Why we're still arming Israel

In late October 2023, about three weeks into Israel's war in Gaza, the Israeli military bombed a refugee camp called Jabalia, one of the most densely populated places on Earth. Israel was targeting Hamas militants and said the bombs were 2,000-pound American-made bunker busters. The Biden administration eventually stopped selling those to Israel over concerns they would be used in populated areas. Now President Trump wants to send more of those same bombs to Israel, and American tax dollars are going to pay for them. A new book by Akbar Shahid Ahmed, diplomatic correspondent at the Washington Sun, documents the failures of the Biden administration and raises the question of why the U.S. is still arming Israel.

The red line that wasn't

The book, Crossing the Red Line, focuses on a specific moment. President Joe Biden, six months into Israel's retaliatory campaign after October 7, clearly stated that Rafa, the southernmost town in Gaza where upwards of one million Palestinians were sheltering, needed to be treated differently. Biden said if the Israelis didn't create a plan for those civilians, he would cut off American weapons. This was a major acknowledgment from the Biden administration that their persuasion campaign wasn't enough to change Israel's behavior, and they might have to threaten actual tangible consequences like withholding bombs.