After rushing to comfort Israel as it grieved the worst attack on Jews since the Holocaust, President Joe Biden last year pledged America would stand with the country in its dark days and the good ones he insisted would come.
At the time, no one knew the international and domestic political consequences of his promise. An ensuing war has proved the existential role the US plays in Israel’s survival but also severely strained the alliance. It has also exposed and widened some of America’s most profound political divides ahead of an already tumultuous election between Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump next month.
The October 7, 2023, Hamas terror attacks, which killed 1,200 people, did not just transform the Middle East’s strategic balance as Israel confronted Hamas, then Hezbollah, and traded fire with their sponsor, its archenemy, Iran. Like the September 11 attacks in 2001, the Hamas horror set off a chain of events that affected countless lives, unleashing political disturbances thousands of miles away.
Militarily, the United States and its allies have twice staged unprecedented operations to protect Israel from a barrage of missiles and drones from Iran. The US has also repeatedly bombed Iran-backed Houthi rebels in Yemen who have launched attacks on international shipping in the Red Sea in the wake of October 7. Amid fears in Washington of a full-on Middle East war, the vulnerability of US troops in the region was tragically driven home in January when three US service personnel were killed in an attack on a base in Jordan.
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At home, the fallout of the Hamas attacks has coincided with the toxic politics of a presidential election year. Campus protests underscored the splits in the Democratic Party, which soon saw unprecedented political upheaval with Biden abandoning his reelection bid and backing Harris just months before the election. In the new race between Harris and Trump, events in the Middle East continue to set off reverberations that could influence the outcome of the election. A horrifying wave of antisemitism, meanwhile, has left many Jews wondering whether they are safe in America.
Israel’s onslaught on Hamas in Gaza, which has killed tens of thousands of civilians, may have finally shattered US hopes of a two-state solution. And it’s turned into the greatest foreign crisis of the Biden administration at a time when the US-led global system is splintering under challenges from Russia and rising China.
Israel’s escalation of the war against Hezbollah in Lebanon threatens to embroil Washington and spark a direct clash with Iran, which has so far been avoided in a near half-century of antagonism since the Islamic revolution.
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Biden has been a staunch supporter of Israel for decades, but his record did not prevent growing suspicion and disagreements with the most right-wing Israeli government in history. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has repeatedly spurned the US president’s attempt to mitigate the civilian cost of the war in Gaza and has disregarded Washington’s priorities when US and Israeli interests diverged. As a result, the Biden administration has suffered a significant erosion of its authority on the international stage and its foreign policy priorities have been threatened.
Months of US shuttle diplomacy involving Secretary of State Antony Blinken, CIA Director William Burns and other senior officials has yielded only limited progress in freeing hostages in Gaza. And a deal that would forge a ceasefire with Hamas seems more distant than ever. Often, it’s appeared that the US wanted an agreement far more than Netanyahu or Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar, who embedded Hamas forces in civilian areas, adding to the war’s carnage.
Biden’s personal credibility has also been damaged by the defiance of Netanyahu, who has not hesitated to intervene in US domestic politics amid an apparent preference for Republicans lined up behind Trump.
Weeks after the October 7 attacks, it seemed Netanyahu was headed for political oblivion, with his image as Israel’s ultimate protector destroyed by the darkest day in the country’s history. But his tenacious endurance means it’s now almost certain he will outlast Biden, who leaves office in January. The widening war that the president will bequeath to either Trump or Harris will be a blot on the legacy of a statesman who regarded himself as a foreign policy expert.
The Hamas terror attacks – and Israel’s response – have laid bare and widened splits in American society and domestic politics.
Washington has been involved in mediating Middle East peace for several generations. But the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has never become such a treacherous domestic political issue as it did after October 7.
Footage of Israel’s retaliation against Hamas in Gaza and harrowing scenes of Palestinian children and civilians killed caused an anti-Israel backlash on the left that created perilous political pressure for Biden and then Harris.
Fury among progressives at Israel and the Biden administration’s failure to rein in Netanyahu divided the Democratic coalition. Thousands of Arab American voters and others refused to support Biden in the primaries, and the prospect of them sitting out next month’s election or voting third party, especially in a critical swing state like Michigan, could doom Harris’ White House hopes. While he was still running for president, Biden was repeatedly interrupted by pro-Palestinian protests and confronted by banners that read, “Genocide Joe,” referring to his failure to do more to spare Palestinian civilians.
Harris is now struggling to perform the same treacherous balancing act that long thwarted Biden. She must prioritize US foreign policy priorities, a political imperative to stand with Israel, and seek to temper the unrest inside the Democratic Party over the war. In a sign of still-deep concern over the political blowback, Harris last week traveled to Michigan to meet Arab American leaders.
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