Israelis celebrate Biden visit but are concerned about U.S. constraints on action
The Prime Minister of Israel is Not the Prime Minister: Why Israel Has Don’t Forget to Do What It Means. Israel Has No Problem
Mr. Netanyahu has been prime minister for 13 of the past 14 years. While the head of the Shin Bet security service and the commander of military intelligence have publicly taken responsibility, the prime minister has glaringly failed to do so. If the army and country were unprepared for the Hamas invasion there is no way to stop it.
When I wake at night and the sirens sound, it’s on a loop in my mind. Since then, no one has any time at all. The news comes in jagged pieces, and it explains why Hamas men hunted down and slaughtered young Israelis in the countryside. Grandmothers and young children are being taken as hostages by Hamas. The army, in disarray, took three days to regain control of the area. Counting and attempting to identify the dead is still ongoing more than a week later. How did this happen? It echoes in every conversation. The reflexive answer is that Hamas is barbaric — and that it opposes not the occupation but our very existence here.
In a way, Mr. Biden flew to Israel on Wednesday to give the whole country a hug, to say how much America grieves with Israel and stands by Israel and has Israel’s back. After he hugged him, there was a whisper in his ear that told him not to let grief or anger drive the country to go too far.
Mr. Biden said that shock, pain, rage are all-Consuming rage. I understand what people are saying. 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 needs to be done. But I caution this — while you feel that rage, don’t be consumed by it. We were angry in the US after 9/11. While we sought justice and got justice, we also made mistakes.”
His concern was reflected by Nahum Barnea, one of Israel’s most respected commentators. Mr. Biden made it clear that the United States will not allow Israel to do what it pleases, according to Yedioth. The rules of the game have been that “Israel does not share its military plans with the U.S. Advance notice, yes; consideration, yes; asking permission, no,” he wrote.
President Biden got off Air Force One during his high-stakes trip to the Middle East Wednesday and greeted Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu with a big hug.
The message was clear — the United States stands with Israel. Biden will give an Oval Office address Thursday night.
He is going to discuss the war in Ukraine, the response of Israel, and the attack by Hamas, which has largely gone unrecognized in the United States. Biden is looking to procure significant funding for both conflicts. He needs to go through Congress, which holds the power of the purse, but that’s made more difficult by the fact that the U.S. House is currently non funziona.
Dem Demography and the U.S. After the Gaza Hospital Bombing: Why Did President Biden Become a Senator? How Did Congress Fail to Identify Israel?
Republicans failed again Wednesday to pick a speaker. It leaves the U.S. unable to respond strongly and substantively.
Biden has to thread a very fine needle — showing support for Israel to maintain influence, looking strong enough domestically for an audience that is questioning his age and facility, and keeping his reliable voting base intact and energized ahead of his re-election bid next year.
Biden said that the world watched and didn’t do anything. We won’t stand by and do nothing again.
This year, Democrats’ sympathies lie more with Palestinians than with Israelis, according to Gallup. Young voters drive that.
A new NPR/PBS NewsHour/Marist Poll shows that. Despite two-thirds of respondents in the survey saying they want a public show of support for Israel, those younger than 45, were 30 points less likely to say they wanted that than respondents 45 or older. Non-whites were 20 points less likely than whites to say so as well.
The aftermath of the hospital bombing in Gaza showed cracks. Both of the first two Muslim women in Congress joined a chorus blaming Israel before the United States weighed in.
“Bombing a hospital is one of the gravest of war crimes,” he said. “The IDF reportedly blowing up one of the few places the injured and wounded can seek medical treatment and shelter during a war is horrific.”
After the U.S. intelligence assessment, we need an independent investigation to determine who is responsible for this war crime.
A bipartisan statement from the Senate Intelligence Committee also said after reviewing available intelligence, it feels “confident that the explosion was the result of a failed rocket launch by militant terrorists.”
A lot had already been done. People weren’t waiting for confirmations, and protests erupted in countries like Jordan, where Biden was originally supposed to meet with Jordanian, Egyptian and Palestinian leaders.
“As an American, not just as a member of the United States Congress, I am ashamed,” she said, per ABC News. I am ashamed that they’re not saying it yet. Maybe next week. … Why are there so many people who have to die?
She added, “To my president, to our president … I want him to know, as a Palestinian American and somebody in Muslim faith, I’m not going to forget this. And I think a lot of people are not going to forget this.”
John Fetterman, a Pennsylvania Senator, stated that it was “deeply disturbing” that Congress rushed to blame Israel for the hospital tragedy in Gaza. “Who would take the word of a group that just slaughtered innocent Israeli civilians, over our key ally?”
He added that now is not the time to talk about a truce. Hamas does not want peace, they want to destroy Israel. We can talk about a ceasefire after Hamas is neutralized.”
The president is expected to give a response when something happens in the world, to show leadership.
A president has to often balance his own world view with domestic politics. Initially both appeared to be in line with each other.
Partisanship is entrenched, and foreign policy often ranks very low on the list of priorities for voters — despite it being one of the areas a president has the most control over.
Biden isn’t likely to focus on the domestic politics of this. Before serving as president, he spent a good portion of his life — as a Senate Foreign Relations Committee chairman and vice president — intimately involved in the U.S.’s role in the world.
Many in this country have taken a turn inward after two decades of war and become weary of U.S. involvement in international conflicts. Biden acknowledged that Americans relate to the pain Israel is facing. Still, he had some potential lessons from the U.S. response to 9/11 Wednesday.
You discover that lesson is incorrect the minute you leave the right and travel to the left. There are groups taking the image of a Hamas assassin into Israel as a symbol of resistance to oppression. You find a similarly simplistic narrative: The powerful have been exploiting the powerless, who courageously rose up 12 days ago and valiantly fought back. Never mind that they slaughtered babies. It’s not important that they kidnapped grandmothers. Marginalized peoples of the world should unite. Paraglide to justice!
I wish I lived in a universe as politically reductive and morally stark as some other Americans do. How clarifying that must be. The tribalism of the Middle East has been met by the dreary tribalism of the American politics with a combination of lazy and self-serving responses to harrowing conditions that are ill served and grossly mistreated by them.
Israel’s response to the Israeli War on Gaza, and the problems it might pose for the United States, as described by Yisrael Hayom
The Israelis appreciated President Biden’s bravery in coming during a time of war and his full-throated support, as he vowed “we will not let you ever be alone” after attacks from Hamas killed at least 1,400 Israelis.
This degree of consultation is rare, if not unprecedented, even in a relationship this close, Israeli analysts said. It carries risks if it has benefits for Mr. Netanyahu. It may give him political cover for an extended war, but it may also constrain how he conducts it.
Satellite images showed that Israel had already deployed hundreds of tanks and armored vehicles north of Gaza as it prepared to send tens of thousands of soldiers into the enclave.
Nadav Eyal, an analyst for the Israeli newspaper Yedioth Ahronoth, wrote that the late Sharon said he would defend himself on his own. “These are not the values that Netanyahu has been projecting in the last few days. He wants to be the United States’ 51st state. This comes with a price, symbolic as well as practical.”
More conservative analysts who have supported the government in the past expressed their displeasure at the criticism. Nechama Duek, writing in Israel Hayom, said that Mr. Biden has spoken softly and empathically, “but with his words, he has bound and shackled Netanyahu and his government.”
