Monday Morning Politics: The Biden Admin on Whether Israel Has Violated Laws

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Brian Lehrer: It is the Brian Lehrer Show on WNYC. Good Monday morning, everyone. Thanks to Brigid Bergin for filling in on Friday. To all you moms out there, a belated Happy Mother's Day. Hope you have the Mother's Day that you deserve. Coming up on the show today, Mark Hertsgaard. He's usually on as environment correspondent for the Nation Magazine. Some of you know that name, but this time he'll tell us about his experience of being wounded himself in a Mother's Day mass shooting.

It was 11 years ago yesterday, and he'll talk about the new book that had inspired Mark Hertsgaard in a very different role than usual coming up later today. Also, one of the things left on the New York State Legislature's plate before they adjourn for the year next month to decide whether to pass the Medical Aid in Dying Act, activists for the cause call it Death with Dignity.

They reject the name it's often been known by Physician-assisted suicide. We'll hear why that is and some major endorsements that are new this year from the New York State Medical Society, the main doctor's organization that represents 20,000 physicians in New York State and the New York State Bar Association, which of course represents lawyers. The Catholic Church is one main opponent. Some disability rights activists are also opponents. We'll see if this might be the year the Medical Aid and Dying Act passes in Albany after a number of years of being introduced and failing.

We'll invite your stories and your opinions as well. Patients, doctors, loved ones of people who have passed. That's all coming up later this hour. At the end of the show, some advice for doing things with friends or family when one of you has a lot more money to spend than the other. Have you ever been in that situation on one side or the other of it? How do you navigate the sometimes awkward relationship of inviting someone or being invited to something more expensive than one of you can really afford?

We start with our weekly Monday morning politics segment. The National Politics News over the weekend was heavily about the next moves for the US in the war between Hamas and Israel, even as the pain on both sides over there continues to mount. In Israel today, it's the annual Memorial Day when the country mourns its war dead in a nation that has been attacked so many times during its short history.

They do Memorial Day as the lead-in to the usual festive Israeli Independence Day, which begins its sundown tonight, 76 years now since the founding in 1948. I think that's going to feel different than it ever did. This year, an associated press story this morning is headlined with the shock of October 7th, still raw, profound sadness and anger grip Israel on its Memorial Day. The AP article starts with the story of a mother whose son was killed by Hamas on October 7th, but Hamas is still holding the remains. Even remains are being held hostage.

On the Palestinian side, the tens of thousands of civilian deaths and the ongoing war killing more every day by bullets or bombs or by lack of food or medical care, that includes in areas of central and northern Gaza where Hamas is reportedly returning after Israeli troops moved south and Rafah in the South even before a more massive ground invasion, which continues to divide Prime Minister Netanyahu there and President Biden here. An American in Rafah, an American nurse on Morning Edition today described the scene at a local hospital.

Nurse: The flies are everywhere. They're in the OR, they're in the ICU. I really think they can predict death. It's, I don't know, just absolutely unbelievable here.

Brian Lehrer: That from Morning Edition this morning. The US politics of all this are main focused now are the many people are being left confused by Biden administration policy toward arming Israel right now. Last week, as many of you heard, Biden withheld a shipment of bombs to Israel, so they won't be used in Rafah in ways that could cause many more civilian deaths, but then the administration released a report on the Israeli military possibly violating US and international law, but that concluded that it allows the US to continue sending arms.

Is the US in, or is the US out of arming the Israeli military? Here is Secretary of State Antony Blinken being asked about the report on CBS faced the nation yesterday by the host Margaret Brennan.

Margaret Brennan: You have been able then to conclude that Israel has violated US laws and weapons-sharing agreements?

Antony Blinken: No, we've concluded is in the case of the use of weapons, as you said, this is an extraordinarily complex military environment in which you have an enemy, Hamas, that committed the most atrocious terrorist attacks on Israel on October 7th and then retreats to Gaza, hides behind and underneath civilians and hospitals, schools, mosques, apartment buildings. That makes it very difficult to determine, particularly, in the midst of war, exactly what happened and to draw any final conclusions from any one incident.

We have a number of incidents that we continue to look at to try to get the best possible assessment. The Israelis themselves are doing the same thing. Our assessments will be ongoing, but as I said, given the totality of what we've seen in terms of civilian suffering, in terms of children, women, men caught in this crossfire of Hamas' making who've been killed or been injured, it's reasonable to assess that in a number of instances, Israel has not acted in a manner that's consistent with internationally humanitarian law.

