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AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org. I’m Amy Goodman.

We end today’s show with journalist Akbar Shahid Ahmed. His new book is Crossing the Red Line: Biden, His Adisors, and Israel’s War in Gaza. The book is based on interviews with more than 150 officials and others involved in shaping the Biden administration’s policies in the Middle East. Akbar Shahid Ahmed covers U.S. foreign policy for The Washington Sun.

Welcome back to Democracy Now!, Akbar. This is a fascinating book. What I found so interesting is that so many of these officials who spoke to you did not want to be identified. Can you talk about why that is? And as we talk about what’s happening in Israel, Occupied Territories, in West Bank and Gaza, why you have chosen to write a book on the Biden administration?

AKBAR SHAHID AHMED: Thanks for having me, Amy.

I think it’s so crucial to look back at the Biden administration’s policy for two reasons. First, because the policies that we’ve seen entrenched and, frankly, worsened and become more dangerous and deadly under Donald Trump were really established by Biden’s team — the full, unprecedented blockade on Gaza, a real U.S. tolerance of expanded violence in the occupied West Bank, Lebanon, Syria, and a dodging of accountability for what U.S. government officials very often know are violations of American and international law.

I also think when we look at people like the policymakers, some of whom you interviewed earlier, Darializa from New York, the agenda that they are setting out when they talk about a different approach to Gaza, to Israel-Palestine, to respond to the popular demand for a new U.S. position there, that hinges on the Biden team.

A lot of the people I talked to, as you mentioned, were anonymous for fear of reprisal, for fear of pro-Israel hard-liners preventing them from getting future jobs. And what’s shocking about this kind of Biden team, too, and the culture I cover, is that, meanwhile, the architects of that Gaza policy, figures like Biden’s Middle East adviser Brett McGurk, who was celebrated this week at the U.N., Jake Sullivan positioning himself to be in a future Democratic administration, they’re not afraid of facing any reprisal for their choices, that very often were enabling atrocities.

AMY GOODMAN: So, if you can talk about their significance and what exactly they did in the Biden administration? You argue, obviously, that they set the stage for what Trump has simply escalated.

AKBAR SHAHID AHMED: I think when we — 

AMY GOODMAN: And who was speaking inside against what was happening?

AKBAR SHAHID AHMED: Absolutely. So, President Biden, a longtime professed Zionist — right? — and obviously in mental decline, as we now know, in that final year or so of his presidency, it was really him and this small group of about four men around him: Sullivan and McGurk, who I mentioned; Tony Blinken, the secretary of state; Jon Finer, his deputy national security adviser. What I heard so often from officials was the sense that Gaza policy was treated differently. Even officials up to the cabinet level, officials in intelligence positions, people in nonpartisan career jobs told me they were seeing the president less and involved less than they had been even earlier in the Biden administration and in handling crises like Ukraine, Sudan, other top issues.

What this has led to in the Trump era is really a tolerance of increased Israeli escalation, right? So, if we look at a policy like the Iran war, the Biden administration very often positioned itself as a defender of Israel as Israel was escalating, as we’ve discussed on the show, again and again versus Iran, making clear that they were kind of building up for the assault we’ve now seen, with all its consequences. The Biden team made the choice, rather than tell Israel, “We need you to rein this in,” and importantly, while they were publicly saying they wanted to avoid regional war, to send the troops, to send the weapons that made these escalations now under Trump possible.

When we think about who was challenging this, there were some figures. I mean, Samantha Power, famously author of a book on genocide, was Biden’s USAID chief. She, to a degree, was someone who inside the administration was arguing for a different approach. But I’ll note, Amy, that a lot of those figures weren’t willing to resign, and, frankly, other than Power, even in talking to me for the historical record, weren’t willing to put their names on what they had said, or, importantly, to criticize their colleagues. And I think until you break from those cycles of tolerating mass civilian casualties in a U.S. official’s role, you’re not going to have a different approach.

AMY GOODMAN: OK, I want to go to President Biden’s national security adviser, Jake Sullivan, back in 2024, denying Israel is carrying out a genocide in Gaza.

JAKE SULLIVAN: We believe Israel can and must do more to ensure the protection and well-being of innocent civilians. We do not believe what is happening in Gaza is a genocide. We have been firmly on record rejecting that proposition. … We have paused the shipment of 2,000-pound bombs, because we do not believe they should be dropped in densely populated cities.

AMY GOODMAN: And the State Department spokesperson under former President Biden, Matt Miller, admitted in May last year that he believes Israel committed war crimes in Gaza. This reversal came after he spent more than a year as the face of the Biden administration’s foreign policy, repeatedly defending Israel against allegations of war crimes and genocide. This was Miller speaking in April of 2024.

MATTHEW MILLER: We have been very clear that we want to see Israel do everything it can to minimize civilian casualties. We have made clear that they need to do every — that they need to operate at all times in full compliance with international humanitarian law. At the same time, we are committed to Israel’s right to self-defense.

AMY GOODMAN: But during an interview with Sky News in June, Matt Miller said he believed Israel did commit war crimes in Gaza and that Israeli soldiers are not being held accountable.

MATTHEW MILLER: I don’t think it’s a genocide, but I think the — I think it is, without a doubt, true that Israel has committed war crimes.

MARK STONE: You wouldn’t have said that at the podium.

MATTHEW MILLER: Yeah, look, because I — I mean, when you’re at the podium, you’re not expressing your personal opinion. You’re expressing the conclusions of the United States government.

AMY GOODMAN: I mean, you’re at the podium expressing the views of the government, not my own views. Akbar Shahid Ahmed, that was Matt Miller, what he said. If you can elaborate on this and how the tone was set, right through the top, and exactly what we’re talking about now? You had President Biden and the person who may run for president again, Kamala Harris. And the significance of what she did when she was running for president and lost, and then how she views this issue today, what you understand?

