The Bottom Line

US Senator Chris Van Hollen says it is time for the Biden administration to tell Israel, “If you continue to ignore us, there will be consequences.”

Senator Van Hollen, who is one of seven senators (out of 100) to have called for a permanent ceasefire in Israel’s war on Gaza, tells host Steve Clemons that Hamas’s surprise attack last year “does not justify the humanitarian catastrophe that we’re witnessing in Gaza”.

The Democratic senator from Maryland said that the United States has to use “all the levers of our power and influence” to allow more aid to get to starving Palestinians.

US policy on Israel “looks incoherent because it is incoherent,” argues Matt Duss, former adviser to Senator Bernie Sanders, and this is making the United States look “feckless and weak”.

Duss tells host Steve Clemons that Israel is violating US law by using US-supplied weapons while preventing humanitarian aid. But President Joe Biden “has simply taken the tools of leverage off the table”.

Duss, the executive vice president at the Center for International Policy, says there are still no indications that the Abandon Biden movement within the Democratic Party, nor Israel’s war crimes, will lead to a shift in course anytime soon.

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The Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis was the last big medical facility in the Gaza Strip destroyed by Israel’s war.

The World Health Organization says Israel killed 627 doctors, nurses, ambulance drivers and other healthcare workers between October and January.

With almost no supplies entering Gaza, what is next for the 2.3 million Palestinians forced to live in inhuman conditions?

Host Steve Clemons speaks with Dr Thaer Ahmad, an emergency room physician in Chicago who recently returned from volunteering at Nasser Hospital; and with Dr Muaiad Kittaneh, a haematologist/oncologist who co-founded the Palestinian-American Medical Association.

About 20 countries have announced suspension of funding to UNRWA, the agency that has been providing services to Palestinian refugees since 1950.

The official reason for the suspension was Israel’s accusation that a dozen UNRWA employees in Gaza had participated in the October 7 Hamas attacks.

To understand the potential consequences of undermining UNRWA – especially amid a humanitarian catastrophe – host Steve Clemons speaks with Leila Hilal, a former adviser to the UNRWA commissioner-general, and Anne Irfan, lecturer at University College London and author of Refuge and Resistance: Palestinians and the International Refugee System.

The United States' support for Israel’s war on Gaza makes the country look ineffectual and hypocritical to the rest of the world, according to Harvard University professor Stephen Walt, co-author of The Israel Lobby and US Foreign Policy.

Walt tells host Steve Clemons that Israel and the US-Israel relationship have changed over the decades, but US President Joe Biden is holding on to a view of Israel formed in the West in the 1970s.

By rejecting a ceasefire, the US looks like it "encourages conflict" instead of being a peacemaker, Walt argues, especially since Israel has no political strategy for resolving the Palestinian question.

American voters feel “impotent and hopeless” as they approach an election where the main choices are a “neo-fascist Pied Piper” (Donald Trump) or “the war criminals of the Democratic Party”, argues independent presidential candidate Cornel West.

West, one of the United States’s pre-eminent philosophers and justice activists, tells host Steve Clemons that President Joe Biden is enabling Israeli genocide and that Israel cannot be secure if “precious Jewish security and safety is predicated on the domination of precious Palestinians”.

West argues that recent talk of a two-state solution is “subterfuge – a refusal to deal with the 700,000 Israeli settlers in the West Bank”.

Actions speak louder than words, so journalists should conclude that Israel’s war on Gaza is proceeding exactly as the Biden administration likes, argues Jeremy Scahill, one of the co-founders of the independent news website The Intercept.

Scahill tells host Steve Clemons that the United States offers political, legal, diplomatic and military support for Israel’s scorched-earth campaign, while some officials have voiced concern for Palestinian lives.

Scahill argues that even if Hamas did not exist, Israel would face armed resistance because, over the decades, Palestinians have been sent the message that diplomacy would not work and Israel would not treat them as human beings.

President Joe Biden’s failure to demonstrate the same regard and sympathy for Palestinian suffering as he has shown Israel has turned the United States into “Israel’s lawyer,” says former US State Department official Aaron David Miller.

Miller tells host Steve Clemons that Israel has lost the Western perception of being David in the story of “David v Goliath,” and its image will be further damaged the more its people veer to the right.

US officials “don't have any better answers right now than the Israelis do”, Miller says, adding that there will be no “open breach” in relations with the Netanyahu government.

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Israel waged 15 wars against Gaza in the last 75 years, and all failed to resolve the core issues, says former French diplomat Jean-Pierre Filiu, professor of Middle East Studies at Sciences Po.

Filiu tells host Steve Clemons that Gaza’s rich history as a trading post connecting Africa and Asia goes back 4,000 years. The way Israel has cut it off from the world “goes against its history and the nature of its people”.

He says Israel’s destruction of Gaza’s heritage sites - ancient mosques, churches, museums - means that “the memory of humanity is being erased before our eyes.”

By mimicking United States tactics in World War II in Germany and Japan, Israel has made a grave mistake with its war on Gaza, according to retired US Army Brigadier General Mark Kimmitt.

Kimmitt tells host Steve Clemons that Israel’s tactics - firebombing and “starting new” - have made it unwelcome among the peoples of the region.

Despite Israel’s assassination of a top Hamas commander in Lebanon and disruption of shipping routes in the Red Sea, the US is less concerned about regional instability than it was in October. The situation “has not hit US red lines,” he says.

