President Joe Biden speaks at the Amtrak Bear Maintenance Facility, Monday, Nov. 6, 2023, in Bear, Del. (AP Photo/Andrew Harnik)

This article was originally posted on Edwin’s Substack newsletter on Nov. 3.

I have read a handful of articles warning Joe Biden that his support for Israel will cost him the Presidency in the 2024 election. Those articles invariable include the abhorrent charge that Mr. Biden is supporting the murder of thousands of children in Gaza. This is, on the left, the same thoughtless base pandering that has radicalized the right in America, and just as dangerous.

The Middle East is as complicated as it is painful

Few places are as divisive and complex as the middle east. I joined those who condemned the outrages of the Netanyahu government before Oct. 7. After the attack, I stand with those who hold Netanyahu responsible for the failures of the Israeli government to prevent that terrible attack, as well as for the government’s illegal and incendiary land grabs in the West Bank.

A two-state solution might have long been reality but for:

  1. The expansionist Israeli right wing, the murder of Yitzhak Rabin, and the rise of Netanyahu.
  2. The continued use of Palestinian misery by Iran and several Arab nations both to focus their own citizens’s anger on a foreign object and to pressure Israel. That pressure includes funding terrorist organization like Hamas.
  3. The corruption and incompetence of the Palestinian Authority. There is blame everywhere for the tragedy of the Palestinians.

None of that excuses the inhumanity of Oct. 7.  The world cannot under any circumstances ever excuse the beheading of children, the kidnapping of grandparents, the wanton slaughter of kids at a concert.

Nor does it excuse the collateral deaths of innocent Palestinians in Gaza.

Hamas governs Gaza. Hamas declared war on Israel and launched a surprise attacked aimed largely at civilian targets. They took hostages, including U.S. citizens.  They continue to fire missiles at civilian targets. They did not attempt to protect the Palestinians living in Gaza. Instead, they hope that the Israeli response will shed so much innocent Palestinian blood that others will be motivated to join their war.

Americans like to make things simple. In the Middle East, however, simplification makes for misinformed commentary. At least three difficult problems are knotted together and cannot be solved one by one:

  • How can Israelis and Palestinians live side by side in peace and dignity? What boundaries must be drawn? What limits on absolute sovereignty must each accept to assure the other? How will a Palestine that includes Gaza be governed?
  • How can the terrorists be held to account and prevented from ever doing again by people who will not themselves become terrorists and murder innocent people? What do you do when the terrorists use innocents as shields?
  • What are the implications of answering these questions on the region and in the context of the much larger Suni — Shia animosities?

The generational delay in answering the first question creates conditions where it becomes necessary to answer the second. Now an answer is necessary, even though it causes yet more pain and more complexity. And, then there’s that third question. That’s the one that leads Iran to arm terrorists in Gaza and Lebanon. Will disarming them so change the balance that they feel required to attack? How will the Saudis respond? This is a multidimensional challenge to peace and stability.

The criticism of Joe Biden fully misrepresents the president’s actions and misunderstands the stakes.

Joe Biden and Bibi Netanyahu are not allies, even as American and Israel are. It is not lost on Biden that the day he landed in Israel as vice president was the day Netanyahu ignored America’s pleas and announced an expansion of settlement activity in the West Bank. To pretend that Biden is fully supportive of Netanyahu is simply false. Imagine if the U.S. was attacked when Donald Trump was president. Would anyone argue that any nation who stood with us was a Trumpist? Of course not.

The president’s position is clear: He stands against the terrorism that slaughtered innocent Israelis and took others hostage and against an indiscriminate military response that slaughters innocent Palestinians. He stands for a two-state solution, that frees Israel from 75 years of existential threats, and gives the Palestinians self-determination, dignity, and nation of their own.

President Biden has no say in whether or how Israel responds to the attack of Oct. 7. That is a decision only the Israeli government can make. President Biden did tell Israelis that we certainly would respond if similarly attacked. At the same time, he warned the Israeli government that it must stay within the laws of war. He called for extraordinary pauses in fighting to allow for humanitarian aid. He included that aid in his funding request to Congress. His administration has been working with every country in the region to provide assistance to the Palestinians, to free Americans held hostage by Hamas, and to find a way out of this tragedy.

Americans, determined as we are to only ever see one side of anything, are making a dangerous situation worse.

Far more is at stake than our own virtue signaling around the Israeli — Palestinian tragedy. Joe Biden knows this. He did not authorize the movement of two American aircraft carrier groups, and other military assets to protect Israel. He moved them in a heroic effort to be the adult in the room and to prevent a wider, far more devastating war.

Here at home, we must not ignore the facts

Bringing this back to American politics, I urge everyone who feels they must comment to lean into the facts, all of the facts, and to work for a just peace. Undermining the President at this moment ignores many of the facts and makes peace harder to achieve. Not just in Israel and Palestine, but here in our country, as the alternative to President Biden is President Trump. Do I really need to talk about the consequences of that?

Edwin Eisendrath hosts “The Big Picture” on WCPT 820 AM every Saturday at 1 p.m. CST. You can follow him on X (formerly Twitter) @eisendrath.