President Biden just made a strong move against Israel, ordering the US government to stop shipping weapons supplies to the Israeli Defense Forces. It was his fine strategic mind at work, once again.
Usually the public defers to the president and his advisors on foreign policy, unless the issues become very prominent or the president forfeits their trust. Those are the two problems now facing the Biden administration. The war in Gaza is a major issue — and the public has zero confidence in Joe’s strategic wisdom. He lost the public’s confidence on that score after the disastrous withdrawal from Afghanistan and the failed attempts to appease Iran. Now, they are unlikely to defer to his judgment in distancing himself from Israel, America’s greatest ally in the region.
It’s an exaggeration to say the Biden administration is abandoning Israel outright. It isn’t. Rather, it is Joe’s latest, “on the one hand, on the other hand” policy move, and it is entangled with the riots and encampments on college campuses. A couple of weeks ago, Biden issued a brief condemnation of campus antisemitism, then remained silent as campus after campus erupted — and finally read a brief speech condemning the hatred. It was the least he could do.
Biden’s immediate goal is to put visible American pressure on Israel to stop an invasion of the southern Gaza city of Rafah and to squelch the prospect of resuming major military operations. Biden would like to stop them at least until the November election is over. After that, who cares?
The administration’s moves are dictated less by international strategy than by US politics. Biden fears he cannot win reelection if he loses Michigan and Minnesota, where Arab-American votes are crucial. He is also anxious about disaffected younger votes costing him other battleground states, either by voting for another candidate or not voting at all. For Biden, the “two-state solution” is less about Israel and Palestine and more about Michigan and Minnesota.
The dilemma for Biden and his party is that, when you look beyond voters under thirty and Arab Americans, the rest of the national electorate supports the Jewish state. Overwhelmingly. None of them teach anthropology at Columbia — and they are appalled by students’ open support for terrorism and the spread of vitriolic antisemitism. They are angered by administration efforts to appease students (and professional agitators) who hate Israel, openly support Hamas terrorists and have revived the old cry of defunding the police. (It’s a routine part of student demands.)
Biden already faced serious headwinds with centrist voters because of inflation, an open southern border and weak economic growth. The troubles in the Middle East and on college campuses add to those headwinds.
The dilemma for Biden is winning back those disaffected independent voters without losing those on the left. To solve it, the president has positioned himself squarely in the middle of the road, with cars and trucks whizzing past him in both directions. He ignored Margaret Thatcher’s admonition that standing in the middle of the road is where “you get knocked down by the traffic from both sides.” But that is exactly where Biden now stands.
It is not a happy position to be in, and neither side likes it. That opposition was clearest this weekend on the campus of the University of Alabama, where a pro-Israel, pro-America group faced off against an anti-Israel, anti-American group. In unison, both groups shouted “Fuck Joe Biden.”
He promised to bring the country together — and he has.