AKBAR SHAHID AHMED: The kind of denials that you highlighted there, Amy, were so crucial to sustaining this horrific policy, because, as I reveal in my book, figures like Jake Sullivan and Brett McGurk, Biden’s Middle East adviser, were, for instance, telling their colleagues, “We don’t believe the Palestinians are starving. They don’t look skinny in the photographs.” That sends a signal throughout the entire U.S. government apparatus of what the top of the system thinks, chilling people further down.

Also, when you look at that Matt Miller statement, what I illuminate in Crossing the Red Line and hope people can take from it for future policy and for accountability is a system of denial. The Biden administration, in 16 months, never reached a single firm conclusion of a war crime. But I was told by several lawyers, State Department, White House, in the words of one, “If they wanted us to find a war crime, we could have confirmed it.” Instead, the Biden administration sustained what one official described to me as, quote, “herd impunity,” essentially allowing plausible deniability, because, as Matt Miller says there, the U.S. government never confirmed, so there wasn’t that one piece of paper that required them to say something happened that was a war crime or ethnic cleansing. Meanwhile, I reveal in the book, they were using the term “ethnic cleansing” all the time.

On Harris, she wasn’t a major player in these decisions. That doesn’t wash her hands of responsibility, right? And I’ve asked her team repeatedly if she wants to express specific regret, right up until August of this year, just before this book tour. They haven’t been willing to provide any kind of statement on policies she would have opposed. And in my reporting, again, nearly 175 interviews, I never found evidence that Harris pushed for a policy change, although sometimes she pushed for rhetorical shifts to show more sympathy towards Palestinians.

AMY GOODMAN: Back in 2024, when she was vice president, Kamala Harris called for a ceasefire in Gaza, made the comment in a speech in Selma, Alabama, marking the 59th anniversary of Bloody Sunday. This is what she said.

VICE PRESIDENT KAMALA HARRIS: And given the immense scale of suffering in Gaza, there must be an immediate ceasefire, for at least the next six weeks, which is what is currently on the table. This will get the hostages out and get a significant amount of aid in. This would allow us to build something more enduring to ensure Israel is secure and to respect the right of the Palestinian people to dignity, freedom and self-determination. Hamas claims it wants a ceasefire. Well, there is a deal on the table. And as we have said, Hamas needs to agree to that deal. Let’s get a ceasefire. Let’s reunite the hostages with their families. And let’s provide immediate relief to the people of Gaza.

AMY GOODMAN: So, that was Vice President Kamala Harris speaking in Selma, calling for a six-week ceasefire. Then you have the DNC, and, Akbar Shahid Ahmed, this is particularly significant, as we were there at the — at her presidential convention, when people sat down overnight, the uncommitted, demanding a Palestinian American legislator be also able to address the DNC. They were denied that. Talk about Kamala Harris’s role in that.

AKBAR SHAHID AHMED: I remember you and Nermeen and me covering that sit-in, Amy, right? We were there with them for hours. And what was so significant about that moment was these were people saying, “We’re Democrats. We want to help you win the election and defeat Donald Trump.” They were not saying, by any means, “We’re your opponents.”

Instead, what Harris and her team did was reach a decision at that point to not permit a Palestinian speaker. And I was told in my reporting to sort of present the idea of a Palestinian American speaker — after, by the way, an Israeli American couple whose son was held hostage had already spoken — to present that as too politically risky, something they weren’t willing to do. I wasn’t able to confirm whether Harris made that call, the donor class made that call, or figures like Jen O’Malley Dillon, the Biden campaign manager, who was still running her campaign.

But the fact that it’s that kind of collective ethos of treating Palestinians that way also gives the lie to the Biden administration’s repeated claims that they were, quote, “the most diverse administration in history.” They were running with that kind of administration. Harris was running as a historic candidate to potentially be the first woman president, half-Black, half-South Asian, speaking at places like Selma, while I was told the people who actually made the decisions, particularly on Gaza, were by no means representing a broad range of experience or a broad range of diversity in this country. And Palestinians and various communities inside the Democratic coalition felt really dismissed. I was told by one Harris campaign staffer after her speech at that convention, “Well, we felt we got everyone, except the Muslims and Arabs.” So, that’s what it was. That gives you a taste of the ethos.

AMY GOODMAN: In this last minute we have together, in your book, Crossing the Red Line: Biden, His Advisors, and Israel’s War in Gaza, what do you want people to take away from this, as we move forward?

AKBAR SHAHID AHMED: I hope people understand there was a bipartisan continuity between Trump and Biden on Israel-Palestine prior to October 7th that helped fuel the conditions that led to that attack and the atrocities of that day, the war that followed. And then the Biden administration, as I detail, in the lame-duck period, despite new intelligence findings, despite new legal conclusions, essentially enabled Trump to get on a path to the Iran war, to have a Gaza ceasefire in which Palestinians were still consistently being denied food and medicine, that’s not optional under international law, and to permit continued fighting in Lebanon and beyond, as we’ve seen. So, I hope people understand that that’s a pattern that can be broken.

AMY GOODMAN: Akbar Shahid Ahmed, I want to thank you so much for being with us, author of Crossing the Red Line: Biden, His Advisors, and Israel’s War in Gaza. The book is just out.

And that does it for today’s show. I am in London for the weekend. Steal This Story, Please! is playing at the Hackney Picturehouse tonight. I’ll be speaking afterwards with director Carl Deal of the film Steal This Story, Please!, about Democracy Now!, Sunday at Cinéma Lumière, also in London, in South Kensington, and then in Lewes, then to Copenhagen and Berlin. I’m Amy Goodman.