The president provided Time magazine reporters with an incendiary set of remarks in a recent interview published on Tuesday. During that sit-down, the president accused his Israeli counterpart, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, of deliberately drawing out the war in Gaza for his own personal benefit.
“Some in Israel have suggested that Netanyahu is prolonging the war for his own political self-preservation,” Time’s reporters asked. The premise alone, attributed to no one in particular, is a scandal. It was a trap — an obvious one at that — that deserved to be rejected outright. But when Biden was asked if he, too, believed that a dastardly and reckless plot was afoot, he refused to dismiss the allegation.
“I’m not going to comment on that,” Biden replied. “There is every reason for people to draw that conclusion.”
That’s a jaw-dropping claim from the head of the American executive branch and a consumer of the raw intelligence produced by one of the most adept spy agencies on earth. It demands further explication. But when reporters gave Biden the opportunity to expand on these remarks today, he backtracked.
“Is Prime Minister Netanyahu playing politics with the war?” one reporter shouted in the president’s direction on Tuesday. “I don’t think so,” Biden replied. “He’s trying to work out a serious problem he has.”
To synthesize these seemingly contradictory remarks, Biden is not saying that he believes Netanyahu is playing politics with Israel’s defensive war against Hamas, but he understands why other people might believe that. After all, they have ample evidence to support that uncharitable conclusion. Despite the perfectly valid rationale for just such a belief, therefore, the president himself does not believe it. Does that make sense?
Of course, it does not. Maybe the president was cleaning up after himself, mooting the impolitic comments he had provided Time’s reporters. Or maybe the aged president is simply confused. Occam’s razor points to the latter.