On the menu today: The Israelis are in trouble because the country’s military accidentally killed seven aid workers connected to the program of Washington-area restaurateur and philanthropist José Andrés — a figure many Washington elites either know personally or feel like they know, because they’ve eaten at his restaurants. But the conventional wisdom appears wrong on two points: President Biden isn’t turning away from Israel in the ways that really matter for the war effort against Hamas, and Israel isn’t as isolated as it seems in ways that matter to the war and to its military supplies. Finally, we should expect Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to be on the ballot in all the key swing states, and I discuss trips to Ukraine with the Washington Post’s David Ignatius.
Biden’s Quiet Support of Israel
The Israel Defense Forces strike that killed seven employees of the World Central Kitchen on Monday may cause the Israelis more friction with the U.S. government than all previous military actions combined. The account from WCK makes the Israeli strike look exceptionally sloppy, inexcusable, and unforgivable: “The WCK team was traveling in a deconflicted zone in two armored cars branded with the WCK logo and a soft skin vehicle. Despite coordinating movements with the IDF, the convoy was hit as it was leaving the Deir al-Balah warehouse, where the team had unloaded more than 100 tons of humanitarian food aid brought to Gaza on the maritime route.”
Our James Lynch reports that Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Thursday, “As it happens in war, we are investigating the matter fully, we are in contact with the governments, and we will do everything possible to prevent this from happening again.”
Josef Stalin infamously and allegedly said, “A single death is a tragedy; a million deaths is a statistic.” The numbers put out by the Gaza Health Authorities may be ludicrously inaccurate and unreliable, but there’s no getting around the fact that scores of Palestinian civilians with no significant connection to Hamas have been killed during the IDF campaign. But this particular tragedy is more likely to affect the thinking of Washington policy-makers, in part because the consequences of the war are on a smaller, human scale — including the accidental killing of an American citizen.
The fact that the workers came from Andrés’ charity also carries particular weight in Washington, where the chef holds a number of restaurants frequented by foreign policymakers, including Zaytinya, Jaleo and Minibar, said DAVE HARDEN, a former humanitarian assistance coordinator at the U.S. Agency for International Development.
Allow me to offer a spectacularly cold take.
A lot of people want you to believe that President Biden has turned his back on the Israelis. And in a couple of ostentatious ways that grab headlines, he has.
But in the ways that Israel needs the U.S. to help it continue its war effort in Gaza, the Biden administration has quietly signed off and nodded in agreement. In late March, the administration authorized the transfer of more than 1,800 MK84 2,000-pound bombs and 500 MK82 500-pound bombs, according to Pentagon and State Department officials talking to the Washington Post.
Between October and early March, the Biden administration authorized the sale of “thousands of precision-guided munitions, small-diameter bombs, bunker busters, small arms and other lethal aid.” In December, the U.S. government publicly disclosed the sale of nearly 14,000 rounds of tank ammunition to Israel and a separate $147.5 million worth of artillery rounds.
President Biden may be raging about Netanyahu and enjoy letting people know that he privately calls the Israeli prime minister an “a**hole.” The Biden administration may be abstaining on certain Israel-related resolutions at the United Nations.
But Biden is not actually willing to take a step that would directly harm the ongoing Israeli campaign against Hamas.
It’s in Biden’s interest to act like he’s more opposed to Israel than he really is, because he and his reelection campaign have convinced themselves that the reason Biden is losing in Michigan is the state’s alienated Muslim, Arab-American, and Palestinian-American voters. Those voters may be a minor factor in Biden’s Michigan struggles, but you’ll notice that his numbers in Michigan aren’t that different from his numbers in Wisconsin and Pennsylvania. Biden’s in trouble in all of those states because prices are still high, the border is still insecure, and he’s really old.
It’s in the anti-Israel movement’s interest to act as if Biden is more opposed to Israel than he really is, because that makes it appear like they are winning the argument, and that the movement is powerful and influential. And it’s in certain pro-Israel voices’ interest to act as if Biden is more opposed to Israel than he really is, because they think significant numbers of American Jews will stay home or vote for Donald Trump in November.
