Biden in Israel in Aftermath of Hospital Explosion
The timing is not auspicious.
The News:
AP (“Biden pledges solidarity with Israelis and suggests ‘other team’ to blame for Gaza hospital blast“):
President Joe Biden vowed to show the world that the U.S. stands in solidarity with Israelis during his visit there Wednesday, and offered an assessment that the deadly explosion at a Gaza Strip hospital apparently was not carried out by the Israeli military.
“Based on what I’ve seen, it appears as though it was done by the other team, not you,” Biden told Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu during a meeting. But Biden said there were “a lot of people out there” who weren’t sure what caused the blast.
Biden didn’t offer details on why he believed the blast was not caused by the Israelis. The Hamas-run Gaza Health Ministry said an Israeli airstrike caused the destruction and hundreds of deaths. The Israeli military denied involvement and blamed a misfired rocket from the Palestinian Islamic Jihad, another militant group. However, that organization also rejected responsibility.
Biden had been scheduled to visit Jordan to meet with Arab leaders after the stop in Israel, but the summit was called off after the hospital explosion. And his remarks spoke both of the horrors the Israelis had endured, but also the growing humanitarian crisis for Palestinian civilians in Gaza.
He told Netanyahu he was “deeply saddened and outraged” by the hospital explosion. He stressed that “Hamas does not represent all the Palestinian people. and it has brought them only suffering.”
Biden spoke of the need to find ways of “encouraging life-saving capacity to help the Palestinians who are innocent, caught in the middle of this.”
But he also said Hamas had “slaughtered” Israelis in the Oct. 7 attack that killed 1,400 people. Biden described at length the horror of the killing of innocent Israelis, including children.
“Americans are grieving, they really are,” Biden said. “Americans are worried.”
Netanyahu thanked Biden for coming to Israel, telling him the visit was “deeply, deeply moving.”
“I know I speak for all the people of Israel when I say thank you Mr. President, thank you for standing with Israel today, tomorrow and always.”
Netanyahu said Biden had rightly drawn a clear line between the “forces of civilization and the forces of barbarism,” saying Israel was united in its resolve to defeat Hamas.
“The civilized world must unite to defeat Hamas,” he said.
NPR (“White House says Biden will be ‘asking some tough questions’ in Israel“):
President Biden will be “asking some tough questions” of Israeli leaders during his trip to Tel Aviv — a trip where he wants to learn more about Israel’s plans for battling Hamas, and where he wants to emphasize aid for civilians in Gaza, said John Kirby a spokesperson for the National Security Council.
Biden will first meet with Netanyahu, then with his war cabinet, Kirby said. The trip comes as Israel prepares for a ground offensive in Gaza, and Biden wants to learn more about the objectives and plans for coming days and weeks, Kirby told reporters.
“He’ll be asking some tough questions — he’ll be asking them as a friend, as a true friend of Israel but he’ll be asking some questions of them,” Kirby said.
On the hospital explosion, Kirby said Biden wants his team to gather more information about what happened. He noted that Biden had spoken to Netanyahu afterward, and that Israel had “categorically and stridently denied” responsibility.
Asked whether the United States was giving Israel the benefit of the doubt on that denial, Kirby said: “We certainly recognize that they feel very strongly that this was not caused by them, and as I said, he has directed the national security team … to try to gather as much information as possible.”
Biden will also press for food, water, medicine and power to be restored to Gaza. Kirby said there was optimism there would be progress on that after Blinken’s recent meetings.
Reuters (“Biden, in Israel, says hospital blast caused by militants“):
U.S. President Joe Biden arrived in Israel on Wednesday pledging solidarity in its war against Hamas and backing its account that a blast that killed huge numbers of Palestinians at a Gaza hospital had been caused by militants.
The fireball that engulfed the Al-Ahli al-Arabi hospital delivered some of the most harrowing images yet from a 12-day war, and wrecked White House plans for Biden’s emergency diplomatic mission to the Middle East, with Arab leaders calling off their planned summit with the U.S. president.
[…]
Speaking alongside Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Biden said: “I was deeply saddened and outraged by the explosion of the hospital in Gaza yesterday, and based on what I’ve seen, it appears as though it was done by the other team, not you.”
“But there’s a lot of people out there not sure, so we’ve got a lot, we’ve got to overcome a lot of things,” Biden added.
“The world is looking. Israel has a value set like the United States does, and other democracies, and they are looking to see what we are going to do.”
[…]
After Biden backed the Israeli account, other Western leaders also called for caution.
