Dershowitz Update

Yesterday, in response to news that the Biden administration had "paused" certain arms shipments to Israel in an attempt to hold back Israel's intent to go into Rafah to eliminate the threat from Hamas, I quoted Alan Dershowitz's statement from back in March, "If you stop supplying ammunition and arms to Israel and deny them the right to defend themselves, you have crossed my red line." I'd been waiting, as apparently many others have, for Dershowitz's reaction to this latest development. It's come, at least for now, in yesterday's Dershow podcast, which is linked above.

If I had to vote today, I would not vote for President Biden

. . . For those who have asked me, has my red line been crossed, this is the red line, and if it is crossed by the Biden administration, I will abide by my commitment and not support those who have crossed my red line, and I'm sure it's a red line for many of you as well. So I hope it hasn't been crossed, and I hope there's still a possibility that Israel can remain a bipartisan issue, but it's moving away from that, and that's a very dangerous development, both for the United States and for Israel.

His position, as first articulated in March, was tentative. He followed "you have crossed my red line" then with, "I hope that doesn't happen," and his statement in the podcast is still, "So I hope it hasn't been crossed". This is not an earth-shakng move by any means. On the other hand, elsewhere in the podcast, he mentions that he talks on the phone with Prime Minister Netanyahu several times a week, apparently without fully understanding that Netanyahu is Biden's bête noire, second only to Trump.

There can be no question that in Biden's mind, a policy that helps Israel is one that helps Netanyahu, and its hard to avoid thinking that Netanyahu, the longest-serving prime minister in Israel's history, has been a far more successful politician than Biden -- deep down, Biden knows this, and he hates Netanyahu for it. (This is also why Republicans like Romney and Jeb Bush hate Trump, by the way.) I don't think Dershowitz has fully wrapped his head around this yet, but he's getting there.

Biden's remarks to Erin Burnett in last night's CNN interview indicate that his thinking is at best muddled:

Biden described warning Netanyahu about the risks of becoming bogged down in Gaza, drawing parallels to the American experience in Afghanistan and Iraq.

“I said to Bibi, ‘Don’t make the same mistake we made in America. We wanted to get bin Laden. We’ll help you get Sinwar,’” he said, referring to the Hamas leader in Gaza. “It made sense to get bin Laden; it made no sense to try and unify Afghanistan. It made no sense in my view to engage in thinking that in Iraq they had a nuclear weapon.”

But Biden supported the Iraq war in 2002, despite his later claims that he didn't:

Joe Biden has claimed that despite voting to authorize military force against Iraq in 2002, he opposed the Iraq war from “the moment” it began. That’s not accurate, and Biden now says he misspoke.

. . . Biden wasn’t against using military action against Iraq to force Iraq to give up weapons of mass destruction (which, as it turned out, it did not have).

The day the war commenced, Biden told CNN: “There’s a lot of us who voted for giving the president the authority to take down Saddam Hussein if he didn’t disarm. And there are those who believe, at the end of the day, even though it wasn’t handled all that well, we still have to take him down.”

Biden in last night's remarks also claimed it "made sense to get bin Laden", but he consistently opposed doing this when he was vice president. In a 2020 exchange with Peter Doocy, he denied it:

Doocy responded, “Didn’t you tell President Obama not to go after bin Laden that day?”

To which Biden responded: “No, I didn’t. I didn’t.”

Biden’s description of his advice to Obama changed between 2012 and 2015; two of his accounts were contradictory. He said in 2012 that he had advised Obama “don’t go” with the raid before obtaining more information. He then said in 2015 that he had not uttered this “don’t go” opinion.

Former top officials in the Obama administration have written in their memoirs that Biden was “against the operation,” that he was “firmly in favor of waiting for more information,” and that he was concerned about the risks of a raid.

The problem continues to be that Joe, as Robert Gates has said, is consistently wrong, and in fact, right or wrong, he'll do what's expedient, which he's always done. Here's the problem, which Dershowitz is working hard not to confront:

Why, you may ask, are the campus and other protesters inspired to protest in increasing numbers, and with greater violence and aggressiveness?

The answer is that the protesters believe their protests are working.

When @POTUS Biden withholds weapons from @Israel a few weeks… https://t.co/9lsXKI1joN

— Bill Ackman (@BillAckman) May 8, 2024

Itr's hard not to conclude that Biden is dangerous at this point. He's playing footsie with the far left, trying to avoid offending them by supporting Israel, while hoping people like Dershowitz won't lose patience with his equivocations. But the bottom line is he's hoping he can keep on being lucky, and nothing will go south in the Middle East before the election. This isn't a strategy.