Biden's Record on Gaza

Brian Lehrer (0:10)

It's The Brian Lehrer Show on WNYC. Good morning again, everyone. Joining me now is Akbar Shahid Ahmed, diplomatic correspondent covering US foreign policy for The Washington Sun. Some of you might know that news organization has noticed news of the United States. They just changed their name. Now they're The Washington Sun. He was previously at HuffPost for more than a decade, and is author now of the new book Crossing The Red Line, Biden, His Advisors, and Israel's War in Gaza. He's been busy this week previewing the Trump, Xi Jinping meeting in the Sun while doing book tour interviews. Maybe you heard him on NPR another time this week on the station.

He joins us now to talk about some of each of those two things. Akbar, thank you for some time. Welcome to WNYC.

Akbar Shahid Ahmed (0:58)

Thank you so much, Brian.

Brian Lehrer (0:59)

To begin on the book, considering all that the Trump administration is doing, including launching the Iran War, largely at the request of Benjamin Netanyahu, as has been reported, why do you think it's important to be talking about the Biden administration at this time?

Akbar Shahid Ahmed (1:14)

We can't understand, Brian, why we are here in this Iran War, which seems to become a quagmire, and why, by the way, three years since the horrors of October 7th, we're nowhere closer to Israeli-Palestinian peace or a reckoning or reconstruction of Gaza without looking back to the patterns established by officials in the Biden era. What the Trump administration has done is essentially follow Biden's pattern of giving Netanyahu impunity, of dodging questions about firm US conclusions of violations of international and American law, and while stating publicly that Israel has been a problem for their own goals. So the Biden administration said, we want the Israelis to lead to fewer civilian casualties. Trump has said, we want the Israelis to advance my peace plan for Gaza.

Neither administration has successfully used American leverage consistently. I think the record of the Biden era is key not only to getting out of the Trump quagmire but for policymakers in 2026, 2028 going forward.

Brian Lehrer (2:17)

You do acknowledge that as early as October 18th, 2023, so just 11 days after the October 7th attacks, when the intensely deadly Israeli military strikes in Gaza had already begun, Biden spoke in Tel Aviv warning Israel publicly not to make the same mistakes. He used that word that the United States made after the 9-11 attacks in the war on terror. So there was some kind of concern and expression there already of Israel going too far in ways that I don't think is the way that Donald Trump speaks. So I'm really asking, do you document a conflictedness that Biden felt about Israel and Gaza?

Akbar Shahid Ahmed (3:01)

To me, that makes the Biden record and the kind of cynicism of it, frankly, even more important to highlight for a more honest and humane policy. So at the same time as Biden's saying, don't repeat our mistakes after 9-11, don't pursue these wars that very often sow the seeds of future violence and lead to huge civilian casualties and suffering implicating you, the Biden administration was rushing weapons to Israel over the advice of their own intelligence and legal experts, and not using the ability they knew they had to constrain Israel. So for instance, the Biden administration did prevent Netanyahu from launching a concurrent military campaign in Lebanon.

Soon after October 7th, they never reined him in on Gaza in that same way. So certainly, yes, the Biden administration paid more lip service to these ideas of a more restrained policy in Gaza. But that makes their awareness of what they were doing and their failure to act to me even more damning.

Brian Lehrer (3:59)

The remainder of the Biden administration after October 7th was only a year and three months. So I guess supporters of Israel's response would argue that so soon after that epic terror attack was no time to cut off Israel's military aid, hampering their ability to go after Hamas, which did continue to say it would continue to attack Israel as soon as it could. I remember a report from, I guess, the fall of 2023, probably November, referring to October 7th as the Al-Aqsa Flood. And the quote from a Hamas official was, we will do this again and again. The Al-Aqsa Flood is just the first time.

So was the Biden administration conflicted about seeing what Israel was doing to Gaza's population, but also not wanting to cut Israel off from being able to go after Hamas as a matter of what they saw as self-defense? Did they discuss it internally in those kinds of terms?