The True Cost of Biden’s Unconditional Support for Israel

When I resigned from the State Department over the Biden administration’s unconditional support for Israel’s slaughter in Gaza, I felt a brief sense of relief. For the nearly six months between October 7 and my resignation, my workday had felt like a deluge of horror, flooded with the specifics of what was happening inside Palestine and U.S. support for it. In the evenings, I would go home and play with my toddler, grateful for the distraction and yet haunted by the children of Gaza. Holding my daughter in my arms, the screams of parents holding the lifeless bodies of their own daughters and sons would echo through my brain.

But the initial relief of resigning publicly was quickly replaced with despair: Nothing seemed capable of changing unconditional U.S. support for Israel.

Coverage of Gaza has described Israel’s genocidal actions as unprecedented: Israel has dropped more tons of explosives than fell on Hamburg, Dresden, and London, combined, in World War II; Israeli attacks have caused the fastest death rate in a twenty-first-century conflict; Israel blocking aid has caused the fastest rate of starvation ever recorded. And yet the Biden administration has made clear that there is nothing that Israel could do that would undermine U.S. support. Biden had expressed concerns about Israel’s plan to invade Rafah, where over a million civilians had fled, and the administration even paused a shipment of weapons. Yet when Israel destroyed Rafah, the administration refused to acknowledge that Netanyahu had clearly crossed a boundary Biden set, and instead recently announced the weapons shipment would proceed.

Biden has publicly acknowledged that Netanyahu’s interests are best served by the violence continuing. In his June 4 interview with Time magazine, Biden was asked, “Some in Israel have suggested that Netanyahu is prolonging the war for his own political self-preservation. Do you believe that?” Biden replied, “There is every reason for people to draw that conclusion.”