“Last night, too many jumped to conclusions around the tragic loss of life at Al Ahli hospital,” Britain’s Foreign Secretary James Cleverly posted on X. “Getting this wrong would put even more lives at risk. Wait for the facts, report them clearly and accurately. Cool heads must prevail.”
The blast unleashed new fury on streets across the Middle East, even as Biden sought to calm emotions and prevent the conflict from sweeping across borders.
Reuters (“Attack on Gaza hospital ‘unprecedented’ in scale, WHO says“):
A strike on the Al-Ahli al-Arabi Hospital in the north of the Gaza Strip that killed hundreds was “unprecedented in scale,” the World Health Organization (WHO) said on Tuesday, condemning the attack.
The strike was the bloodiest single incident in Gaza since Israel launched a bombing campaign against the densely populated Gaza Strip in retaliation for a deadly cross-border Hamas assault on Israeli communities on Oct. 7.
“This attack is unprecedented in scale,” said Richard Peeperkorn, WHO Representative for the West Bank and Gaza. “We have seen consistent attacks on healthcare in the occupied Palestinian territory.”
[…]
Mike Ryan, executive director of WHO’s Health Emergencies Programme, said it was “inhumane” to leave Gaza’s health workers with the dilemma of caring for their patients or fleeing to save their own lives. He said doctors and nurses were choosing their patients over themselves.
“It is absolutely clear to all sides of this conflict where the health facilities are,” Ryan said.
“It is absolutely clear healthcare is not a target… That is enshrined in international humanitarian law. And we’re seeing this breached again and again and again over the last week. And it has to stop. It must stop.”
My Two Cents:
The almost universal initial reaction to the blasts were that it was an Israeli war crime. That Israel vehemently denies that—and that the United States is siding with them on the matter—is encouraging. Presumably, President Biden wouldn’t allow himself to be photographed hugging Netanyahu if he had reason to believe he was responsible.
Regardless, Biden has simultaneously bolstered Netanyahu and Hamas. The strong showing up support for Israel while they’re under so much international pressure is surely welcome. But it also firmly ties the United States to Israel’s war and undermines the long effort to establish ourselves as an honest broker.
To reiterate what I’ve written in previous posts, there’s simply no question that we should be on Israel’s side in the aftermath of the vicious attack against its civilian population by Hamas. But it’s now going to be very hard for Arab leaders to work with Biden.
Footage this morning does not look like hospital leveled by an Israeli bomb and is more consistent with Israel’s explanation of a wayward Islamic Jihad rocket. We’ll see what comes out but the rush to take Hamas at their word seems like a huge mistake by the media and numerous organizations. Summits and meeting that could have addressed the situation have been cancelled, which was Hamas’ goal.
Question: Why should our goal be that we establish ourselves as an honest broker? Is it because we think of ourselves at the world’s arbiter? The moral leader? I can see that as our self image but at what point can we say: Hamas perpetrated a terrorist attack on another country. There is no question here. The demand on Hamas is unconditional surrender. And once that is done, then we can be that honest broker, that intermediary.
Seems our role should be as the most powerful supporter of liberal democracies against violent and authoritarian regimes, including Russia, China, Iran, most of the Arab states, any number of African states. Hamas is just one small example where we don’t have to be an honest broker.
@Scott: Again: supporting Israel in attacking Hamas is absolutely the right thing to do. But Hamas and the Palestinian people are not the same. If Israel, is it has been wont to do, especially under Netanyahu, over-reaches and kills a disproportionate number of innocents, it will be viewed as being done with American blessing.
@Scott:
We should.
The question is does Netanyahu support liberal democracy? No.
Has Israel under Netanyahu’s failed leadership behaved like a liberal democracy, with human rights commitments? Meh.
Netanyahu’s governments have pursued a policy of breaking international law with illegal settlements and of bolstering Hamas — undermining US policy and peace efforts while escalating tensions.
Netanyahu and his religious-extremist coalition have attempted to cripple democracy. Note how little support Israel has given Ukraine, despite US pleas.
It does not compute for American presidents who claim to support liberal democracy to hug Benjamin Netanyahu, a Hamas-fluffing authoritarian. Obama was right to keep him at arms length.
@James Joyner:
I do not believe there is any formula to determine that, it looks to me based on subjective judgement.
No matter what the IDF does, it will seem disproportionate to some people, not so much to others.
It will be seen according to people’s priors, some people will always see whatever Israel does as with American blessing.
@DK:
All true re. Netanyahu and his coalition of other yahoos.
