The Inexcusable Omission in Biden’s Big Israel Speech – Ceasefire
President Biden greets Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at Ben Gurion International Airport on Wednesday, Oct. 18, 2023, in Tel Aviv.,Evan Vucci/AP // NPR
Why calling for a ceasefire is the right move, politically and morally. Calling for a ceasefire would, at the very least, change the conversation—and make better use of the knowledge hard won from actions we regret.
Much of the coverage of Joe Biden’s speech in Israel on Wednesday has understandably focused on a warning. “Justice must be done,” Biden said, hours after arriving in Tel Aviv. “I caution this: While you feel that rage, don’t be consumed by it. After 9/11, we were enraged in the U.S. While we sought justice and got justice, we also made mistakes.”
It was an evocative and apt word of caution. The devastating attacks on civilians perpetrated by Hamas on October 7 recall the brutality of the September 11 attacks. But it’s also highly reminiscent of the errors in judgment that can be made in the hot haze of retribution, specifically the lack of concern for civilian deaths in retaliatory strikes and, relatedly, the apparent lack of concern for the potential short and long-term consequences of retaliatory actions in general. Israel, much like the United States did in response to 9/11, has adopted an abstract, possibly unfulfillable goal that justifies endless war: in this case, the eradication of Hamas.
Biden’s flick to the way our own military misadventures paved the road to regret was perhaps the only suggestion that restraint might be the more intelligent choice. The message was hardly subtle, even if Biden didn’t exactly spell it out. After 9/11, the U.S. blundered into two wars that each lasted longer than a decade, destabilized an entire region, and permanently tarnished its reputation. In related remarks, Biden called on Israelis to recognize the humanity of Palestinians, millions of whom are currently trapped in Gaza, with limited access to food, water, and electricity. “The vast majority of Palestinians are not Hamas,” Biden said. “Hamas does not represent the Palestinian people.”
Some of Biden’s rhetoric was overbaked—one presumes that when he says we received the “justice” we sought, he means the death of bin Laden and the destruction of Al Qaeda (more or less), a few highlights plucked from a mostly dreary reel. But it’s rare to hear a president speak about great national errors in this fashion. It certainly stands apart from notable past efforts to speak with a chastened tongue—one thinks of Ronald Reagan’s passive “mistakes were made” commentary offered in the wake of the Iran-Contra scandal.
Nonetheless, it’s hard to quibble with the comparison Biden attempted to make. These particular parallels with 9/11—perhaps the only ones that matter—are clear. Israel, bent on vengeance, has already killed thousands of Palestinian civilians in retaliation. The conflict is already spiraling out of control, and there is a very real possibility that it could touch off a regional conflict with profound, devastating, and unknown consequences. Israel may get a feeling of retribution, as America did after 9/11. But in doing so it may unleash a metric ton of devastation, also as America did after 9/11.
By invoking the September 11 attacks, Biden made it clear that he and his administration understand the potential, and indeed likely, risks of Israel’s profoundly dehumanizing and destructive response to Hamas’s heinous attacks. The problem was that the rest of the speech, in which Biden, in no uncertain terms, made it clear that his administration will continue to back those attacks for as long as possible, undercut the virtuous recollection of September 11. And there was one particular omission that stood out in its grave absence—the one word that could halt this deadly misery: cease-fire. The one unimpeachable position that Biden can take right now, as the fog of war threatens to consume everyone, is that a cessation of hostilities would be morally correct, politically sound, effective from a humanitarian perspective, and would push the conflict in the direction in needs to go right now: everyone sitting down and talking to one another.
The need for a cease-fire is especially great given that Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, is an untrustworthy ally who is bent on exacerbating the conflict in order to prolong his loosening grip on power. “Netanyahu suddenly faces a long, bloody war with the Palestinians after spending most of his political career sidelining, short-shrifting, and underestimating them, all the while relying on his country’s military superiority—including its Iron Dome anti-missile system—to protect Israel,” wrote Foreign Policy’s Michael Hirsch. His Cabinet is stacked with far-right ultranationalists; he himself took a number of actions that explicitly elevated Hamas, all for his political benefit.