Secretary of State Antony Blinken hates the question in all forms. “Do Jewish lives matter more than Palestinian and Muslim lives?” he was recently asked on a global stage. “No, period,” he replied, visibly startled. That evidently satisfied nobody. “Do we have a double standard? The answer is no,” he had to answer yet again this week, while launching his department’s annual report on human rights. It documents violations across the world, including abuses committed by both Hamas and the Israeli army.
These awkward questions keep coming because much of the world simply assumes that the administration of President Joe Biden does have a double standard — according to which the U.S. condemns or punishes abuses by adversaries, such as Russia, but ignores or excuses those by friends, such as Israel.
Correct or not, that perception is widespread not only in Muslim countries and the Global South but also closer to home. It’s why American students are protesting on college campuses — for both sides, but disproportionately for the Palestinians.
I’ve been among those arguing that Biden has actually been better than most in showing empathy for both sides. And yet I see the pressure growing in the court of world opinion.
Some are especially upset that the U.S. seems to be ignoring not only international but also domestic law, specifically the so-called Leahy Law. It prohibits the State Department and the Pentagon from aiding units of foreign armed forces that are implicated in “gross violations of human rights.”
Last week, Blinken prepared to apply the Leahy Law to a unit of the Israeli army for the first time. The plan is to withhold American aid to a battalion called Netzah Yehuda (“Judah’s victory”). Founded for ultra-orthodox soldiers (who won’t fight alongside women), this outfit has attracted recruits from far-right Zionist settler communities in the West Bank. According to evidence the State Department has been reviewing, Netzah Yehuda has committed human-rights abuses against Palestinians in the West Bank.
So an American censure may well be justified. But this move is also a reminder that neither the Leahy Law nor any other legal tool can solve Biden’s larger problem, which is the appearance of a double standard.
In the current context, aiming the Leahy Law at Israel is mainly symbolic. Curtailing aid to Netzah Yehuda won’t coax Benjamin Netanyahu into moderating his policy any more than Biden’s other entreaties and “red lines” have done, which is to say hardly at all.
This leaves Biden’s overall message as scrambled as ever. Even as Blinken’s people were finalizing their Leahy action, Congress was rushing a legislative package to Biden’s desk. It will, among other things, provide another $26 billion to Israel, on top of the oodles the U.S. sends every year. (Having received some $124 billion since its founding in 1948, Israel is easily the world’s top recipient of cumulative U.S. aid.)
Biden also has sent another ambiguous signal in the Security Council of the United Nations. One council member, Algeria, had proposed upgrading Palestine’s status at the UN from “permanent observer” to full member, and 12 countries voted in favor, with two abstaining. Only the U.S. cast its veto. That was hard to explain, because Washington claims to be adamantly in favor of Palestinian statehood as the only long-term solution to pacify the Middle East.
If Biden and Blinken want to convince the world that they don’t have a double standard, they should condition military aid to Israel on the proper use of the weapons or halt all shipments. And at the UN, the U.S. should side with Israel or Palestine depending on the matter at hand.
If Biden is not prepared to make these changes, no invocation of the Leahy Law can solve his problems in the Middle East. Netanyahu will keep ignoring him, American students will keep rioting, and the world will keep accusing the U.S. of hypocrisy.
Andreas Kluth is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist covering US diplomacy, national security and geopolitics.
