Biden's Big Hug and Quiet Punches
In order to save thousands of lives, Biden needs to speak even more loudly against Israel's assault on Gaza.
President Joe Biden acted quickly and strongly after the horrific massacre of innocent Israelis on October 7. He made America’s support for Israel crystal clear. But I was concerned that this justified support was not linked more explicitly with calls for Israeli restraint as they responded to the Hamas assault.
Then, I talked with a former senior official in the Biden administration. He thought that the best way to support and influence Israel right now was precisely what Biden was doing: give Israel a “big hug and quiet punches.” That is, demonstrate America’s unequivocal support for the nation of Israel - and then deliver private messages of caution. This was the only way to navigate the tricky waters of politics in Israel and at home.
The first part of the strategy has worked brilliantly. Joe Biden is now the most popular politician in Israel. He has spent hours talking to the victims of the Hamas attack. His trip to Israel, taking at great personal risk and just the second time a U.S. president has gone to a war zone not under American control (the first was Biden’s visit to Kyiv) was masterful. His image is displayed on huge billboards throughout the country. Even as two-thirds of Israelis, according to a recent poll, want anyone else but Netanyahu to lead the country, they strongly support Biden.
"Israelis were hungry for a father figure that will hug them and show empathy,” said Nimrod Novik, a former foreign policy adviser to Israeli Prime Minister Shimon Peres, “And the president has done that in such a way that really touched every Israeli." Moving two carrier battle groups into the eastern Mediterranean, flowing military aid to Israel and other steps have assured Israelis that America is with them in their hour of need.
The big hug has worked. But will the quiet punches?
There is a river of rage surging through Israel. Biden wants to redirect it.
U.S. officials are deeply concerned that Israel’s intense bombardment of Gaza and the impeding ground assault could be disastrous for the small nation. The last Israeli incursion into Gaza in 2014 killed 3,500 Palestinians and 70 IDF soldiers. It was limited in scope and lasted 50 days. This war will be much worse. Israel’s air and artillery bombardment has already killed more than 4,300 people in Gaza since October 7, compared to the 1,400 killed by Hamas on October 10.
The invasion could also escalate the conflict horizontally, involving Israeli in a multi-front war. Violence is surging across the Israeli-occuppied West Bank, where IDF soldiers and settlers have killed almost 100 Palestinians since October 10, including many children. Clashes are also increasing on the northern border with Lebanon. Biden officials understand that this will be disastrous for Israel, the Palestinians and regional stability.
There is a river of rage surging through Israel. Biden wants to redirect it. At this point, it is unlikely that anything can stop Israel from its ground invasion, but Biden may be able to focus it on Hamas and away from civilians. The quiet restraint messages have gotten more explicit in the speeches both he and Secretary of State Tony Blinken have given. Their diplomacy has at least delayed the invasion (Biden’s trip was conditioned on delay) and opened up a humanitarian corridor into Gaza. But it has a long way to go.
Increased public calls for restraint
On October 16, Blinken, who had spent the week in shuttle diplomacy in the region, spoke to the press to announce Biden’s visit. The first four of his five points emphasized support for Israel and “our ironclad commitment to its security.” The fifth was that: “The President will hear from Israel how it will conduct its operations in a way that minimizes civilian casualties and enables humanitarian assistance to flow to civilians in Gaza in a way that does not benefit Hamas.”
On October 18, Biden concluded his visit to Israel with remarks in Tel Aviv. The first two-thirds of his speech were a warm and personal expression of support and understanding, coupled with warnings to others in the region not to attack or threaten Israel. But then he offered wise advice, delivered in a very personal way. He said:
Shock, pain, rage — an all-consuming rage. I understand, and many Americans understand.
You can’t look at what has happened here to your mothers, your fathers, your grandparents, sons, daughters, children — even babies — and not scream out for justice. Justice must be done.
But I caution this: While you feel that rage, don’t be consumed by it.
After 9/11, we were enraged in the United States. And while we sought justice and got justice, we also made mistakes.
I’m the first U.S. president to visit Israel in time of war.
I’ve made wartime decisions. I know the choices are never clear or easy for the leadership. There’s always costs.
But it requires being deliberate. It requires asking very hard questions. It requires clarity about the objectives and an honest assessment about whether the path you are on will achieve those objectives.
Thus, in the heart of Israel, Biden delivered a plea to spare Palestinian lives. He reminded Israelis that “the vast majority of Palestinians are not Hamas.” He mourned the Palestinians killed by air strikes and urged the immediate delivery of food, water, medicine.
