In his current Washington Post column and his appearance on today's Morning Joe, Eugene Robinson did his best to defend Biden's record as president. The headline reveals Robinson's theory: "Time caught up with Biden. It will also prove him right."
But in Robinson's view, when it came to foreign policy, there was one major flaw in Biden's record: his failure to curb Israel's alleged "atrocities" in Gaza. Robinson [emphasis added]:
"Many in Biden’s own party are sharply critical of his handling of the war in Gaza. The Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas attack and hostage-taking were atrocities, and Israel had the right to respond. Killing tens of thousands of Palestinian civilians and reducing their homes, schools and hospitals to rubble are also atrocities."
Robinson offered this defense of Biden:
"The fact is that U.S. officials have limited influence over how Israel conducts its military operations — and much less influence over Israeli public opinion, which generally supports the way Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has been waging war."
So in Robinson's mind, Bibi and those damnable Israelis who support him are the real villains.
The "atrocity" here is Robinson's naive--or deliberate--willingness to accept claims about the number of civilian deaths from the Gaza Health Ministry—AKA Hamas. Hamas' numbers are almost surely inflated, and in any case, Hamas does not distinguish between civilian and terrorist deaths, or between those caused by Israeli actions or by terrorist activities gone awry.
And the truth is that no military force has even used as much caution and restraint against an enemy dug in in urban settings, and callously wiling to use its own citizens as human shields. As a West Point expert on urban warfare has written [emphasis added]:
"In my long career studying and advising on urban warfare for the U.S. military, I've never known an army to take such measures to attend to the enemy's civilian population, especially while simultaneously combating the enemy in the very same buildings. In fact, by my analysis, Israel has implemented more precautions to prevent civilian harm than any military in history—above and beyond what international law requires and more than the U.S. did in its wars in Iraq and Afghanistan."
Robinson's discussion of his column on Morning Joe was surprisingly short, and he never mentioned Gaza. Did Joe Scarborough not want false accusations about Israel's "atrocities" on his air?
