The NPR Politics Podcast - In Israel, Biden Affirms Support, Warns Against Acting Out Of Rage

Episode Date: October 18, 2023

The president delivered the remarks during his trip to Israel. An additional stop in Jordan to meet with Egypt's leader and the head of the Palestinian Authority was cancelled.Majorities of both parties in the U.S. favor American support for Israel. And, despite an ascendant isolationist inclination within the Republican Party, the deeply rooted pro-Israel sentiment among the party's white evangelical base has remained steadfast. This episode: White House correspondent Asma Khalid, campaign correspondent Danielle Kurtzleben, and national political correspondent Mara Liasson.The podcast is produced by Casey Morell and Elena Moore. Our editor is Eric McDaniel. Our executive producer is Muthoni Muturi.Unlock access to this and other bonus content by supporting The NPR Politics Podcast+. Sign up via Apple Podcasts or at plus.npr.org. Connect:Email the show at [e-mail] the NPR Politics Podcast Facebook Group.Subscribe to the NPR Politics Newsletter.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

Hi, this is Nathan from Chicago on top of Longs Peak at 14,255 feet. It's the tallest mountain in Rocky Mountain National Park. This podcast was recorded at 1121 a.m. on Wednesday, October 18th of 2023. Things may have changed by the time you hear this. Big fan. Now enjoy the show and enjoy my friend Romeo, who's fallen asleep on this mountain. Nice snoring. Climb to Fort Cedar. Congratulations. Hey there, it's the NPR Politics Podcast. I'm Asma Khalid. I cover the White House.

I'm Danielle Kurtzleben. I cover politics. And I'm Mara Liason, national political correspondent. And today on the show, we have got the latest on President Biden's trip to Israel, what he said and what it means. About an hour ago, Biden made a speech in Tel Aviv promising steadfast support for Israel and reflecting on the country's loss of life. We've seen it described as Israel's 9-11. But for a nation the size of Israel, it was like 15 9-11s. But he also had a word of caution, thinking back to the U.S. response to the 2001 terrorist attacks. We were enraged in the United States.

While we sought justice and got justice, we also made mistakes. I'm the first U.S. president to visit Israel in time of war. I've made wartime decisions. I know the choices are never clear or easy for the leadership. There's always cost. But it requires being deliberate. It requires asking very hard questions. It requires clarity about the objectives and an honest assessment about whether the path you're on will achieve

those objectives. The vast majority of Palestinians are not Hamas. Hamas does not represent the Palestinian people. Mara, there was a lot going on in these remarks that Biden delivered. There was a clear message of support for Israel, a warning to other countries not to get involved, and some concern about Palestinian civilians who are still in Gaza, who have nothing to do with Hamas. What stood out from you from what Biden had to say? Well, what stood out for me was how complicated this is for the president. He is a staunch supporter of Israel. He has made that crystal clear. He has also sent aircraft carriers to the Middle East warning other countries not to get involved. He does not

want this to become a regional conflict, a regional conflagration. He also clearly is concerned about what happens after Israel begins its ground invasion of Gaza. He agrees with Israel's right to retaliate, but he's very worried about the civilian toll and also what the civilian toll will do to world support for Israel, as in will it evaporate? You know, he also said later this week he intends to send a request to Congress for a quote, unprecedented support package for Israel's defense. You know, obviously very significant, but I also think it's important for listeners who hear our podcast, I'm sure they are familiar, this is actually impossible for Congress to pass in this moment because there is no elected

Speaker of the House. That's right. Republicans in the House who are the majority are in complete disarray. They don't have the votes to elect anyone yet. And without a speaker, they can't do the nation's business. They can't keep the government open after November 17th. There's a lot of things they can't do. The war between Hamas and Israel has come at the worst possible time for American dysfunctional politics. And once there is finally a speaker and Congress can debate some sort of a support package for Israel's defense, one thing that I think that I know I will be watching closely is what the partisan split on that support package looks like.

