Jon Finer lifts the fog of war in Israel
Joe Biden’s principal deputy national security adviser reveals how the administration plans to balance the U.S.’s support for Israel against humanitarian concerns and the risks of widening the war.
On Saturday, Hamas militants from Gaza invaded southern Israel, massacring some 1000 people, including at least 27 Americans, and kidnapping an estimated 150 others, including some from the United States.
In a speech on Tuesday, President Joe Biden was swift to denounce Hamas and support Israel in unequivocal terms, saying that, “Like every nation in the world, Israel has the right to respond — indeed has a duty to respond — to these vicious attacks.”
The headlines written about that speech emphasized Biden’s moral clarity and his righteous anger.
This was the easy part: condemning vicious terrorists who had just murdered hundreds of young people at a music festival.
That clarity has quickly given way to much murkier moral questions…
What does the United States do if Israel’s response violates the laws of war?
… and much more difficult tactical and strategic concerns…
How do we find and rescue American hostages?
How do we keep countries such as Iran from taking advantage of the conflict?
How does Biden keep aid to Israel flowing when Congress is broken?
None of this is as simple as Biden’s initial response.
One of the people at the White House whose job it is to figure all of this out is Jon Finer, the president’s principal deputy national security adviser.
On this episode of Playbook Deep Dive, Jon opens-up about how the administration is approaching some of the thorniest problems related to the war in Israel, including: striking the right balance between supporting Israel and expressing concerns about an extreme response; Biden’s warnings to Iran; and whether America should now consider itself at war with Hamas.