Brian Lehrer: In a number of instances, reasonable to assess that Israel has not acted in a manner consistent with international law. That was Blinken with Margaret Brennan on CBS's Face the Nation, but allowing that it's complicated, Hamas is causing a lot of this, and so US can continue to provide weapons, but here is Blinken with host Kristen Welker on NBC's Meet the Press.

Anthony Blinken: There has to be a credible plan for the civilians.

Kristen Welker: Have you seen a credible plan?

Anthony Blinken: We have not. Second, there's something else that's important. We also haven't seen a plan for what happens the day after this war in Gaza ends. Because right now, the trajectory that Israel is on is even if it goes in and takes heavy action in Rafah, there will still be thousands of armed Hamas left. We've seen in areas that Israel has cleared in the North, even in [unintelligible 00:06:57] Hamas coming back.

The trajectory right now is that going into Rafah even to deal with these remaining battalions, especially in the absence of a plan for civilians, risks doing terrible harm to civilians and not solving the problem, a problem that both of us want to solve, which is making sure Hamas cannot again govern Gaza.

Brian Lehrer: Blinken unmute the press. The Biden administration is withholding weapons that could be used for an all-out invasion of Rafah but approving in general of continuing to arm the operation even while denouncing how Israel is handling it. People are confused, and Biden is getting it from both sides of the aisle. Here is Senator Bernie Sanders on what he thinks the report about likely violations of US and international law should have led Biden to say.

Bernie Sanders: I think any objective observer knows Israel has broken international law, it has broken American law. In my view, Israel should not be receiving another nickel in US military aid.

Brian Lehrer: That's Bernie Sanders on Meet the Press but here's Republican senator Rick Scott of Florida on Fox News Sunday.

Rick Scott: Israel has no choice but to destroy Rafah. I've always believed that Biden is unfortunately now part of the pro-Hamas wing of his party. That's all they're worried about is he's worried about winning a presidential election.

Brian Lehrer: As Biden aims to thread the needle of supporting Israel's main objectives but pushing it toward more regard for civilian life and more planning for the day after, he's either part of Hamas, say the Republicans there, or enabling war crimes, say progressives. With us now, USA Today, White House Correspondent, Francesca Chambers, who's been reporting on all this. Francesca, thanks for coming on. Welcome back to WNYC.

Francesca Chambers: Thank you so much for having me. I appreciate it.

Brian Lehrer: Let's back up a few days and do a timeline of most of the last week to try to clarify what the Biden administration is doing as much as possible where these multiple statements and actions began and the reactions to them you've been reporting on All Of It. Your article last Wednesday was called Biden Pauses Bomb Shipment to Israel Over Humanitarian Concerns in Gaza. What exactly, remind us, did they pause?

Francesca Chambers: This was specifically a pause on certain bombs, the 2000-pound bombs, as well as another type of bomb that they also paused. It was a total of 3,500 bombs that he paused. Now, Biden, in the CNN interview also said that he would put a pause on artillery shells and other types of weapons that could be used in population centers such as Rafah.

He didn't say with clarity all of the weapons that he would be pausing if Netanyahu goes into Rafah, but generally speaking, they were offensive weapons. That is very different than saying he's going to put a pause on all military aid to Israel, including defensive weapons, and the question of how long, what he's looking for here, that's where the story goes this week.

Brian Lehrer: Even what you just described, that particular pause could be the source of some confusion because you have the Quote of Defense Secretary Austin saying at a Senate hearing that, "We haven't paused one shipment of high payload--" I'm sorry, that they did pause one shipment of high payload munitions, but then he said, "We have not yet made a final determination on how to proceed with that shipment. Is it clear when that determination would be made finally or based on what criteria?

Francesca Chambers: US officials say that that's determinant on what the Israeli government decides to do. Does it launch a major ground operation in Rafah? They're essentially saying that the ball is in Israel's court to determine how long that pause would be, but lawmakers were very frustrated to hear that information. They were surprised by the news reporting on that last week, when they learned, they said from media reports that this had even happened in the first place, that there was a review taking place.

Brian Lehrer: Then came the Biden administration's report on Friday about whether Israel has violated US or international law in the way it has used US weapons. As you report, they concluded that it is reasonable to assess, and we heard that in the Blinken clip, reasonable to assess that there have been possible violations, but it could not definitely assess that violations occurred. Do they explain why they concluded that violations are reasonable to assess, but they wouldn't land based on whatever evidence that is? For sure, wouldn't reasonable to assess that violations did occur lead to a conclusion that they did.