I point all this out not to defend Biden — he is, as usual, demonstrating all of the fortitude and spine of an overcooked noodle — but to reinforce the accurate observation of Matthew Continetti, that the president doesn’t have a policy regarding Israel. “What the Biden administration has instead is a wish list. The items on this list sound nice to liberal ears: Defeat Hamas, free the hostages, capsize Netanyahu’s coalition, end the war, and jump-start the peace process. But the items are also numerous. They conflict with one another. They aren’t prioritized in any way.”
Remember, the U.S. military is also preparing to build a giant pier/terrorist target off the coast of Gaza, somehow without putting any “boots on the ground”:
The Army-led pier operation will involve about 1,000 U.S. troops and four Army ships that deployed from southeastern Virginia on March 12. After an estimated 30-day transit, the vessels are expected to pull in offshore, where the soldiers will build the floating steel structure and an 1,800-foot, two-lane causeway stretching from the edge of the Mediterranean Sea to a beachhead.
All deliveries will be staged and inspected in Cyprus before being loaded onto vessels that carry them to the pier. U.S. personnel will move supplies to the causeway, but they will not leave it, defense officials have said.
Maybe Biden realizes he has to “dance with the one that brung him.” Maybe he can’t really wholeheartedly embrace the anti-Israel and functionally pro-Hamas positions of the progressive grassroots. Or maybe he’s just an 81-year-old man who doesn’t think as clearly or make decisions as easily as he used to; CNN chose to inform voters that Biden is “famously indecisive” in August 2022.
A few weeks ago, the Economist ran a striking cover piece, declaring “Israel Alone.” And no doubt, each week and month since the October 7 Hamas massacre, world opinion has shifted against the Israelis more and more. The victims of Hamas have been quickly forgotten, as have the remaining hostages whom Hamas refuses to release, and whom Hamas men are almost certainly still abusing in the most horrific ways.
Funny thing is, as widely and furiously denounced as Israel has been over the past half year — the criticism has worsened month by month — the Israel Defense Forces’ effort against Hamas just continues. Sometimes they have good days. Sometimes they have bad days. And sometimes they have extremely bad days like Monday, when the erroneous strike killed the workers from World Central Kitchen. But the IDF keeps going, no matter how much the rest of the world denounces them. A whole lot of “soft power” is being brought to bear against Israel, with minimal effects on the ground. When push comes to shove, hard power wins.
Nothing anyone has done outside of Israel has been sufficient to get it to halt its ongoing operations against Hamas in the Gaza Strip, other than a short cease-fire in November. (Hamas broke the cease-fire, and Hamas continues to reject offers for another cease-fire, this one a proposed 40 days.)
And as for “Israel alone”. . . Israeli arms sales to India, its largest customer, are uninterrupted. Israeli gas supplies to Egypt and Jordan rose by about 25 percent in 2023, despite brief disruptions at the start of the war in Gaza, and the calls for an embargo on selling arms to Israel are unlikely to have much effect unless two countries agree; 99 percent of Israel’s arms exports come from the U.S. and Germany. Has the Israeli economy been hurt by the ongoing war effort? No doubt, and you can see it in the GDP numbers. But Israel ended 2023 with more billionaires in the country than when the year started.
Finally, let’s note that lots of people who can shrug their shoulders at Russia’s egregious ongoing human-rights abuses in occupied Ukraine, or the Chinese government’s concentration camps and attempted genocide of the Uyghurs, or any action by the mullahs in Iran, will get out in the streets and furiously denounce Israel. When the only country that stirs your ire in terms of human rights is the one with a Jewish star on its flag, the rest of us can conclude what really motivates you.
ADDENDUM: Over in that other Washington publication I write for, I note that Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is likely to appear on the ballot in just about all of the swing or competitive states this year — Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and (even though I think it doesn’t really count as a swing state) North Carolina. Kennedy’s decision to select Nicole Shanahan, a Bay Area tech lawyer who previously was a big Democratic donor, as his VP makes the Kennedy–Shanahan ticket seem like a more attractive option for disaffected voters on the left rather than for disaffected voters on the right.
Separately, I made a podcast appearance with fellow Post columnist David Ignatius, who also just returned from Ukraine, and has a fascinating story of the Ukrainians not allowing him to bring felt-tip pens into his interview with Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky.