Following Hamas’s horrific October 7 attack, Israel launched an offensive of staggering violence in Gaza, saying it targeted militants while regularly striking hospitals, schools, and homes. Critically acclaimed journalist Akbar Shahid Ahmed offers extensive reporting and chilling new details about how the Biden administration enabled Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu — ignoring warnings from government experts and implicating Americans in thousands of apparent war crimes. Washington did little to free Israeli hostages or shield innocent Palestinians as protests grew nationwide and international human rights principles crumbled. Still, President Joe Biden denied he was giving Netanyahu a blank check. He set a “red line” over the town of Rafah, where more than 1 million Palestinians were sheltering, saying an assault there would risk Israel’s pipeline of American bombs. Yet after Netanyahu’s advance began, deepening Gaza’s humanitarian catastrophe, Biden’s team kept weapons flowing.
In vivid prose and with unparalleled access to insiders, Ahmed depicts a White House that resisted a course correction as its failures became undeniable. He probes Biden’s inner circle: a paranoid and imperious group shaped by the War on Terror, whose choices fueled tens of thousands of avoidable deaths among Palestinians, Lebanese, and Israelis, torpedoed long-time standards for warfare, and created a more dangerous world for us all. The Biden administration’s decisions drove voter backlash that helped Donald Trump regain power, and established patterns of impunity that have spurred wider bloodshed under Trump.
Crossing the Red Line is an urgent reckoning with Biden’s record on Gaza that is vital to understanding historic damage to America’s standing in the world, and a period whose dark consequences will resonate globally for decades to come.
Featured Speakers
Akbar Shahid Ahmed, Diplomatic Correspondent, NOTUS
Akbar Shahid Ahmed is the diplomatic correspondent at New of the United States (NOTUS). For his Gaza coverage, he has received a Writers Guild Award and a New York Press Club Award and has twice been named a finalist for the Livingston Award. Based in Washington, D.C., Ahmed previously covered foreign policy at HuffPost for twelve years. He is a Yale graduate who grew up in Karachi, Pakistan.
James Siebens, Fellow, Defense Strategy and Planning, Stimson Center
Randa Slim, Program Lead, Middle East Program, Stimson Center (Moderator)
