Biden’s Debate Performance Raises Alarm in Israel (2024)

Israelis fear Iran and its proxies might try to exploit Biden’s apparent weakness.

And Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel has publicly pressured the Biden administration to speed up munitions supplies ahead of any conflagration with Hezbollah in Lebanon.

Several of Israel’s Sunday newspapers featured the debate on their front pages in a kind of delayed reaction: The debate took place before dawn on Friday local time, after the weekend papers had gone to press. And Hebrew dailies are not published on Saturday, the Sabbath.

Analysts for Israel Hayom, a right-wing free paper, and the left-leaning Haaretz newspaper differed sharply in tone but both raised the specter of enemies of Israel and the United States testing the administration’s resolve.

“Will Hezbollah and Iran assess that Biden is too busy now to back Israel in case all-out war breaks out in Lebanon this summer?” Amos Harel, Haaretz’s military affairs analyst, wrote on Sunday.

While some on the Israeli right have mocked Mr. Biden’s debate performance, hoping for a Trump victory, Mr. Harel continued, that was a display of ungratefulness after the U.S. president stood by Israel and supplied it with large quantities of weapons. “Moreover,” he added, “Trump is a feeble reed to rely on.”

During the presidential debate on Thursday, Mr. Trump accused Mr. Biden of not wanting Israel to “finish the job” in Gaza — calling him weak and raising eyebrows by using the word “Palestinian” as an insult. Mr. Biden offered little in the way of a response.

Mr. Biden has been a staunch supporter of Israel throughout the war, although he has also been critical, frequently calling on Israel to limit civilian casualties and to work to mitigate the humanitarian crisis in the Palestinian enclave.

He has a long history with Mr. Netanyahu. Mr. Biden flew to Israel in a powerful show of solidarity last fall, soon after the Hamas-led terrorist assault on southern Israel that prompted the war in Gaza. He has since paid a political price for his support, which has infuriated American opponents of the war who want the U.S. government to stop providing Israel with munitions.

But the visions of Mr. Biden and Mr. Netanyahu have diverged in recent months. The U.S. government held up one shipment to Israel of heavy bombs, fearing that they would be used in densely populated areas. And Mr. Biden has dismissed Mr. Netanyahu’s oft-stated goal of “total victory” over Hamas as a vague objective that would mean indefinite war.

Mr. Trump was strongly supportive of Israel as president and largely went along with the agenda of Mr. Netanyahu and his right-wing allies. During his term, Mr. Trump moved the United States Embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, fulfilling a longstanding Israeli demand.

But the former president appears to have soured on Mr. Netanyahu. He has said the Hamas-led assault was a result of Mr. Netanyahu’s lack of preparation and praised Hezbollah as “very smart.” In an interview with Israel Hayom in March, Mr. Trump advised Israel to wrap up the war in Gaza, because it was losing much of the world’s support.

“You gotta get it done,” he told the paper, “and we gotta get to peace — we can’t have this going on.”

Israel Hayom’s publisher is Dr. Miriam Adelson, the widow of Sheldon Adelson, and a staunchly pro-Israel megadonor who is now backing Donald Trump’s third White House bid.

Amnon Lord, a columnist for Israel Hayom, asserted on Sunday that Mr. Biden’s performance in the debate proved persistent claims that “an extreme progressive group” of aides was driving U.S. foreign policy.

“In a world rife with aggressive forces,” he wrote, “the unflattering image of an American president — the leader of the free world — appearing weak and incoherent encourages them to exploit opportunities.”

“Biden’s decline mirrors the collapse of his Middle East policy vis-à-vis Iran and its proxies,” Mr. Lord added.

Mr. Lord trod carefully around Mr. Trump’s performance in the debate, saying only that he, too, “didn’t gain supporters.”

Yediot Ahronot, a mainstream Hebrew daily, flagged a column on its front page describing Mr. Biden’s performance as a “catastrophe.” The columnist, Nadav Eyal, wrote that faced with the prospect of another Trump presidency, the Democrats and their allies carried the fate of the free world on their shoulders.

“Weakness is not a characteristic that an American president can broadcast, by any stretch,” he wrote.

Gabby Sobelman and Myra Noveck contributed reporting.

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As the U.N.’s relief chief steps down, Gaza’s aid woes are piling up.

However, the relief efforts in Gaza have fallen far short of the needs of the sealed, densely populated enclave in which the majority of the population of some 2.2 million has been displaced. In May, Israel closed the Kerem Shalom crossing after a Hamas attack killed four soldiers in the area, then mounted an incursion that closed the Rafah crossing along the border with Egypt. U.N. officials said this effectively choked off the two main arteries for aid.

For most of the last month, aid deliveries within Gaza have slowed to a near halt. Hopes to revive them via a temporary pier built by the United States have largely been thwarted, partly by weather conditions that have more than once forced the pier to be moved from Gaza’s coast, and partly by the difficulty of distributing the aid once it arrives.

The U.N.’s main agency for Palestinians, UNRWA, earlier this month said that Gaza had become the deadliest place in the world for aid workers, with at least 250 killed since the Oct. 7 Hamas-led attack on Israel sparked the war in Gaza and a humanitarian crisis. U.N. aid agencies have demanded that the Israeli authorities do more to protect aid workers in the Gaza Strip and ensure that assistance reaches those who need it, Stéphane Dujarric, a U.N. spokesman, said on Tuesday.

On Friday, a Pentagon spokeswoman, Sabrina Singh, said that the temporary pier had been removed again ahead of sea turbulence, while indicating that the backlog of aid was taking up so much space that re-establishing the pier might not be a top priority.

Days earlier, in a social media post directed at the World Food Program, a U.N. agency that coordinates much of the humanitarian work in the enclave, the Israeli agency overseeing aid in Gaza displayed a photo of supplies that it said were waiting at the pier’s offloading area. “Stop making excuses and start playing your role as a humanitarian food organization and the head of the logistic cluster,” it said.

The World Food Program suspended operations near the pier earlier this month. The program’s officials said some of its facilities were hit during an Israeli mission that rescued four hostages but involved strikes that killed scores of Palestinians, including women and children.

In his last week as U.N. relief chief, Mr. Griffiths addressed concerns that the suspension might forecast the halt of all aid groups’ operations in Gaza. “We’re not running away from Gaza at all,” Mr. Griffiths said in an interview on Wednesday. But he added, “We are particularly concerned about the security situation in Gaza, and it is becoming more and more difficult to operate.”

On Sunday, a World Food Program spokeswoman confirmed that the organization’s suspension of operations at the pier remained in place, pending a security review by the U.N.’s safety and security arm, but said that the aid group had made arrangements to start clearing the backlog of undelivered aid and that it would “be distributed immediately.”

Anjana Sankar contributed reporting.

As thousands protest in Israel, a former hostage speaks out.

Noa Argamani, a hostage who was rescued on June 8, called for the release of the remaining captives in a video by the Hostages and Missing Families Forum, which represents families of hostages held captive in Gaza.

“We must do everything possible to bring them back home,” Ms. Argamani said in the video. She was kidnapped and taken to Gaza along with her partner, Avinatan Or, on Oct. 7. He is still being held.

Efrat Yahalomi, the sister of Ohad Yahalomi, a French-Israeli hostage who was taken from the Kibbutz Nir Oz, said it was “incredibly painful” to know that Israeli hostages were languishing in captivity.

“Almost nine months have passed, and I’m still standing here with a heavy heart, while you, Ohad, are still not here,” she said in a statement released by the forum.