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: ceasefire. 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 ceasefire 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.
Even with its warnings, Biden’s speech mostly gave Netanyahu the political cover to continue striking Gaza with impunity. Thousands of missiles have struck Gaza over the last week, killing more than 3,000 Palestinians. “Hamas committed atrocities that recall the worst ravages of ISIS, unleashing pure unadulterated evil upon the world,” Biden said. He went on to say that his administration would be seeking an “unprecedented support package for Israel’s defense,” to the tune of $10 billion.