On Thursday, The White House released a readout summarizing a phone call between President Biden and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
Biden called for an immediate ceasefire during the chat, saying it was “essential to stabilize and improve the humanitarian situation and protect innocent civilians.” He also called on Israel to take concrete steps to protect aid workers and implied that U.S. policy in the region could shift if Netanyahu did not heed the call. Biden’s request came days after an Israel strike in the Gaza Strip killed 7 employees of the humanitarian organization World Central Kitchen and sparked global outrage.
Today Israel announced that it’s reprimanding the soldiers connected to that killing and reopening the Erez border crossing between Israel and North Gaza. In other words, Biden’s gentle rebuke has resulted in some minor changes to Israeli policy.
We are sitting around and talking about how upset we are while we hemorrhage billions of dollars.
The sequence of events is not surprising. There’s a long history of Israel changing course at the request of the United States, a country that it relies on for vast amounts of military aid. Reagan suspended the delivery of fighter jets to the country after it bombed an Iraqi nuclear reactor and pressured Menachem Begin to end his bombardment on Lebanon. George H.W. Bush withheld loan guarantees to make Yitzhak Shamir halt settlement expansion.
We’ve even seen examples of this dynamic during Biden’s presidency. Franklin Foer’s book The Last Politician: Inside Joe Biden’s White House and the Struggle for America’s Future, details conversations between Biden and Netanyahu that occurred during Israel’s 2021 assault on Gaza.
Biden “held his tongue” after Israel bombed a 12-story building that served as a home base for journalists in Gaza City, and the attacks continued. However, later in the campaign, Biden instructed the Prime Minister to wrap things up. Netanyahu insisted he needed more time to bomb, but Biden reportedly told him, “Hey, man, we are out of runway here. It’s over.”
Netanyahu begrudgingly agreed to a ceasefire days later.
Again, none of this is especially surprising. However, for months the Biden administration has insisted there’s very little it can do to alter policy in the region and acted as though Israel’s policy decisions are unconnected to the United States, the country that gives them more than $4 billion a year in military aid.
This narrative is consistently pushed during press briefings.
Here’s a typical example from February 27, in which State Department spokesman Matthew Miller was asked about the tools it has to influence Israel.
“So one thing I will say about that that people often tend to forget is that Israel, like other countries in the region, is a sovereign country that makes its own decisions,” claimed Miller. “The United States does not dictate to Israel what it must do, just as we don’t dictate to any country what it must do.”
Miller made a similar statement the following month, when he was asked about Israel invading Rafah.
“We can’t dictate to them,” he told reporters. “They’re a sovereign country, and the United States can’t dictate to any sovereign country. They’re going to make their own decisions, and they have been quite clear about that, and we would expect nothing less from any sovereign country.”
This lie isn’t only being promulgated by The White House, it’s also embraced by much of the mainstream media. We saw many examples of it in the weeks after October 7th attack.
“Biden Confronts the Limits of U.S. Leverage in Two Conflicts,” reads the headline of a November 6 New York Times piece from this genre. The article frames the most powerful man in the world as a constrained actor, unable to make much of a difference. “For 10 days, the Biden administration has been urging Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to allow for ‘humanitarian pauses’ in the bombing of Gaza, hoping that the $3.8 billion a year in American security assistance would carry with it enough influence over the Israeli leader’s tactics,” Sanger assures readers. “It has not. Mr. Netanyahu rebuffed Mr. Biden’s push for greater efforts to avoid civilian casualties…”
Sanger quotes Representative Massachusetts Congressman and former Marine Seth Moulton. “There is a long history of U.S. presidents realizing they don’t have as much leverage over Israel as they thought,” he declares, without providing any examples.
As the Palestinian death toll has grown and the atrocities have continued, this position has begun to dissipate throughout elite opinion.
After Biden put out a statement expressing his anger and heartbreak over the death of the 7 aid workers, David Sanger co-wrote a much different piece at the Times. This was the headline for that one: “Biden Is ‘Outraged.’ But Is He Willing to Use America’s Leverage With Israel?”
“Conditions on how American arms are used are usually standard fare, some imposed by Congress and others by the president or secretary of state,” explains the article. “…But Israel has always been the exception. Even when Senator Chuck Schumer, Democrat of New York and the majority leader, gave an impassioned speech urging new elections in Israel — a clear effort to oust Mr. Netanyahu — he declined to call for limits on arms. When pressed the next day, Mr. Schumer said he did not even want to discuss the topic.”
“There are other steps Mr. Biden could demand,” it continues. “For example, the United States could insist that aid convoys be escorted by the Israel Defense Forces, or that nearby Israeli military units remain in constant communication with the aid providers, an issue two U.S. senators raised to Mr. Netanyahu in February.”
This crack in the consensus was best conveyed on a recent episode of MSNBC’s Morning Joe by Elise Jordan, a political analyst, former National Security Council aide and speechwriter for Condoleezza Rice.
“I am so sick of hearing how President Biden is,” Jordan told the panel. “The buck stops with him; if he wants to stop the arms sales and the bombs that are killing civilians, he can. He has the power. We don’t need his aides going to reporters and talking about how upset they are.”
“What happened yesterday is still going to happen…we don’t need to be getting any more arms or money, and it needs to stop and be conditional. It’s ridiculous, it’s going on unchecked and unfettered, and we are sitting around and talking about how upset we are while we hemorrhage billions of dollars,” she continued.
It is ridiculous, and Biden could stop this charade anytime.