Francesca Chambers: There's a reason that the State Department says that it cannot definitively say, is because there are hundreds of investigations that are still open, but also because the US government doesn't have officials on the ground to be able to independently verify some of these things. They also note that Hamas tends to hide behind civilian populations. That was all fueling the idea here that they could not conclusively determine this, but the State Department did say in its report that it has serious questions about Israeli protection measures for civilians, and it did raise serious concerns around when it said that it was reasonable to assess that US weapons could likely been used in some of these instances.

If we could take a step back though for a second and go back earlier into the week, what prompted this report? President Biden in a national security memo in February had said that he would send a report on not just Israel but on countries that the US supplies weapons to, to Congress by May 8th. Around comes Wednesday, the report doesn't come out, it was unclear how long it was going to be delayed.

It eventually comes out on late Friday afternoon, right before close of business. Then you have the report itself that comes out, as you noted in the windup to this frustrating both Republicans and Democratic Lawmakers for different reasons on Friday night. Secretary Blinken then spoke out yesterday on this, and he tacked very closely to what the findings of the report were, noting very carefully as you again pointed out, that he wasn't deviating from there very careful to stick within exactly what the report says.

Brian Lehrer: When you say hundreds of investigations are ongoing, that's what the report says. They can't conclude definitively whether there were violations, partly because there are hundreds of investigations going. Does that mean investigations of hundreds of individual incidents where maybe they were going after a number of Hamas fighters, but they knew they were in the basement of a big residential building where a lot of civilians live and where's the line there, anyway, those kinds of investigations?

Francesca Chambers: That was how I interpreted it, when a senior US State Department Official briefed reporters on Friday. I would note that Blinken also said on Sunday that the US is continuing to assess this, that this is an ongoing review.

While the report itself was due to Congress last week with Biden setting out the timeline, a self-imposed timeline for that, that the US will continue to look at these, this isn't an end all be all, so to speak, and Biden also had promised in his initial national security memorandum that prompted this, that the government would produce reports every fiscal year as well. In the next fiscal year, you could see another report regardless of what state's findings between now and then might be.

Brian Lehrer: On these assessments being not just of the way Israel is using US weapons or US military aid but on how a number of countries that receive those things, Do you know some of the other particular countries, and is that to address the concern that many Jews have or many supporters of Israel have, that Israel is being singled out constantly for scrutiny on how it conducts this war, how it does all kinds of things when there are things arguably as bad if we judge them to be bad, that are being done by many other countries, but people always want to talk about Israel.

Francesca Chambers: Though it does address a number of countries, including Ukraine, and when President Biden committed to this report, it was notable that even though the pressure had been rising on him from Democrats because of Israel's war against Hamas, he did not explicitly promise a report on Israel, it was on US weapons use in particular. The countries that are covered in this are Columbia, Iraq, Israel, Kenya, Nigeria, Somalia and also Ukraine. Indeed the focus has largely been on Israel over the past few days.

Brian Lehrer: Did the report with its careful language about reasonable to assess that they have violated international law and US policy for how our weapons or military aid should be used, even despite all that careful language on either side of that, did the report conclude that the US can continue to arm Israel in the current war? Was that stated in the report?

Francesca Chambers: Yes. Currently, that's what the US position is. Now, that being said, President Biden had made this decision to pause as we talked about the shipment, of one-one shipment of these weapons. When asked how this may have affected this coming report, may have affected the president's decision, we haven't been able to get specific clarity on when the president was briefed on this report and how it might have influenced his decision. Now, the State Department has indicated that the president's decision did not influence the findings of their report, but one question we'll have this week is, when was Biden briefed specifically on the findings of this report? Was it before he decided to put that pause on the arms?

Brian Lehrer: For people who are confused by all of this, how does Biden explain the two things from last week? The conclusion that it doesn't have enough proof of violations against civilians to cut off weapons, but then he did, in fact, cut off that shipment of bombs because it would be used to kill too many civilians in his opinion?

Francesca Chambers: President Biden hasn't actually spoken out on the State Department report yet at all. We heard from Secretary Blinken yesterday but not yet from President Biden on this. John Kirby, the spokesperson for national security for the White House, did say last week though that the president's thinking on this matter has shifted, it has changed. The reason for that is because of the threat of the massive ground invasion into Rafah, that really seems to be a turning point for President Biden, who we do know had been warning behind closed doors, prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on the US position for some time.

