TIO Public Square

Biden's Dilemma Over the Israel-Hamas War

by Robert P. Sellers

President Joe Biden faces multiple challenges as he seeks reelection – immigration, the economy, a divided nation, his age, an unconventional opponent – but perhaps his greatest conundrum is how to react to the Israel-Hamas War. For years, he has described himself as “a Zionist in my heart.” He was born in 1942, during World War II and six years before the founding of the State of Israel in 1948.

Thus, as a child and adolescent the accounts of German prison camps and the horrific suffering and death of the Jews made a strong impression on his young mind. By his own admission, his father had a “preoccupation with the Holocaust,” often declaring that “the world stood silently by in the 1930s in the face of Hitler.” As an adult, Biden took his children, and later his grandchildren, to the infamous Dachau Concentration Camp, believing it appropriate to teach them about both the terrifying cruelty that occurred there and the silent apathy that allowed it.

During his more than 50 years in government service – as a senator, vice president and now president – he has maintained his “unshakable” commitment to Israel. He has met with every Israeli prime minister since Golda Meir in 1973, who told him that Israel’s “secret weapon” was that “we have no other place to go.” Biden has never forgotten that conversation. From time to time, however, while he has expressed public support for Israel, he has privately shared concerns with successive Israeli leaders over their policies and actions.

It is Biden’s prolonged backing of Israel that has gotten him votes from the evangelical Christian voting bloc. Ron Dermer, former Israeli Ambassador to the United States, recognizes the political power of religious conservatives. He has urged Israel to put more emphasis on winning the favor of American evangelical Christians than Jews. He argued, “People have to understand that the backbone of Israel’s support in the United States is the evangelical Christians,” noting that evangelicals are about a quarter of America’s citizenry while Jews comprise less than two percent of the population.

An independent news agency, funded in part by the Qatari government, explains that “[al]though President Biden may use less crude rhetoric [than the former president] and [has] reinstated humanitarian aid to the Palestinians, his position does not constitute any real shift from that of Trump and thus [it] similarly gratifies the desires of evangelicals.”

Many of these evangelicals self-identify as Christian Zionists. The leading figure of this political and religious ideology is John Hagee, senior pastor of Cornerstone Church in San Antonio, Texas, and the founder of Christians United for Israel, the most influential American Christian Zionist organization with some 10 million members. This philosophy espouses “the belief that the modern state of Israel is the result of Biblical prophecy, namely the notion that 4,000 years ago God promised the land to the Jews, who will rule it until Jesus’ return to Jerusalem and the rapture – at which time Jews must convert to Christianity or be sent to hell.”

While President Biden is not a Christian Zionist, he is nonetheless a resolute champion of Israel as America’s greatest ally in the Middle East, one who recognizes that the Jewish State is surrounded by Arab nations that have historically displayed varying degrees of hostility toward Israel. As he has said, “Were there no Israel, no Jew in the world would be ultimately safe. It’s the only ultimate guarantee.”

But Biden faces a dilemma as he moves toward the presidential election in November 2024. On the one hand, he experiences opposition from some congressional members of his own party.

**Prime Minister Netanyahu — Photo:** **Chatham House CC BY 4.0 Deed**

Progressive Democrats are disappointed in his unquestioned support of the government of Israel and they disapprove of his waiting so long to challenge Prime Minister Netanyahu about the way he is conducting this war. The loss of life in Gaza, more than 35,000 Palestinians – compared to the approximately 1,200 Israeli civilians, including some 120 American, French and Thai citizens, murdered or taken hostage in the Hamas attack on October 7, 2023 – is incredibly unbalanced. This tragic one-sidedness breaks a cardinal rule of just war theory which states that “the desired end should be proportional to the means used.”

The progressive caucus therefore applauded Biden’s decision to withhold a shipment of weapons contingent upon whether Israel launches a full-scale ground assault on Rafah, the city where as many as a million Palestinians have fled military attacks elsewhere. But the president’s later decision to release the $1.2 billion in tank ammunition, tactical vehicles and mortar rounds angered these Democrats again.

The initial announcement that the administration was pausing the shipment of arms was encouraging, said Rep. Becca Balint (D-VT), who explained:

I think this is really speaking to the large swath of the Democratic Caucus that needs to see a change. It has been very satisfying to see [that] the message, I believe, is getting through, it’s getting delivered. “We’re trying to turn the Titanic. Israel is a strong ally of ours. I think most Americans support Israel as a sovereign, secure Jewish state, and they’re also holding this deep despair about the way [Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin] Netanyahu has conducted the offensive in Gaza.

It makes sense, then, that veteran leaders like Nancy Pelosi as well as newcomers like Balint were disturbed when the White House changed its course and announced the weapons would be sent. Senator Bernie Sanders had urged President Biden to withhold the newest shipment of arms to Israel as a way of pressuring Netanyahu to alter his war strategy. Faiz Shakir, an adviser to Sanders and director of More Perfect Union, said in a CNN interview that the foreign aid to Israel “cannot come in and just go right out.” But it seemed like a quick reversal of policy with Biden’s announcement of the change of plans. The disapproval of Sanders and other Democrats was stark, because of the implication that further innocents in Gaza would surely die.

This criticism of the current administration has been echoed on numerous college campuses across the country, where supporters of humanitarian efforts to help Palestinians have sometimes been chanting about “Genocide Joe.” The campus demonstrations have forced Biden to walk a tightwire between denouncing antisemitism and sanctioning the students’ right to protest. This balancing act has not been entirely successful, particularly as squads of police have dismantled campus encampments, fought with protesters – sometimes violently – and arrested more than 2,000 since mid-April 2024.

