Many Americans and Israelis have likened Hamas’ massacres in Israel on Oct. 7 to Al Qaeda’s Sept. 11, 2001 attacks on the U.S. That analogy has been used in service of arguing for a strong Israeli military response — or for showing no restraint whatsoever — as Israel wages war against Hamas in the Gaza Strip. The right in particular has invoked the memory of 9/11 as a way to describe the scale of the pain Israelis are feeling — and to justify the forcefulness of the Israeli government’s retaliation.
During a speech in Israel on Wednesday, Biden also brought up 9/11. But while he raised it as a way to express empathy with Israel, he also used it to warn of the perils of being led astray by vengeance.
“Justice must be done,” Biden said. “But I caution this 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.”
The president invoked 9/11 not to give license to Israel to act brutally, but to counsel its government to act rationally.
He also gently applied pressure to Israel to adhere to a clear plan as it prepares for a potential ground offensive. "I’ve made wartime decisions, I know the choices are never clear or easy for leadership," he said. "There’s always costs. But it requires being deliberate, it requires asking very hard questions, it requires clarity about the objectives and an honest assessment of whether the path you’re on will achieve those objectives. The vast majority of Palestinians are not Hamas, Hamas does not represent the Palestinian people.”
It was a refreshing change of pace. The president invoked 9/11 not to give license to Israel to act brutally, but to counsel its government to act rationally, strategically and with consideration for the effect those actions will have on civilians.
It’s unclear what Biden considers to be America’s post-9/11 mistakes, given that plenty of aspects of the so-called War on Terror might qualify. But the broader sentiment is correct. Sept. 11 was a terrible tragedy, but the subsequent groupthink in American establishment media and our political class led the U.S. into a bloodthirsty imperial rage that, according to Brown University’s Watson Institute’s estimate, led to the death of over 4 million people. It also served as the catalyst for an extraordinary erosion in freedoms at home, including invasive mass surveillance, racist and authoritarian detainment policies and the reported extrajudicial murder of U.S. citizens. The U.S. always had the option of responding strategically to international terrorist networks without launching forever wars or degrading civil liberties, but declined to do so.
By contrast, former President George W. Bush, who rarely touches hot-button political issues these days, recently piped up on the Hamas attacks, resorting to language reminiscent of his simplistic and belligerent post-9/11 rhetoric. Bush cautioned against “softness,” decried “isolationist tendencies” in both U.S. parties, ruled out negotiations, predicted that it’ll get “ugly for a while” and hoped to find out what Netanyahu is “made out of” over the course of an invasion of Gaza.
Unfortunately, Israel is currently gravitating toward Bush’s path, away from the more circumspect one urged by Biden. Israel is dehumanizing Palestinian citizens with racist rhetoric and pursuing collective punishment in Gaza by choking off food, water, medicine and electricity to its 2.3 million residents; and also with indiscriminate bombardments and forcible population transfers. While Israel has agreed to allow humanitarian aid into Gaza through Egypt on the condition that it doesn’t help Hamas, it’s a minor concession amid a broader set of policies that are killing and starving Palestinian civilians en masse.
Of course, Israel is pursuing these unconscionable policies with the blessing of the U.S. As I’ve written about recently, the overwhelming emphasis of the Biden administration’s approach to the Israel-Hamas war has been to trumpet that the U.S. will support Israel no matter what it does. If Biden really wants to be a good friend to both Israeli and Palestinian civilians, he would work harder to pressure Israel to not succumb to the darkest temptations of its rage.