasserts U.S. support for Israel before pushing for Israel to do more to help civilians in Gaza.
“Israel has a tough decision to make. Bibi has a tough decision to make. There’s no question about the need to take on Hamas. There’s no question about that. None. Zero,” Biden said. But he added, of Israel’s leader, “I think he has to change his government. His government in Israel is making it very difficult.”
Biden specifically called out National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir. Ben-Gvir sits on Israel’s security cabinet, but is not a member of the country’s three-person war cabinet.
The comments prompted responses from both the Israeli military and also Hamas.
“We know to explain exactly how we operate with precision, based on intelligence, even when we are operating on the ground,” said Israeli military spokesperson Daniel Hagari. “We know how to operate against the Hamas strongholds in such a way that best separates the uninvolved civilians from terrorism targets.”
Former US ambassador to Israel David Friedman responded by writing: “Really unfortunate comments today by Biden. Israel’s bombing is not, and cannot be described as ‘indiscriminate,’ which he should know perfectly well from his intel briefings. And the current makeup of Israel’s government is entirely irrelevant to the current war, where the ‘war cabinet’ controls the efforts and includes centrists with distinguished military credentials, and where all of Israel’s major political parties fully support the IDF in its battle against Hamas. It is also irrelevant that the current government does not support a disastrous ‘two-state solution,’ which, by the way, is opposed by almost all Palestinians as well.”
“Biden’s comments only feed the anti-Semitic rhetoric that Joe Biden claims to find so disgusting,” Friedman concluded.
Biden’s comments are especially infuriating considering the high death toll among IDF soldiers carrying out fierce battles on the ground against terrorists embedded in civilian areas and dressed in civilian clothing.
(YWN Israel Desk – Jerusalem & AP)
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One Response
You can not “kowtow” to yourself. Biden is managing a coalition of the younger Progressive (WOKE) faction which apparently does not see anything wrong with genocide of Jews, and the “old fashioned” or at least older, moderate Democrats (who were the “establishment” until recently) who in the past have been seen as friendly towards Jews.