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David Frum, staff writer for The Atlantic magazine and a pro-Israel supporter, tells host Steve Clemons that Israel and the United States should “avoid solution-ism” for the Palestinians and focus on day-to-day necessities, like food and water.

The way Israel has responded to the Hamas attack of October 7 was “inevitable”, Frum says, adding that “Israel has never been allowed this much scope to act”, by the US, United Kingdom and European Union.

Join this wide-ranging conversation on the internal debates within Israeli society, and how Israel envisions the future of the region, including rapprochement with Saudi Arabia.

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In the evangelical Christian worldview, the 1948 creation of Israel was a fulfilment of Biblical prophecy and the Palestinians are either “non-existent” or “the enemies of God, because they are the enemies of the State of Israel”, explains Palestinian human rights defender Jonathan Kuttab.

Kuttab tells host Steve Clemons that believers of this interpretation of holy scripture do not care about international law or catastrophic war in the region. “They say, ‘Bring it on. That’s the End Times. That’s the Second Coming. That’s wonderful.’”

And if 30 percent of Americans hold these beliefs, what is the impact on US policy on Palestine and Israel?

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“No national liberation movement in history is based on what its enemy wants,” says the former prime minister of the Palestinian Authority, Salam Fayyad.

For the Palestinian Authority to have any legitimacy in the eyes of the Palestinian people, the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) would have to expand its membership to include Hamas and Islamic Jihad, Fayyad tells host Steve Clemons.

Without achieving a "national consensus", the Palestinian Authority is in no position to rule the Gaza Strip when Israel's war on Gaza ends, Fayyad says. Otherwise, the United States' hopes for a “revitalised” Palestinian leadership are pointless.

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Contrary to what Israeli leaders say, the war on Gaza is not making Israel safer, according to political scientist Ian Bremmer, founder of Eurasia Group, which studies geopolitical risk.

Bremmer argues that the human carnage created by Israel in Gaza over the past few weeks is strengthening Hamas and isolating Israel.

Meanwhile, United States support for Israel’s actions has made Washington “more isolated … than the Russians were when they invaded Ukraine”.

Join host Steve Clemons as he asks Bremmer about the war on Gaza and its global ramifications, including the roles played by Iran, Saudi Arabia and some European countries.

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Israel has gone far beyond “going after Hamas” in the first 10 weeks of its war on Gaza, according to one of the United States' leading political scientists, John Mearsheimer.

He tells host Steve Clemons that murdering hundreds of civilians daily and starving the rest is a “punishment campaign” and “should be unacceptable to decent people all over the world”.

In this episode, Mearsheimer, who teaches international relations at the University of Chicago, looks into Israel’s long-term strategies and explains why the elites in the US, Europe and the Arab world are not taking concrete steps to stop Israel’s bombing campaign.

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University of Maryland professor Shibley Telhami says US President Joe Biden is making his decisions on Palestine and Israel “based on personal beliefs, personal preferences, personal emotions,” and “not necessarily driven by a considered assessment of American interests at stake”.

Telhami tells host Steve Clemons that Biden’s “inability to show empathy” for the Palestinians is shocking, and that the president’s recent warnings to Israel were driven in part by his calculations for next year’s election.

All the talk about plans for “the day after” the war are distractions from the real-time death and destruction in Gaza, Telhami says.

For expressing their opinions on the Israel-Palestine, many Muslim Americans and Arab Americans have paid a hefty price, including the loss of jobs and suspension from college.

Universities across the US are also cracking down on student activism.

Since the beginning of Israel’s war on Gaza on October 7, the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) has received double the usual amount of reports of bias and requests for help, according to the executive director, Nihad Awad.

Speaking to host Steve Clemons, Awad warns that as the Israeli narrative continues “falling apart”, more attempts to dehumanise the Palestinian people will be seen.

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Some US officials have talked about the need to protect innocent Palestinian lives, but US President Joe Biden has said almost nothing.

Council on Foreign Relations senior fellow Steven Cook says it was a mistake for Biden to have offered the “bear hug” - full, unconditional support for Israel.

Now Biden is stuck in a position of supplying Israel with the means to kill more Palestinians while asking Israel to allow basic food and water into Gaza.

Join host Steve Clemons in his wide-ranging conversation with Cook about where the war on Gaza is heading.

For many on the American right, the Palestinians are a proxy for Iran and Palestinians imprisoned by Israel are "criminals".

On the left, the Palestinian issue is about a nation striving for freedom.

The only thing both sides agree on is that peace and stability are highly unlikely anytime soon.

In this episode, host Steve Clemons gets two diametrically opposed takes on the Israel-Palestine conflict. The first is from former US National Security Advisor John Bolton. The second is from the former executive director of Human Rights Watch in the Middle East and North Africa, Sarah Leah Whitson.

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After the war on Gaza, US President Joe Biden says he wants to “reinvigorate” the attempts to create a Palestinian state alongside Israel.

But the devil is in the details. After the Hamas attack on Israel, and Israel’s scorched-earth war on Gaza, will either side want to talk about peace and stability? Are Israelis willing to make the compromises that Palestinians would find acceptable, and vice versa?

Mara Rudman worked as a Middle East envoy in the Clinton and Obama administrations. She tells host Steve Clemons that US national security interests will force Washington to impose a resolution.