Rhodes’s Moral Tale of Israel and the Democrats Leaves Out the Most Important Facts

Rhodes ignores Hamas, misreads Biden’s policy (and mistakes), and erases the strategic realities that shaped both the conflict and decades of U.S.–Israel ties

The first thing I found peculiar in Ben Rhodes’s New York Times op-ed - certainly not the last - was this paragraph. I read it over and over; it felt off, and it took some time to put that unease into words. See if you can spot it:

“Democrats have long held virtuous reasons for supporting Israel. Louis Brandeis saw Israel’s socialist kibbutzim as a haven for European Jews and as part of a global effort to advance progressive policies. Harry Truman’s recognition of Israel was a commitment to security for the Jewish people after the Holocaust. Jews marched alongside Black people in pursuit of civil rights and joined them as a core of the Democratic Party’s base. Through the Cold War, Israel retained the dual status of an underdog and a democratic ally.”

None of the reasons Rhodes gives include the tiny-winy major reason that Democrats -or Republicans - valued Israel: it was important and proved its worth throughout the Cold War. What he writes about the Cold War reduces Israel to being an “underdog” and a “democratic ally.” Narrative. Framing. Sentences that work nicely for a speechwriter.

In Rhodes’s telling, Democratic support for Israel is not a question of national interest but an expression of the party’s own moral and identity-based architecture.

So let’s try a bit of history. Why did the U.S. strengthen its ties with Israel after 1967, when many in the world severed theirs?

The U.S.S.R. was dominating the Middle East. Israel stood alone against its proxies. Holding back the Soviet Union was the cornerstone of U.S. foreign policy. Only one country in the Middle East consistently did that: Israel. There are numerous examples of how Israel served as a key strategic asset for the West and for the U.S. Things that today sound almost obsolete: the study of the MiG-21, the Soviet Union’s most sophisticated fighter jet, which the Mossad was the first to obtain; or getting Khrushchev’s “Secret Speech,” the moment Soviet leadership distanced itself from Stalin’s legacy- another Israeli intelligence operation. There were many, many examples like these, and one overarching result: Israel versus the Soviet proxies was one of the very few arenas in which a Western ally actually won. This was not Vietnam, nor Central or South America.

This strategic logic helped make Israel a bipartisan issue in American politics, reinforced by cultural factors. Rhodes, however, appears unwilling to consider the realist dimension. For him, everything revolves around image and narrative - the “underdog” and the like.

And it’s not only the Cold War. Israel has destroyed, every 20-some years, a military nuclear program of a Middle Eastern rival of the United States: first the Osirak reactor of Saddam Hussein in 1984; then again in 2007, in the destruction of an almost-operational North Korean–built military reactor developed by Bashar al-Assad, the Syrian dictator; and less than 20 years later (joined by the U.S.) a significant blow to the Iranian nuclear program. In the case of the Syrian reactor- and also many components of the Iranian nuclear program - it’s Israel that delivered the intelligence. Considering the volatility of the Middle East and its importance to global energy supply, these are issues far larger than storytelling. Imagine what might have happened if Israel weren’t there, or lacked American weapons to do it all.

The Syrian Nuclear reactor, Sat image, 2007

The second element that stands out in this paragraph is the one sentence that doesn’t deal with Israel at all - the reminder that “Jews marched alongside Black people” for civil rights. All the other sentences are about Israel; this one is not. It is about the Jewish community.

Rhodes’s point here is presumably that Democrats supported Israel because they felt they owed something to the Jews? Or that Jews became part of the Democratic base through the civil rights movement and therefore could influence the party?

It’s uneasy, to say the least. My guess is that something else is happening here. Rhodes avoided stating the obvious: that Jews were deeply involved, and influential within, Democratic politics in the early to mid-twentieth century, long before their later involvement in the civil rights movement. Since a large majority of American Jews were (and remain) Zionists, and since Jewish voters have historically leaned Democratic, its only natural that they advocated for policies aligned with their views - including those that saw Israel as a valuable American ally. Why would Rhodes avoid making this point explicit? Decide for yourself.