But the War Cabinet is in control now, including the key opposition leader Benny Gantz.
Netanyahu is finished; as soon as the fighting is done he’ll be out.
His polling figures are so abysmal, Likud will boot him to try to survive.
@DK:
While I agree with your assessment of Netanyahu, I think Biden has to embrace him for now, just to try to remove the threat of regional escalation through an Israeli overreaction.
Let’s hope that that’s why he’s doing it.
(Although the calculation should be different if the hospital explosion were caused by an Israeli strike – which, according to commentators I trust, appears unlikely.)
@drj:
Both to restrain Israel by embracing them, and to deter Iran and Hezbollah.
@JohnSF:
I really have my doubts that Iran is chomping at the bit, to be honest.
ETA: although there might be real pressure on Hezbollah to not sit this one out if things get too much out of hand. And after that, who knows…
@drj:
I don’t think Iran are chomping, but do they love to stir up troubled waters to fish in, and they may stir a little too much.
Problem will be if Hezb/IRG decide they’ll look weak if Hezbollah don’t act.
Then Hezbollah get pasted, and Iran decides it must act (in the Gulf, most likely) to save them/
I still incline to think the Hezbollah axis would be far less of a problem if the US had terminated the Assad regime ten years ago.
@James Joyner: I understand the need to distinguish the Palestinian people from Hamas for the purposes of bounding the scope and intensity of the Israeli response.
I do not believe such a distinction should be made for the purposes of understanding the problem and being honest about the options.
We spent 20 years distinguishing between the people of Afghanistan and the Taliban. We killed a lot of Taliban. Yet, Afghanistan never seemed to run out of them. They never were out-competed by another group because there weren’t enough of them left to hold power. The Taliban is still there and now run Afghanistan.
Last I checked, there isn’t massive immigration of men to Gaza, yet Hamas never runs out of fighters and has held power comfortably for almost 20 years. Yes, the Palestinians people aren’t Hamas, but they’re Hamas adjacent and no doubt would choose Hamas control of the streets over Israeli control.
There are no good options to solve this dynamic. Israel can 1. accept the status quo of a continuous simmer and 10-15 year boil over. 2 Remove the young adult and adult population by *means. 3. Allow a hostile Palestinian State to form on their border. 4 leave Israel.
Only 2 of those options are executable and only 1 is actually feasible.
My money is on the status quo being retained.
Sometimes I think of attempts to solve the conflict as akin to trying to retrieve something from deep inside a working meat grinder. Odds are 99.99999999% you’ll lose your hand and fail to retrieve the object stuck inside.
@Scott:
Israel is a democracy in exactly the same way apartheid South Africa was a democracy. Gaza is Lesotho. The West Bank is an Eswatini that they decided they wanted to take over. At the time Ronald Reagan and other hawks, plus Southern Dixiecrats made the argument that we had to support SA because it was a democracy. I didn’t buy that then and I don’t buy it about Israel now. We should condemn the attacks by Hamas, but we should also get the hell out of there. Israel/Palestine is cooked. There is no hope for peace and the the people controlling both countries are busy killing off the few remaining who are willing to compromise. That’s not our battle, on either side.
@JohnSF:
All due respect, but I’ve heard this about 100 times over the past couple of decades…
I haven’t participated much in these Israeli/Palestinian discussion threads the past couple of days as I don’t really have anything more to say for the most part, my comment about Israel being a democracy being an exception to that. But I feel I should make something clear. Of course Israeli must pound Hamas, and of course Israel will overreact and make mistakes causing outrage, just as we did in Afghanistan and Iraq. And of course it is most likely that the hospital bombing was a failed rocket attack by Hamas, followed by a deliberate false flag attack by Hamas, followed by an Israeli error they are covering up, and least likely that it is a deliberate Israeli attack.
And of course Palestinians are correct to fight the occupiers. And of course Israelis who have lived on land for multiple generations have a right to that land and shouldn’t be considered occupiers. Great wrongs were done, and are being done. It’s a mess.
When we helped negotiate a peace in Northern Ireland it was because we were able to find willing partners, however hostile they were to each other. But there is no one with power on either side of this generations long struggle that is looking for peace, only victory and annihilation. We should not be choosing a side, not anymore. When the settlers murdered their Prime Minister and were rewarded with ever more power, the die was cast. We should wash our hands of the whole place.
@MarkedMan:
Problems:
1 – It’s impossible in terms of US politics.