The analysis of the Brookings Institute is that even though the president has pled with Americans to reject anti-Palestinian sentiments, his self-identification with Israel has implicitly legitimized the violence in Gaza which has caused horrific human suffering. Even though unintentionally, “the president’s public support for Israel’s actions that have rendered thousands dead and wounded [plus] hundreds of thousands displaced has served to dehumanize Palestinians in the eyes of the public.”

Progressive Democrats in Congress are also incensed because Biden waited so long to call for a cease-fire despite continuing aggression and mounting civilian deaths. This faction of the Democrats can influence important segments of the population – Arab Americans, Muslims of many nationalities, and younger voters – so many of whom voted for Biden in 2020. Usamah Andrabi, of Justice Democrats, concludes: “President Biden has a made a massive miscalculation to align more closely with Netanyahu’s far-right government than [with] a majority of Democratic voters who support a cease-fire and oppose sending more bombs and weapons to the Israeli military.”

Regrettably for Biden’s efforts to unify his party, progressive Democratic activists are plotting to move the protest over the president’s handling of the war from the halls of Congress and the university campus quads to the Democratic National Convention floor in Chicago. The plan promises to generate a very divisive political battle. On the other hand, Biden faces almost constant opposition from Republicans, and disapproval over his response to this war is especially evident.

**Robert Satloff — Photo:** **Washington Institute**

Some Democrats back the government of Israel’s response, but the majority of Republicans are angered that Biden would censure Netanyahu’s war strategy by refusing to transfer to Israel the offensive weapons that had been approved by Congress. Many mainstream Jewish and pro-Israeli organizations across the country mirror this sharp criticism of the president by his Capitol Hill opponents. Robert Satloff, executive director of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, said Biden’s decision “runs the risk of lengthening the fighting, causing more civilian casualties, undermining chances for a hostage/ceasefire deal, running out the clock on a Saudi agreement and extending the Gaza fighting so long that it hurts [Biden’s] reelection chances.”

Rep. Don Bacon (R-NE) declared: “I support Israel’s desire to destroy Hamas in Gaza. They attacked brutally on 7 October, and Hamas has to be destroyed in Gaza to the best that they can. To stand in front of that, that means President Biden wants Hamas to continue to exist in Gaza, which is a continuous threat to Israel. It’s wrong.” Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) sounded an alarm that delaying the shipment would have negative consequences for the United States. He said: “If we stop weapons necessary to destroy the enemies of the state of Israel at a time of great peril, we will pay a price. This is obscene. It is absurd. Give Israel what they need to fight the war they can’t afford to lose.”

Frustrated, Speaker of the House Mike Johnson and other Republicans rebuked President Biden by voting, 224 to 187, to force Biden to transfer the weapons to Israel. This action revealed the deeply divided opinion in Congress about the Israel-Hamas War. The GOP bill was supported by 16 Democrats while only 3 Republicans voted against it. Johnson also sought to court votes for the Republicans at the Israeli Embassy’s 76th anniversary celebration of the founding of Israel when, in his remarks, he delivered a covert critique of the president. He said: “Some leaders who have previously been proud to stand with Israel and even some who have made statements of solidarity following October 7, … suddenly began to backpedal on that support. On one day, they tell us that we can give no safe harbor to hate, but on the next they demand that Israel must give safe harbor to Hamas. They tell us they support Israel but they give cover to antisemitism.”

But Biden’s guidance of the U.S. response to the Israel-Hamas War is not a problem only in Congress. It also has greatly damaged his support across the nation among young voters. For example, Hayden Camarena, in Northern California, may skip voting in the 2024 presidential election altogether. Evan McKenzie, in battleground Wisconsin, wanted any candidate for president other than the two who are running again. In Philadelphia, Pru Carmichael is not even sure the election matters. According to an NBC News report, while these young voters live in different cities, pursue diverse careers and have varying political beliefs, they have one thing in common: they voted for Biden in 2020 and say they may not again in 2024.

While a number of policy misfires have disappointed young voters – in their view Biden’s insufficient response to climate change, his inability to cancel all student loan debt and the administration’s failure to codify Roe v. Wade – the White House response to the Israel-Hamas War has caused the greatest slippage with this voter bloc.

Yet, if it were not enough that Biden’s decisions regarding Israel have alienated progressive Democrats and young voters, as well as justified the suspicions of Republicans that his administration is dangerously left-leaning, it is an even greater risk for his reelection chances that white evangelicals are a significant part of Donald Trump’s base. Mimi Kirk, editorial consultant at The Palestinian Policy Network, notes that with 81% of this Christian voting bloc supporting Trump in 2016, “he catered to them through such Israel-friendly moves as the transfer of the US embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem and support for settlements and Israeli annexation of the West Bank and the Golan Heights.”

In summary, President Biden faces a tremendous problem as he tries to traverse the politically dangerous territory of an American response to the Israel-Hamas War. His difficulties bring into sharp relief the tensions between political and religious interpretations of current events, the obligations both to military alliances and humanitarian justice, the right of security for every American versus the right to public protest and freedom of speech, the contrast of defensive and offensive weapons and, finally, the different loyalties of older and younger voters.

Intriguingly, Biden’s reelection to a second term as President of the United States may not rely upon his domestic successes – such as getting control over the coronavirus pandemic, lowering job unemployment for Blacks, Hispanics and persons with disabilities, rebuilding our infrastructure, expanding benefits to toxic-exposed veterans, passing the first gun violence legislation in 30 years, providing student debt relief for middle- and working-class families and restoring an atmosphere of gravitas and integrity to the presidency. Instead, a war fought far from U.S. shores, and the complex situation of growing disapproval of the way this administration has responded to it, may cause Biden to lose the election in November.

Header Photo: The Spartan Shield