How Democrats Lost Their Way on Gaza

T here has been much public handwringing in the Democratic foreign policy establishment in recent months over Gaza policy. The party’s establishment and progressive factions were engaging in vicious finger-pointing about the Gaza war and America’s relationship with Israel even before the release of Biden adviser Brett McGurk’s new book about the October 7 hostages.

Biden confidants such as former Secretary of State Antony Blinken and National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan strike me as decent and principled men. While in office, both evinced frustration, publicly and privately, about the twisted discourse in Washington policy circles and the prejudiced media coverage of the Gaza war — and how that affected Hamas’s strategic calculus at critical junctures.

While party leaders now seem content allowing far-left voices to come to the fore, the Democratic foreign policy establishment needs an honest accounting of why and how the administration’s deliberations and messaging on Gaza lost their way — including muddying moral clarity about what happened on October 7, the ideology underpinning the atrocities, and how a sovereign nation-state should respond.

In the days following the Hamas-led October 7 onslaught, President Biden made clear his revulsion at the scale of the barbarity and his solidarity with the government and people of Israel — including his visit to Tel Aviv eleven days after the attack. That deeply felt outrage and sincere support for the Israeli people should have been the guiding light in the two years that followed.

Instead, narrow political considerations, biased media coverage, and far-left, anti-Israel activists’ demands were allowed to shape policy deliberations and official messaging, including the president’s. This miscalculation prolonged the conflict, increased Palestinian suffering, and fueled anti-Israel discourse in American society that nurtured antisemitism.

Israelis and Palestinians alike would be better off had the United States proceeded with strategic and moral clarity about the October 7 attacks and the responsibility of nations to respond. Israel was right to exercise military force against Hamas and its army of over 25,000 militants. Any other government, tasked with the primary responsibility of defending its people, would have done the same — and should be expected to do so.

Like the U.S. military, the Israel Defense Forces operate under legal frameworks requiring distinction, precaution, and proportionality in military action. But those laws were never designed to guarantee zero civilian harm when fighting an enemy deeply and intentionally embedded in civilian infrastructure. Credible allegations of operational misconduct demand transparent investigation and accountability within the Israeli military justice system.

Rather than helping the public understand these legal standards and Hamas’s practice of operating from high-density civilian locations, the Biden administration too often allowed the grim realities of urban warfare to be reframed as inherently unlawful — by failing to speak up about heavily biased media coverage and about Hamas’s use of human shields.

Americans are right to care about Palestinian suffering, and because Israel is an American ally using U.S. weapons, its conduct deserves scrutiny. But that scrutiny was not applied evenly. Hundreds of thousands have died in Syria and Sudan with a fraction of the outrage. Mosul and Raqqa were reduced to rubble at the cost of thousands of civilian lives during U.S.-led counter-ISIS operations, yet no comparable moral outcry followed. Demanding of Israel a standard that no army has met and no other conflict has faced is not accountability; Biden administration officials should have rejected that double standard and selective outrage early and repeatedly.

The Biden administration was right to press Israel on humanitarian access at certain junctures. Aid restrictions and the collapse of public order inside Gaza produced real hardship. The mistake was letting that pressure be heard as a verdict on the war itself, while saying far too little about Hamas’s systematic looting and diversion of aid.

There never was, and there is not, a “genocide” in Gaza. The administration should have been forthright about this from the start, including repudiating rhetoric from discredited UN officials. The misuse of this term is a grave disservice to the millions of Armenians, Jews and other victims of Nazi Germany, Cambodians, and Rwandans murdered en masse in the 20th century.

Washington also failed to challenge the figures released by the Hamas-run Gaza Ministry of Health. Officials should have consistently noted that the published statistics included deaths of Hamas and other militants, as well as those who died of causes unrelated to the conflict. Despite the terrible destruction of parts of Gaza, Israeli procedures ensured that the ratio of combatant to civilian deaths among Gazans remained historically low for dense urban combat.

Furthermore, the administration should have pushed back on slanted media coverage, reminding U.S. outlets to be thorough and judicious in their reporting — especially given that news organizations around the world look to American media to validate sensational claims. U.S. officials should have regularly reminded the world that Hamas conducted the vast majority of its military operations from homes, apartment buildings, schools, hospitals, and mosques, putting Palestinian women, children, and men in harm’s way every hour of every day.

Hamas had every opportunity to surrender. Israel even signaled a willingness to consider exile for its leaders. Hamas chose instead to keep fighting, using innocent Palestinians as human shields. The responsibility for Palestinian deaths lies overwhelmingly with Hamas and its enablers, including the regime in Tehran.

The Netanyahu government’s mistake was not the decision to fight Hamas, but the refusal to plan for “the day after.” The Biden administration’s mistake was failing to prioritize this. That left a campaign with no agreed political exit, allowing critics to brand the war aimless. A clearer American position would not have ended the war on Washington’s schedule, but it would have forced Hamas and Western critics to argue with an explicit postwar plan rather than a political vacuum.

America and Israel need one another: The strategic and economic partnership is too deep to squander in a political food fight. Future administrations must bring mutual respect and long-term stability back to the relationship.

Too many Democratic foreign policy figures currently defending their records on Gaza are reluctant to acknowledge these truths. But Democrats who want to govern again must face them. Biden flew to Tel Aviv in October 2023 and embraced Israel’s cause, and the Democratic Party has spent the past three years arguing over whether to disown that instinct. Ambivalence in American leadership was read by Hamas as a reason to keep fighting, by Tehran as proof of American fatigue, and by allies as a reason to hedge.

A party that wants to govern again must be able to say three things at once: that Israel’s war against Hamas was just; that its conduct, like U.S. operations in wartime, deserves scrutiny; and that the singular, selective condemnation applied to Israel but no other ally or adversary is wrong. Until Democrats can say all three, they will keep arguing about the last war while their adversaries prepare for the next one. A party that presided over the war and still cannot describe it with moral clarity will not be trusted to shape the one that follows.