2 – Removal of the US security guarantee would massive incentivise Israel to prompt use of nuclear weapons to cripple Iran, destroy the local basis of Hezbollah, etc.
Perhaps Netanyahu is not finished.
But I’ll bet that way.
Netanyahu’s general appeal, such as it was, was built on his reputions as “Mr Securtity”
That’s finished.
Polling IIRC (read it in print) indicates 95 per cent hold the government responsible for the security failures.
55% think Netanyahu should resign after the fighting is over; 30% of Likud voters do.
Only 30% favour Netanyahu as PM; Gantz is on 50%
Indications are if an election was held with Netanyahu, Likud would fall below 20 seats, and Gantz’s opposition would win more than 40.
Likud politicians will drop Netanyahu out of pure self-preservation.
@Jim Brown 32:
There are some grounds for doubting Hamas is a solidly supported as might be thought, according to Nathan French.
It did not kill all the Fatah people it could because it felt secure.
Similarly is its refusal since 2006 to hold elections
When you look at the photos it’s clear the hospital was not an Israeli attack. No crater – paving stones intact. Cars burned but not shifted. Surrounding buildings intact. And it’s nonsense to imagine that hundreds of people were in that small blast area. Israel doesn’t own a missile or bomb weak enough to have caused this.
This was likely Hamas or Islamic Jihad, using homemade missiles with small warheads, having a catastrophic friendly fire incident – probably accidental, but not necessarily.
But why wait for analysis when you can uncritically repeat terrorist talking points and demonize Jews?
@JohnSF: I read those surveys in the same vein as Republicans who like DeSantis because they desire Trump without the Trumpy Baggage. The Republican Party is also despised by its voters, yet, given a choice they wouldn’t even elect a Democrat as dog catcher.
Given my DeSantis vs Trump analogy, what would be the actual experienced difference by Americans and Allies of President Ron over President Don? Less aftertaste, but same poison pill
I don’t like Biden’s first comment (“it was done by the other team”), as it makes it sound like it was a deliberate attack by Hamas, when the emerging evidence doesn’t (yet?) support that. Failed rocket launch is most likely, and matches the overnight analysis of Bellingcat. (I like Bellingcat because they show their work, and they are usually right, and they are cautious to not get ahead of the data —in a world with so much motivated misinformation*, this is gold)
The massive death toll is because the hospital courtyard had become a refugee camp.
JJ writes:
When Biden repeated the claims that 40 babies were beheaded by Hamas (strongly implying that he had seen photographs), and those claims were eventually walked back by everyone, that served as a clear reminder that the US is not an “honest broker”.
Instead he is hugging someone who is creating a humanitarian disaster with orders for 1.1M people to evacuate through a war zone without food or water.
——
*: in the immediate aftermath of the explosion at the hospital, there was a round of pro-Israeli folks pushing a “IDF struck a Hamas weapons depot at the hospital, Hamas are bad” claim. This particular bit of misinformation has lodged into a lot of people’s minds as “IDF initially claimed responsibility.” I would worry that it’s going to become the new “jet fuel can’t melt steel girders, 9/11 was an inside job” but I expect that there will be some other massive loss of life next week that pushes this out of everyone’s memory.
@JohnSF:
Agreed… today. Again, I go back to South Africa. Once it became clear by their actions (rather than words) that the apartheid government had complete control of policy and would never engage in meaningful peace talks, I.e. that there was no negotiating partner there, the world started turning on them. It took years, but that was the key. And when they finally realized the choice was between going against the whole world and eventual overthrow, or negotiating the best deal they could, enough people with power decided the latter was the wiser path. It didn’t have to turn out as well as it did (which is and always has been rocky). Imagine if Winnie Mandela instead of Nelson came to power.
I don’t call for us to wash our hands because I hate Israel or laud the Palestinians, but because our policies are making things worse, not better.
@MarkedMan:
South Africa would be a more encouraging reference point if SA was not not circling the drain.
I despise Netanyahu and Likud, and we might have been able to step further back a year ago, or six weeks ago, but not now. We have no choice but to support Israel because we’ve promised to support Israel and failing to do so would send a very bad message to Taiwan, South Korea, Philippines and more countries which are not NATO allies, but are American commitments. Biden is right to stand with Israel.
He’s also right to move the aircraft carriers and Marines into closer proximity. Israel will not allow itself to be defeated, and Israel is a nuclear power with an estimated 90 warheads. We are right to try and overawe Iran and Hezbollah because we don’t want a wider war for humanitarian and power politics reasons.
