The presidents message to Israel hardly matched the severity of the situation after all, it was not a condition, but rather a threat to condition. But it was the toughest Biden has been on Israel since the war began in October. After that conversation, Israel did commit to allowing more food and supplies into Gaza and claimed they would take more measures to limit civilian casualties. The uncommitted votes may also be affecting the outlook of powerful Senate Democrats. Also on Thursday, Sen. Chris Coons of Delaware, a Democrat close to Biden, told CNN that the United States was at the point that aid to Israel should be conditional on a change in its conduct of the war in Gaza, noting, Ive never said that before.
Coons is a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. One of his colleagues on that committee, Sen. Chris Van Hollen of Maryland, also a Democrat whose state has a vigorous uncommitted campaign underway had said Sunday that Biden needed to back up his no excuses language with real action. Van Hollen told ABC News, Until the Netanyahu government allows more assistance into Gaza, to help people who are literally starving to death, we should not be sending more bombs. The Maryland senator is reportedly considering legislative options to block weapons transfers. Whats more, the New York Times reported Thursday that a plan to sell $18 billion worth of fighter jets to Israel reminds in limbo, which, according to the paper, strongly suggests that the top two Democratic officials on that committee, Rep. Gregory Meeks of New York and Sen. Benjamin Cardin of Maryland, have not signed off on the deal. Even figures as centrist as Sen. Tim Kaine, a Virginia Democrat and Clintons running mate in 2016, are signaling that they now want to end this war. On Friday, Kaine called on Biden to investigate Israels bombing of the World Central Kitchen and, more remarkably, stop sending bombs and other offensive weapons to Israel. In an equally dramatic development on Friday, forty House Democrats, including Nancy Pelosi, sent a letter to Biden expressing great dismay over his Israel policy and calling on the president to hold off on any weapons transfers or military aid to Israel until an investigation of the recent attack on aid workers can be conducted, and make any aid conditional on following international law. All of this is still a long way from forcing Israel to stop the bombing. But its clear that Israels atrocities, widespread protests, and perhaps most of all, the uncommitted votes and the threat of losing electoral power, have scared powerful Democrats and may be beginning to move even Biden. The most important reason Biden should end Israels war on Gaza is to end the suffering and death; its appalling that Biden has the power to save so many human lives yet is not doing so. But, also not insignificantly, the protest vote shows that if he continues to fund Israels massacre of Palestinian children, Bidens voting base could reject him, making it even harder for him to beat Trump.
The president is clearly beginning to realize that he risks undermining any moral argument for his reelection in November. If this genocide continues with no meaningful intervention on Bidens part, the call to vote blue will seem deeply offensive to many decent people. It will become insulting to say, we must vote for Biden because of democracy, to maintain stability, or because Trump is a fascist. How do you vote against a fascist and for a racist, exterminationist war? How do you vote for democracy, yet for a war that the majority of Americans reject? How do you vote for stability, yet for an all-out assault on Palestinian institutions and civilization? With the worlds eyes on Gaza, words like fascism and democracy will sound like evasive abstractions, feeble consultant-generated talking points. Dead and dismembered children, and bombed hospitals on the other hand, are all too real and concrete. Lets hope for Biden, the mounting pile of empty and uninstructed ballots are tangible, too.