Biden had attended a meeting of the Israeli cabinet - another unprecedented step - and said that he had urged the officials to allow “lifesaving humanitarian assistance to civilians in Gaza.” His deft diplomacy succeeded in at least starting the delivery of such aid as Israel finally agreed this Saturday to let 20 trucks though the Rafah gate at the Gaza border with Egypt. On Sunday, 17 more came in.
Israeli officials admit that this is the result of U.S. pressure. Israel had said that they would not allow any aid into Gaza until Hamas release all 200 hostages. But pressed by right-wing parliamentarians of the Israeli Knesset on why the aid was starting to flow, Defense Minister Yoav Gallant said, “The Americans insisted and we are not in a place where we can refuse them. We rely on them for planes and military equipment. What are we supposed to do? Tell them no?”
Notably, Biden concluded his Tel Aviv remarks with a strong rebuke to those in Israel, particularly the hard-line factions in the current government who seek to force all Palestinians from the occupied West Bank and all areas controlled by Israel. “We must keep pursuing a path so that Israel and the Palestinian people can both live safely, in security, in dignity, and in peace,” he said. “For me, that means a two-state solution.”
He reinforced this messages in his powerful Oval Office speech to the nation just one day later. Again, he lead with a condemnation of the “pure, unadulterated evil” of the Hamas attack. But this time he quickly adds that he is “heartbroken by the tragic loss of Palestinian life.” He again stresses “the critical need for Israel to operate by the laws of war. That means protecting civilians in combat as best as they can.”
Journalist Jonathan Alter called Biden’s speech “pitch perfect in tone and substance.” Alter was struck, as I was by Biden’s blunt admission of the profound mistakes the U.S. made in invading Iraq after 9/11. Biden again said that “when America experienced the hell of 9/11, we felt enraged as well. While we sought and got justice, we made mistakes. So, I cautioned the government of Israel not to be blinded by rage.”
This frank admission “is something new in the history of the presidency,” says Alter. While previous presidents will generally alluded to past errors, “in this case, Biden was talking about a specific colossal mistake: Responding to 9/11 by going to war in Iraq, a horrible decision by President Bush that Biden says he regretted backing in the Senate.” Biden is trying to prevent Israel from making a similar strategic blunder.
We have to hope that these public statements are accompanied by much stronger private ones. Demands by many to link aid to Israel - now at $3.8 billion a year with Biden asking for $14 billion more in a new aid package - with an end to settlements and the killing of Palestinians in the West Bank have been growing in recent years. But U.S. officials have resisted. Can Biden be firmer now, linking aid to scaling back the planned invasion?
Mother Jones Washington Editor David Corn wonders the same, even as he notes in his October 21 newsletter that there is“something dismaying about having to focus on Biden’s fancy diplomatic footwork, as the bodies of dead children are being pulled out of rubble, when an appropriate response is to scream, ‘Enough…Stop!’” He argued against a “blank check for Bibi.”
On Saturday, Biden was asked by press as he left church whether he was asking Israel to delay the invasion. He replied, “We are talking to the Israelis.”
Retired General Barry McCaffrey is one of many military experts warning that the Israeli invasion would be “a bloody mess.” In order to prevent Israel from making the same mistakes we made after 9/11, in order to save the lives of thousands of innocent civilians and perhaps hundreds of Israeli soldiers, we have to hope that the “quiet punches” are getting louder.
For more on the Gaza War, please see my previous posts:
Insanity is doing the same thing, over and over and expecting a different result. How many times, how many wars, how many incursions do we need to see that the occupation of territory and the imprisonment of 2.3 M people isn't working nor has it. We're seeing the recycling of violence, again. Hamas (or the group of the day) kills Israelis, Israel responds and kills Palestinians. And on and on it goes. I would venture a guess that none (or very few) of the dead are Hamas unless women and children have now been conscripted. The 'trick' is to make the people living in Gaza 'out' Hamas and abandon their leadership. But that trick has to have a carrot...the stick isn't working. More likely, the bombing is making more terrorists. On the ground, a 16 year old kid whose family gets wiped out and has to abandon the hovel that they call home isn't going to feel very good about Israel or the US.
The carrot would be real statehood, self governance and freedom of movement. The Palestinians have shown their resolve and their ability to survive in the worst circumstances possible. There aren't going anywhere. They are 'home' and they want to stay there.
An excellent, thoughtful piece