What we also heard last week that was different though from the White House is what the alternatives would potentially be that they're providing Israel. They had not provided clarity on that before saying, previously that they had alternatives that they thought that Israel could use to go after Hamas instead of a ground-scale invasion but declining to say what those are. All that to be said, is now you're seeing more in public view, what the Biden administration had been privately telling the Israelis as the president seeks to put leverage essentially against Benjamin Netanyahu to put this in more of a direction that the US is comfortable with.

Brian Lehrer: My guest, if you just joining us, is White House Correspondent for USA Today, Francesca Chambers, as we describe the fast-moving Biden policy, proclamations and actions with respect to continuing to arm Israel in the current war between Hamas in Israel. We're going to get, as we go, into the politics of this. how it fits into the campaigns for Congress and the presidency from either side. Also, the longer term, not just what might happen in Rafah and how Biden is keeping his eye on that because that was also in one of the clips we heard from Secretary of State Blinken. We'll get to that, too.

Your headline from Blinken's appearance on the networks on Sunday was that Blinken said the review of civilian deaths in Gaza is ongoing as fury over the report spreads. To the ongoing piece of that, and I know you talked about another report coming next year, but does it also mean they expect to reach a more definitive conclusion that would affect a decision on whether to continue to arm Israel generally sooner rather than later?

Francesca Chambers: Blinken didn't go into further detail on that yesterday. He left that fairly open-ended, but it is clear that the US says that the report itself was backward-looking. It covers a period that ended in April. Of course, any potential invasion of Rafah would be a new incident, and they would review those future incidents potentially, but it's not clear how the State Department intends to do that.

Brian Lehrer: To the fury, as your headline puts it, over the Israel report, did we hear the representative examples there of that in the Senator Bernie Sanders clip and Senator Rick Scott clip that we played at the top?

Francesca Chambers: Right, but there have been other lawmakers as well as progressive groups that spoke out after the Friday night report as well. Republicans, you've mainly been hearing from them that they are worried that this is a politicized report that will create new requirements for American allies. You heard Senator Jim Risch, who is the ranking Republican on Senate Foreign Relations, say that they believe that this could potentially further impede "security assistance and" undermine our ability to deter Russia and China in the future. That would be another example.

You also heard progressive groups such as the Center for American Progress say that they were disappointed on Friday night that this report did not reach stronger conclusions. I think the report itself coming after Biden's weapon pause tempered expectations from the left on what to expect from Biden going forward for progressives who were glad that he put the pause on certain offensive weapons earlier in the week, some of them now expressing disappointment that the Biden ministration at least followed that up with this report that did not conclude that Israel actually had violations on US weapons policy [crosstalk] to assess.

Brian Lehrer: Biden, he's getting it like the university presidents. You think that's fair to say? Republicans like Senator Rick Scott in that clip literally called him pro-Hamas. He used that term to characterize Biden. Protesters are calling him Genocide Joe. Do you have reporting as a White House correspondent about how much Biden thinks he's trying to manage complexity, which he obviously sees the situation as complex, while he gets accused of being too hard or too soft by different groups of people at the same time?

Francesca Chambers: I think it's very clear in the line that you have seen not just Secretary of State Blinken walk yesterday but in Biden's own mind that he has been walking where he is juggling giving remarks on Holocaust Remembrance Day for instance with a weapons pause, with the State Department report as he speaks to the divisions that are taking place in the Democratic Party. You do have the progressives who are sending letters to him, to his administration, saying that he should consider conditioning weapons, that he should consider pausing offensive weapons.

There are also Democrats who have been writing into his administration to push for continued and full-throated support for Israel militarily. Then you also have a situation in which his administration is saying, as Blinken did yesterday, that the support is still ironclad for Israel's defense, that the US is not going to abandon Israel. There are a lot of complexities that the administration is trying to work through and, as you said, thread the needle here in ways that are, of course, just being deemed insufficient by politicians and groups across the political spectrum.

Brian Lehrer: Politically, Biden is calculating, and maybe he's just doing what he thinks is right and complicated in a complicated situation. I don't know if you can get into his brain as a White House reporter and pick apart what's political from what's deeply felt, genuinely felt. Politically, is he betting that while there are loud voices denouncing him on either side, that there's a broad center in the American electorate that understands that he's trying to deal with complexity in a complex way?

Francesca Chambers: I think the latter part is, just as the general assessment, correct, but when it comes to the politics of it, he also has progressives who have been advising him that if he continues down this current course with his position on Israel, that he will lose large swaths of the base potentially in the general election. You have young people, and not just young progressives, we're talking the young Democrats of America who are saying that this is problematic, that it's depressing the youth vote. You have progressive lawmakers such as Bernie Sanders and Ro Khanna and Pramila Jayapal, who have been telling him this as well. By the way, those are progressives who are supporting his reelection bid.

