There was one word sorely missing from President Biden’s big speech in Israel on Wednesday: “ceasefire.”
Biden visited Israel on Wednesday to express solidarity with the country and meet with leaders there. In a lackluster speech from Tel Aviv, he cautioned against Israeli aggression and condemned Hamas, but carefully avoided calling for a de-escalation in the conflict.
“Hamas committed atrocities that recall the worst ravages of ISIS, unleashing pure, unadulterated evil upon the world. There’s no rationalizing it, no excusing it. Period,” Biden said.
He made the distinction that the “vast majority of Palestinians are not Hamas. Hamas does not represent the Palestinian people,” he said.
However, he only issued a soft warning to Israel: “While you feel that rage, don’t be consumed by it.”
“After 9/11 we were enraged in the United States. While we sought justice and got justice, we also made mistakes,” he said.
Biden did not call for a ceasefire or de-escalation, and promised to support Israel. “I know the choices are never clear or easy,” he said.
“What sets us apart from the terrorists is we believe in the fundamental dignity of every life,” Biden said, but he made no mention of the egregious statements made by many Israeli officials suggesting they believe just the opposite, and no condemnation of Israel’s indiscriminate massacre of Palestinians.
Israel’s immense military response in Gaza has left over 3,000 Palestinians dead and over 12,000 thousand injured, according to the Palestinian Ministry of Health. Israel continues to block Gaza from receiving any food, water, electricity, or humanitarian aid. On Tuesday, a bombing at a hospital in Gaza wounded and injured hundreds of people, further exacerbating the humanitarian crisis. Palestinian officials have blamed an Israeli airstrike, but Israeli officials claim that a misfired Hamas rocket was to blame, a point which Biden parroted in his speech.
Instead of calling for a ceasefire, Biden made it clear that his priorities lie with the Israelis.
“For me, as the American president, there is no higher priority than the release and safe return of all these hostages,” he said.
Biden said that the violence “cuts deeper” in Israel, because of the “scars left by millennia of antisemitism.” He pointed out that the day of Hamas’s incursion was the deadliest day for the Jewish people since the Holocaust.
“The world watched then. It knew. And the world did nothing. We will not stand by and do nothing again,” he said referring to mass genocide. This sentiment sits in stark contrast to statements like those of Holocaust scholar Raz Segal, who has called Israel’s military response in Gaza a “textbook case of genocide.”
Biden’s silence fits with a HuffPost report last week that found that U.S. diplomats have been warned not to use the words “de-escalation/ceasefire,” “end to violence/bloodshed,” and “restoring calm.”
Biden’s speech also comes shortly after the U.S. vetoed a U.N. Security Council resolution that condemned Hamas’s attack, condemned all violence against civilians, and called for a “humanitarian pause” in Gaza. The U.S. was the only country in the UNSC to veto this resolution.