In the Final Stretch, Biden–Harris Administration Continues to Undermine Israel

A mere weeks before giving up power, the Biden–Harris administration continues to hamstring Israel in the aftermath of Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023 attack.

In a recent New York Times interview with Secretary of State Antony Blinken, he was asked essentially the same question three times: “Do you believe that Israel’s actions have been consistent with the rules of war?”; “Has Israel respected the rules of war in Gaza?”; and, “Have they [Israel] met [their wartime] responsibilities?” Rather than forcefully and correctly answer yes, Blinken did two great injuries to Israel:

1. He let the “Israel is committing genocide” canard live on. While Blinken did state that Israel did not commit genocide, he seems to validate alternative viewpoints: “As to how the world sees it — I can’t fully answer to that, but they — everyone has to look at the facts and draw their own conclusions from those facts.” By equivocating, Blinken allows the false claim that Israel committed genocide to endure.
2. He continued the false claim that the lack of humanitarian assistance was Israel’s failure. Blinken continued to claim that Israel did not deliver sufficient humanitarian assistance to Gaza. He stated, “We’ve found periods of time where, no, we didn’t think they [Israel] were doing enough.” Blinken also called Israel’s humanitarian assistance “insufficient.” Strangely, Blinken did not mention in the interview that the Biden–Harris administration had been pushing discredited reports that claim there was an imminent famine in Gaza, nor the number of times that Hamas intercepted humanitarian aid, nor the number of times that Hamas had operated in the humanitarian zones that Israel set up.

Blinken’s interview was revealing in several other ways.

U.S. impotent in negotiations with Hamas

Blinken admitted that when there was “public daylight between the United States and Israel” and a perception that the U.S. was pressuring Israel: “Hamas has pulled back from agreeing to a ceasefire and the release of hostages.” This is a revealing admission that the U.S.’s role in hostage talks was counterproductive and hardened Hamas’s positions because of the U.S.’s public pressuring of Israel.

The Biden administration in fact failed to achieve a breakthrough in negotiations since the November 2023 hostage deal. Better policies that the Biden–Harris administration could have chosen, and that Blinken did not address in the interview, include the U.S. giving Israel more freedom to both negotiate and wage war and for the U.S. to put real pressure on Qatar to make Hamas deliver on releasing the hostages.

Success of the Abraham Accords contingent on a Palestinian state

Additionally, Blinken’s interview showed that the Biden–Harris administration continues to push the destructive, self-fulfilling prophecy that claims advances in the Abraham Accords are only possible with advances toward a Palestinian state.

Blinken admitted that the trip he originally had scheduled for October 10, 2023, to Saudi Arabia and Israel “was to work on the Palestinian component of any normalization agreement between Saudi Arabia and Israel, because we believed — and the Saudis also said it was hugely important — to make sure that if there was going to be normalization there was also a pathway toward a Palestinian state.”

The belief in the prime importance of a Palestinian state, and the claim by Blinken that Saudi Arabia felt a Palestinian state was “hugely important” runs counter to the fact that the UAE, Bahrain, Morocco, and Sudan were able to sign on to the Abraham Accords during the Trump administration without a pathway toward a Palestinian state and that Saudi Arabia even helped broker these accords, without the Palestinians, behind the scenes.

In the interview, Blinken doubled down on the Abraham Accords–Palestinian state linkage by saying: “We have the prospect of a totally different region with normalized relations between Israel and Saudi Arabia and many other countries, Israel integrated into the security architecture of the region, and, because it will be a requirement of any such normalization agreement, a real pathway to a Palestinian state [emphasis added].” It is likely the obsession with the Palestinian track that prevented the Biden–Harris administration from getting a single additional country to sign on to the Accords.

Tacit endorsement of anti-Israel attitudes at the State Department

Lastly, Blinken shows that he is OK with an anti-Israel mutiny at the State Department. When asked about recent high-profile resignations at the State Department over perceived biases towards Israel, Blinken did not oppose such dissent nor the resignations on principle. Rather than state why he believed it was right to support Israel, Blinken talks for two paragraphs about how he understood those defectors: “I have inordinate respect for the people in this department who’ve not only had different views of the policies that we’ve pursued but have expressed those views.”

He even talks at length about the “dissent channel cable” and strangely concludes: “I read everything; I comment on everything; I look for answers on everything. Does that mean we get to the right answers every time? No. But does it mean we’re intensely focused on it? Yes.” These meandering words suggest that Blinken actually respects the veracity of such dissent.

Once the Biden–Harris administration leaves office, the Trump administration must put credible pressure on Hamas to release the hostages, expand the Abraham Accords without being hamstrung by an obsession with a Palestinian state, and allow Israel to finish its defensive wars against its mortal enemies.

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