A third point is more obvious and goes to the core of Rhodes’s article: the idea that Biden “hugged” Netanyahu throughout his term. As someone who covered it, Friction was high, and while Biden supported Israel throughout the war, the U.S. vetoed or postponed much of what the Israeli governmet attempted to do - constantly pressuring Jerusalem to refrain from escalation so this wouldn’t turn into a “regional war,” while in reality it was already a regional war.

The nuanced picture is this: the Biden administration did support Israel’s right to self-defense, did assist immediately after October 7, did help repel Iran’s attacks on Israel- including one of the largest missile and drone barrages in history. But at the same time it pressured Israel to respond only with limited strikes against Iran. The same balancing act was attempted (unsuccessfully) in Gaza. A good example is how the Biden administration postponed Israel’s plan to enter Rafah for months, embargoing weapons.

President Biden and PM Netanyahu, October 18, 2023 (photo: Avi Ohaion, GPO)

For Biden’s critics on the left, the problem was always that he failed to stop Israel in its tracks or fully leverage American power, as Rhodes now argues. Yet Rhodes does not address what we learned during the Trump term: Unequivocal support for Israel, paired with off-the-record intensive pressure on Netanyahu and repeated full-fledged demand for the hostages’ immediate release - first in December 2024, then again during the negotiations that produced the fragile ceasefire—was the key factor in achieving both the ceasefire and the hostages’ release. Even if he is only focused on winning the narrative war, Rhodes has to acknowledge thatthis was Trump’s biggest foreign policy victory. He does not.

Conversations with former Biden officials emphasize their own frustration: some feel strongly that if the U.S. had given Israel full backing to destroy Hamas’s army earlier, instead of constantly focusing on securing any deal, Hamas would have broken sooner and the ceasefire achieved earlier. Tens of thousands of lives - almost all of them Palestinian - would have been saved. Rhodes would obviously disagree, but the problem is that he never addresses the argument in the first place. Why? Because his focus is not on the facts, but on shaping a narrative for a political base. That’s legitimate - but he shouldn’t present it as a moral argument.

Here’s an example for Rhodes’s moral framing:

“If you believe a Palestinian child is equal in dignity and worth to an Israeli or American child, it is no longer possible to support this Israeli government while hiding behind platitudes about peace.”

First, who in the Democratic Party today supports “this Israeli government”? Chuck Schumer, who said in March 2024 that Bibi has to go?

Here are some real questions: How do you achieve that very real and necessary dignity for every Palestinian child if he is ruled by Hamas - an organization that does not recognize recognize this child’s human rights, and does not recognize Israelis’ right to life? And how do you do that when the majority of Palestinians, not only in Gaza, tell pollsters they support Hamas?

Like Rhodes, I also think the occupation harms Israel itself, beyond being intrinsically wrong. It is also true the Netanyahu governments have done anything in their power to prevent Palestinian statehood, and have allowed more violence by Jewish fundamentalists in Judea and Samaria. Netanyahu’s rule has eroded Israeli democracy, and yes, has made terrible ddecisions during the war that have led to Israel being more isolated today than ever. To borrow Rhodes’s wording in a different topic, these facts are exactly the reasoning it is “maddening” that he seemingly doesn’t deal with the real issues at all. My sidenote here, as a Middle Easterner, is that his factual diagnosis is lacking and his recipe was tried and proven flawed.

Here, the problem becomes clear: the gap between actual strategy and Rhodes’s fixation on narrative over consequence. His Op-Ed constructs a story about how Democrats “blew it,” with little attention to how the war might have been ended sooner, how Gazan lives might have been spared, how Israelis might have been better protected, or how dignity might be secured for all. In the Middle East, stories have consequences. And when narrative replaces strategy, administrations will continue to blow it.