Psychologically speaking, Biden is right to offer a comforting blanket to traumatized Israelis. The disproportion in destructive power between Israel and either Hamas or Hezbollah is so great that a wider war would mean many more civilian casualties. A reassured Israel is better than an enraged and abandoned Israel. Right now, paradoxically given our support for Israel, the US is the only restraint on Netanyahu.
ETA: We didn’t support apartheid SA because it was a democracy, that was threadbare propaganda. We supported SA because they control the passage from the Indian Ocean into the Atlantic, and we didn’t want the Soviet Navy running around at will. We dropped SA as the USSR began to weaken and fail. Not a coincidence.
@MarkedMan:
But there remains the problem of what an Israel absent the US security assurance might do to secure itself unilaterally.
And that, unfortunate as it may be, the world continues to be economically dependent on the flow of Gulf hydrocarbons.
Which means if the US steps away, there is a very high probability of a replacement turning up, one way or another.
@Michael Reynolds:
I can’t argue there. But I do believe Zimbabwe/Rhodesia is the “best” case example if Botha hadn’t been able to negotiate.
Yes, the decision to materially support a country has much more to do with strategic value than morality, as it should. And Israel is more important to us strategically than any group of non-oil producing Middle Eastern countries. But it is not more strategically important than the oil-producers and further, a great deal of their strategic value has to do with their position with respect to those oil producers. As that oil becomes less and less important all of those calculations will change.
I agree with JohnSF’s comment that US domestic politics drives our relationship with Israel as much as strategic value. But I think this need to unthinkingly side with the Israelis hurts us as a country and also hurts Israel as it shields them from the consequences of their bad decisions. If Israel did not have its history, its very real and morally very admirable entwinement with US and world Jewery, and its warped, twisted and harmful entanglement with fundamentalist Christianity, we would view them as more akin to Saudi Arabia.
@JohnSF:
Very good point. When I say “we should wash our hands”, what I’m really saying is “we should stop taking Israel’s side and painting them as the victim in all this and instead treat them as we need to for strategic reasons. We need to quit getting led around by the nose or it will surely end with our children dying in Tehran in order to protect illegal Israel settlements.”
“We should wash our hands” is just shorter to type.
@MarkedMan:
I don’t disagree that we should have (past tense) put distance between the US and Likud Israel. I’ve said as much many times. Or at least several times. But now it’s like trying to divorce your wife after she gets a cancer diagnosis. Only Newt Gingrich does that. Shoulda, woulda, coulda. On the plus side there is at least a hope that we’ll soon be done with Bibi.
As to SA, it’s just fucking depressing. One secular saint (Mandela, and I’m not being ironic calling him a saint) does not ensure good governance.
Adam Silverman’s daily Ukraine post at Balloon Juice for today has extensive discussion of the Gaza hospital at the end of the post, lots of pictures discussion etc.
I thought this point was telling:
Adam Silverman at Balloon Juice is discussing the Gaza hospital in his daily Ukraine post for today.
Extensive discussion, pictures etc.
I really noticed this point, my emphasis:
@MarkedMan:
I think for the African nations in question the sort of slo-mo ethnic cleansing being used by the Israelis in the West Bank with settlements was not an option and obviously so. There have never been a significant number of Europeans with a reason to be eager to migrate to Africa, so the ultimate fate of the European colonies there was sealed from the git-go.
@Michael Reynolds:
When there are large explosions it makes sense to operate from the initial assumption that it has a lot to do with the people dropping large bombs.
That may be lazy, but it’s not antisemitism.
It’s war. Sometimes people bomb a hospital, by mistake, “mistake” or *cough* *cough* “mistake.”
@dazedandconfused:
European migration to North America worked because the natives lacked resistance to smallpox, measles, mumps many other diseases, the diseases spread outpaced the European settlements killing off the natives.
Africa is full of tropical diseases Europeans lack resistance to.
@Gustopher:
You know, given assholes in Dockers carrying tikki torches and chanting ‘Jews will not replace us’, I think you might want to be a tad less naive. Anti-semitism isn’t just drawing swastikas on temples, it’s also leaping to the conclusion that Israel must have behaved horribly, that Israel must be the moral equivalent of Hamas. Hearing a news report of a crime and assuming the perpetrator must be a Black guy isn’t burning a cross, but it is racism. And this eagerness to blame Israel is anti-semitism.
I’m not by any stretch suggesting that Israel is or should be immune from criticism. But watch the column inches and the pixels dwelling on Israel’s response, compared to the amount of coverage of the brutal attack on Jews in their homes.