They're campaigning for him as well, but they're telling him that this is going to be a problem for base progressives and young people in particular. It was clearly an issue for him in Michigan and some of the upper Midwest states when you go back to the Democratic primary where there were the uncommitted and abandoned Biden votes in these swing states that are make or break for the general election. There is a political element here regardless of whether or not the administration wants there to be a political element here. There most certainly is.

Brian Lehrer: You also had a story on Trump slamming Biden over the decision to withhold those bombs. That was before Trump's rally at the Jersey Shore this weekend that media reports say drew tens of thousands of people, and he continued to hammer Biden on that there. Would you say one of the ways Trump hopes to win is by being the unequivocal supporter of Netanyahu's war policy, being that candidate?

Francesca Chambers: I think that he is certainly trying to talk to the right of Joe Biden when it comes to Israel policy. Certainly, Republicans are trying to argue, I think as you provided some examples, that this is evidence that Joe Biden is abandoning Israel, although, again, his administration points out that it has continued to send weapons to Israel, just it may not send in the future these certain types of high payload bombs and other types of weapons but that it is committed to sending Israel the aid that passed in Congress recently and President Biden signed into law.

Indeed, the administration clarified last week that the weapons that it paused are actually from previous allocations of funding. This isn't coming from the recent bill, which is a concern that some Republicans have had.

When it comes to the presidential election itself, when you look at the battleground state polls that have come out recently, including some new ones today, Trump is ahead in many of these battleground states despite the fact that President Biden's team has been putting a lot of money into advertising, the president and vice president have been hitting the road ever since the State of the Union going to battleground states to talk about the economy, to talk about infrastructure, to talk about all these things, and yet, he's still trailing Trump or statistically tied with him in a handful of these battleground states.

Brian Lehrer: A few more minutes with Francesca Chambers, White House correspondent for USA Today. You're not a military reporter so you may not know the answer to this, but does the White House think the withholding of the bombs will actually affect the course of the war, particularly in Rafah? Will Israel not launch the major invasion there without them either because they actually need that specific shipment of bombs in order to do it, or because they care about Biden's public criticism of the prospect of that?

Francesca Chambers: Well, Bibi Netanyahu has said that he will move forward with what he deems fit regardless, but as far as what the White House has said about this, yes, they do hope to change Netanyahu's calculus about a Rafah invasion. That's exactly the hope that the White House has here. When I said that they're now speaking out on some of the other things they say, that they have provided alternatives to Israel as well at this point, including they said that they're working towards standing up an alternative government structure to Hamas that they're trying to work on what a post-conflict Gaza looks like compared with now that the administration is continuing to work with Arab nations to try to find a solution outside of this, a two-state solution.

Certainly, the administration is now being more clear publicly with what those alternatives would be here to do the major ground invasion of Rafah, and that is a difference than what we heard before.

Brian Lehrer: Let me, to conclude, ask if you can go even further in that direction because this goes to the other Antony Blinken clip that we played at the top where he laid out two different disagreements with Israel.

One, that Israel does not have a credible plan for civilians in Rafah. Two, that Israel does not have a credible plan for after this war in Blinker's opinion, and therefore, presumably in Biden's opinion, whenever that is, that wouldn't just result in new Hamas battalions developing and repeating the cycle. Is the US offering publicly what it considers to be credible plans for Rafah or for the longer term?

Francesca Chambers: It has not said what it would consider to be credible plans for Rafah, although it has said that what the Israelis have repeatedly laid out wouldn't be enough, and indeed they've suggested that any invasion of Rafah would put civilians in harm's way, in a way that the US finds acceptable or any major invasion. They're not talking about what Israel's currently describing as its limited operation in Rafah right now.

Then with respect to what it wants to see moving forward here, Biden did hint at this a little bit in his CNN interview where he said that he was working with some Arab nations and what the US wants to see is the Palestinian Authority in charge, but it wants to see reforms. He did not go into detail on what those reforms would include, what they would be, but this isn't the first time that he said that. He said that in the past, but he did reiterate that again last week.

Brian Lehrer: Francesca Chambers, White House correspondent for USA Today. She has many articles on this in the last few days. Thanks for drawing on your reporting to give us this deep dive into the complex policy that Biden is trying to pursue in the Middle East and the politics of it.

Francesca Chambers: Thank you for giving me the time to try and go be on headlines.

 

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