"Crossing the Red Line": Should Biden Be Held Responsible for the Destruction in Gaza?

A new book completed after years of in-depth reporting turns its focus squarely on former U.S. President Joe Biden. In Crossing the Red Line: Biden, His Advisors, and Israel's War in Gaza, HuffPost reporter Akbar Shahid Ahmed raises a pointed question: should the Biden administration bear responsibility for the devastation Israel has inflicted on Gaza?

A note on sourcing: this article is based on a video interview from Vox's podcast Today Explained and represents a summary of current affairs content. It is not part of this site's primary focus on AI and technology.

A Deep Investigation Built on 150+ Interviews

Ahmed spent several years interviewing more than 150 people involved in shaping and responding to U.S. policy toward Gaza. That scale of sourcing is rare in political investigative books, meaning the conclusions rest not on a single source or public statement, but on testimony from a wide range of frontline decision-makers, advisors, and diplomats.

Based on what the interview reveals, the author's core methodology is to reconstruct the White House's internal chain of communication in order to examine what role the U.S. government actually played in the conflict — passive bystander or active enabler.

What Makes Biden's Support "Distinctive"

The most contested argument in the interview is this: virtually every U.S. president has supported Israel, but what sets Biden apart is the degree of unwavering commitment behind that support. Ahmed argues that even when Israel openly disregarded Biden's own calls for "restraint," the support never faltered.

This observation cuts to a long-standing tension in U.S. foreign policy: the gap between rhetorical calls for restraint and the reality of uninterrupted backing. If a president publicly urges an ally to show restraint while simultaneously providing continuous military and diplomatic support, how do outside observers interpret his true position? The book's title — Crossing the Red Line — is a metaphor for exactly this contradiction: whether those so-called "red lines" carry any real binding force.

U.S. support for Israel has deep historical and institutional roots. Since Israel's founding in 1948, successive American administrations have treated it as a key strategic ally in the Middle East, providing billions of dollars in annual military assistance under the Foreign Assistance Act and repeatedly vetoing UN Security Council resolutions condemning Israel. This "special relationship" also has powerful domestic political underpinnings: lobbying groups like AIPAC have long operated across both parties in Congress, giving U.S. policy toward Israel a high degree of bipartisan consistency. It is against this backdrop that Ahmed characterizes Biden's support as "unusually steadfast" — the frame of reference is not ordinary allied relations, but comparisons with the Obama, Clinton, and George W. Bush administrations, each of which took more visibly assertive steps to publicly pressure Israel or pause aid during periods of particularly aggressive military action.

Why Assigning Responsibility Is So Difficult

Holding a single leader accountable for a conflict is inherently complex and contested. Supporters of such a framing point to active acquiescence within the decision-making chain; critics argue that a president's actual ability to control an ally's internal military operations is limited. Ahmed's book clearly sides with the "accountability" argument, but that position must be examined in broader context.

It is worth reminding readers that the source material for this article is only an interview preview and does not lay out the book's full arguments or counterarguments. For an independent assessment, readers are encouraged to consult the book directly or listen to the full Today Explained interview.

In the study of international relations and the ethics of war, defining "complicity" has always been a central debate. Scholars typically distinguish between "direct participation" and "enabling support": the former involves direct operational command or personnel; the latter refers to sustaining another party's military campaign through arms supplies, intelligence sharing, or diplomatic cover. Critics invoke the second logic — U.S. veto power at the UN, continued arms transfer authorizations, and overt political backing have, they argue, constituted a form of structural permission for Israel's actions. Defenders tend to invoke the principle of state sovereignty: the United States cannot and should not bear direct responsibility for an ally's independent military decisions. This debate has grown especially sharp in the context of Gaza, because the controversy involves not only the scale of casualties but also potential violations of international humanitarian law — placing the moral and legal dimensions of "responsibility" under simultaneous scrutiny.

Conclusion

Crossing the Red Line, grounded in interviews with more than 150 people, advances a thesis that is sure to spark broad debate. Its value lies not in delivering a definitive verdict, but in placing a critical question squarely on the table — the chasm between rhetorical restraint and substantive support — and leaving it open for the public and policy researchers to continue arguing over.