Welcome to POLITICO’s West Wing Playbook, your guide to the people and power centers in the Biden administration. With help from producer Raymond Rapada. Send tips | Subscribe here | Email Eli | Email Lauren The political challenge facing President JOE BIDEN amid the Israel-Hamas war is only growing more fraught. Polls show growing unrest among Democrats over his posture on the war. Three-hundred thousand protesters on Saturday marched to the White House, demanding a ceasefire. Two days later, red paint remained splattered on the White House gates. To discuss the ongoing crisis and challenge facing the administration, West Wing Playbook called JEREMY KONYNDYK, a former Biden and Obama administration official for USAID and now the president of Refugees International. This conversation has been edited for length and clarity. You were the director of USAID’s Office of Foreign Disaster Assistance under Obama. I imagine this moment brings some of those memories back. I turn back to the experience we had in Yemen in 2015. We spent a year and a half on the same kind of rhetoric that we’re hearing from the Biden administration. We did a ton of back channel advocacy and engagement with the Saudis around international humanitarian law and the importance of minimizing civilian harm. But the only thing that really made a difference was when President Obama pushed King Salman personally to allow food, fuel and aid to get through the blockade. I imagine that they are being tougher in private than they are in public. But that doesn’t really matter if it’s not making a difference. The administration wants Israel to change its behavior. They know that what the [Israel Defense Forces] is doing in the conduct of the war is unacceptable, but they can’t bring themselves to say so publicly. [Benjamin] Netanyahu knows that. And he knows that as long as that’s the posture, he can keep doing what he’s doing. So you’re saying Biden needs to be more forceful in calling this out publicly? I don’t think they can continue this lockstep in public, but tough private approach and expect things are going to change. It takes first acknowledging that the president, now for three and a half weeks, has been calling on Netanyahu personally to ensure compliance with civilian protection as required by international law. And for three and a half weeks, Netanyahu has been totally disregarding that. There is a tendency within government sometimes to drink your own Kool-Aid, and to think the narrative that you’re telling yourself is the narrative the world can understand. And that is just not the case here. As someone who has been a part of humanitarian work for a long time, what’s your biggest fear in all this? I am really mortified. What the rest of the world sees is that, when civilian apartment buildings are bombed by Russia in Ukraine, the U.S. government forcefully condemns this as illegitimate. And when they see similar tactics being used by the IDF in Gaza, they see lockstep support from the U.S. government. This dramatically undermines the credibility of international humanitarian law. The fundamental foundation of international law is that certain things are wrong full stop, because it happens to humans. That’s why it makes the attacks by Hamas wrong — deeply horrific and a grave violation of international humanitarian law. And that’s why it makes war crimes in response wrong. Your organization has called for a ceasefire. We’ve already seen Biden officials sharpen their language as they advocate for humanitarian pauses — is there any world in which they call for a ceasefire? I hope so. I’m somewhat concerned about the emphasis on aid rather than protection. We have this term that was used in Bosnia: “the well-fed dead.” When I hear a lot of talk about aid, and not really as much talk about meaningful action to really protect civilians, it just brings me back to that phrase. The fundamental humanitarian need of people in Gaza right now is protection from violence. It’s hard to know how this ends, but however history views the U.S. response, is there still time to change that? This is a really hard policy challenge for the administration. This last month is absolutely horrific. There is a very understandable and appropriate desire by the administration to ensure Israel’s safety and security. But do they really think that bombing Gaza to a pulp will achieve that? Part of what makes any military action possible and sustainable is the perception that it’s legitimate. You can’t reverse engineer legitimacy. In the eyes of the world that is not the U.S. government, that legitimacy moment has already been lost. MESSAGE US — Are you ERIKA DINKEL-SMITH, special assistant to the president and senior labor adviser? We want to hear from you. And we’ll keep you anonymous! Email us at westwingtips@politico.com. Did someone forward this email to you? Subscribe here!
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