Now, of course, there are plenty of Democrats, including Joe Biden, who staunchly support Israel. But as we will discuss later in this show, things look different depending on what party you're looking at. The Republican Party tends to be much more uniformly staunchly pro-Israel. The Democratic Party has splintered a bit with progressive Democrats, particularly young progressive Democrats, seeing this war in either more nuanced terms, supporting both Israeli and Palestinian people or supporting the Palestinian people more than they support Israelis. So, Danielle, you know, we've already begun to see some Republican presidential candidates criticizing how the president has been handling this conflict. What are you hearing and what

have you been seeing? One of the biggest points on which Republican candidates have been taking aim at Joe Biden and not just candidates, but Republicans in Washington as well, is on that $6 billion that the U.S. had planned to transfer to Iran as part of that deal surrounding the release of five imprisoned Americans in that country. Now, the criticism there being that Iran is a historic supporter of Hamas. And I should add that the Biden administration has decided not to release those funds to Iran now. their fire on each other here. One of their big goals, and we, again, we'll talk about this a bit more later in the podcast, is to show Republican voters just how much each one supports Israel and to try to make the case, I support Israel more than my opponents do. And that is about, first of all, Republican support for Israel. It's also just about projecting strength on the world stage. It's about hawkishness.

It's about projecting peace through strength. So if I can shift gears for a moment, because I do think it is worth noting that this trip Biden made today to Israel was initially intended and scheduled to be a two-country trip. The president was supposed to go on to Amman, Jordan, where he was going to meet with the president of the Palestinian Authority, as well as the president of Egypt. That part of the trip was called off after an explosion at a hospital in Gaza yesterday. But we've been told by the White House that the president doesn't intend to talk with these leaders on the flight home. Mara, how do you interpret that? And what comes next? The way I interpreted is that after that blast at the hospital in Gaza, which Hamas blames on Israel and Israel blames on a group called Islamic Jihad, his trip became very different. He was going to meet with Egyptian and Jordanian officials and Palestinian leaders,

and he couldn't because of the backlash and the anger about the casualties in that hospital. So it makes his trip look a little more one-sided. He is talking to these leaders on the phone. I think that President Biden, even though he has made it clear that the U.S. is a staunch ally of Israel, full stop, he also wants to be as much of a broker as he can. And he's hoping that other countries in the region step in to try to tamp down this conflict. All right, let's take a quick break. And when we get back, we'll take a closer look at Israel's political support here at home in the United States. And we're back. And I want to shift to looking at where U.S. support for Israel is in the United States. According to the latest NPR-PBS Marist poll that was taken last week, a majority of

people in both parties broadly support Israel, but Republicans do in bigger numbers. And Danielle, you've got some new reporting specifically looking at that GOP support. What shapes that? Right. So there are really three strands that come together to boost Republican support for Israel over the second half of the 20th century. And we can talk more about where it's gone since then. But the big three strands are this. One, evangelical support for Israel and the biblical basis for that. And just to get into that a teeny bit, the biblical basis for that, there are two things. One is the Old Testament promise that God made to Abraham that there would be a land for his descendants for all time. And

many evangelicals do believe that. The other is a biblical tie in the book of Revelation between the end times and the place that is now Israel and the Palestinian territories. That's one big area is evangelical religious ties to the place. The second is political sorting. Those white evangelicals were not always quite uniformly Republican the way they are today. But Republicans quite intentionally courted those voters over the second half of the 20th century and early 21st century and really brought them into the party. Now, the third strand is the rise of neoconservatism in the second half of the 20th century

and early 21st. Now, neoconservatism is a foreign policy school of thought that is about intervening in other areas of the world, in other countries, and is also about promoting democracy. It is very much associated with the George W. Bush presidency and helping to get the U.S. into war in Iraq. Now, there is now an isolationist streak in the Republican Party. We can talk more about that. Neoconservatism is no longer as in vogue as it used to be. Republican support for Israel is complicated, as Danielle said. Also, the isolationism in the Republican Party is selective. Many of them do not want to send military aid to Ukraine, but they're happy to send it to Israel. So far, at least, it seems like the Republican Party is a majority pro-Israel party, with the exception of Donald Trump's comments recently dissing Bibi and praising Hezbollah, which he's tried to walk back in recent days.

Yeah, I mean, how are the other Republican candidates responding to Donald Trump here. Well, some of them are criticizing him for criticizing the Israeli government, and others of them are trying to be farther to the right than him. You have Ron DeSantis who says we shouldn't let in any Palestinian refugees because they're all anti-Semitic. And when you talk to foreign policy experts who also look at U.S. campaigns, what they'll say is that support for Israel really has become a litmus test for Republican candidates in a way that it simply does not exist among Democrats. That Republican candidates, as Mara just nodded to, are really trying to outdo each other to show Republican voters that they support Israel more than their opponents do. At least most of the candidates are doing that.

All right. Well, let's leave it there for today. I'm Asma Khalid. I cover the White House. I'm Danielle Kurtzleben. I cover the presidential campaign. And I'm Mara Liason, national political correspondent. And thank you all, as always, for listening to the NPR Politics Podcast. to this podcast.