President Joe Biden slammed America's conduct during the Second World War in a conversation with Israel's war cabinet, arguing that the Allied bombings of Nazi Germany led to the "United Nations and all these rules" that preclude the use of such tactics today.
In an interview with the New Yorker's Evan Osnos, Biden criticized the Jewish state's leaders, saying they have become consumed with "rage" in their war against Hamas and have lost "the moral high ground." Biden went on to detail a conversation he had with members of Israel's war cabinet, who defended the war in Gaza by noting "that America had carpet-bombed Germany in the Second World War." Biden responded by suggesting America should not have done so.
"That's why we ended up with the United Nations and all these rules about not doing that again," he said, according to Osnos.
Biden’s criticism of the Israeli military campaign comes days after he suggested that a ceasefire deal between the Jewish state and Hamas was imminent. Several parties involved in the negotiations, however, cast doubt on Biden's comment, dismissing the president's optimism as exaggerated. Biden walked back his assessment on Thursday.
"I was on the telephone with the people in the region," Biden told reporters. "Probably not by Monday, but I’m hopeful."
Biden is facing pressure to secure a ceasefire from his party's progressive flank—as well as Hamas.
Last week, more than 100,000 Michigan Democrats voted "uncommitted" in the state's presidential primary after anti-Israel activists organized a protest vote. Days later, on Monday, a senior Hamas official said Biden must pressure Israel into a ceasefire deal.
"It is now in the hands of the Americans, if they are serious about achieving a cease-fire before Ramadan, to exercise enough pressure on the Israelis," senior Hamas official Bassem Naim said. Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu "doesn't want to reach an agreement and the ball now is in the Americans' court," he added.
The United States Air Force's bombing campaign against Nazi Germany was a crucial part of the Allied forces' victory, having "wrecked Germany's transportation system and reduced its oil production to a trickle," according to the National Museum of the United States Air Force.
"This destruction left the Wehrmacht (German Army) severely weakened from lack of supplies and fuel," the museum's website says. "With its air force defeated and its infrastructure in total ruin, Nazi Germany succumbed to Allied ground advances from the east and the west in May 1945."