Whatever we think of the first US presidential debate and who won, both candidates – Democratic President Joe Biden and Republican contender former president Donald Trump – came across as strongly supportive of Israel in the war against terrorism, although both had markedly different takes on Israel, Hamas, Iran and the situation in the Middle East.
Commentators argued that their exchange over Israel during the 90-minute debate, was proof of how important an issue it is in the November 5 presidential election.
Trump fired the first shot while assaulting Biden on his foreign policy in general and the Ukraine war in particular, claiming (not for the first time) that under his presidency, October 7 would never have happened.
The previous president implied that Biden’s presidency had enabled both the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022 and Hamas’s attack against Israel in 2023. “If we had a real president, a president [who] was respected by [Russian President Vladimir] Putin, he would never have invaded Ukraine,” Trump charged, adding that “Israel would have never been invaded in a million years by Hamas” had he been president.
Asked by the CNN moderator what leverage he would use to bring Israel and Hamas to a ceasefire, Biden touted his three-phase Gaza ceasefire plan, declaring that no one in the world had been a greater supporter of Israel than the US under his administration.
Biden said “everyone from the United Nations Security Council straight through the G7 to the Israelis and [Prime Minister Benjamin] Netanyahu himself” had endorsed his plan and only Hamas was “still holding out.”
He said Hamas had been “greatly weakened” during the war, and stressed that while it “should be eliminated,” Israel has to be “careful in populated areas.”
Insisting that “we’re still pushing hard to get them [Hamas] to accept” the plan, Biden rebuffed Netanyahu’s accusation that Washington had withheld arms shipments. “The only thing I’ve denied Israel was 2,000-pound bombs – they don’t work in very well-populated areas; they kill a lot of innocent people. We’re providing Israel with all the weapons they need.”
Trump fires back on Biden's Israeli position
Trump rejected Biden’s position, claiming that the president was the one restraining Israeli leaders. “Actually, Israel is the one who wants to keep going,” Trump said, adding: “We should let them go and let them finish the job. He [Biden] doesn’t want to do it because he has become like a Palestinian. But they don’t like him because he is a weak Palestinian.”
Trump deflected a question on whether he would support the establishment of a Palestinian state, only saying, “I will have to see.” On Iran, which has been the focus of his assault on Biden’s foreign policy in recent months, Trump said: “I wouldn’t let anybody do business with them. They ran out of money. They were broke. They had no money for Hamas. They had no money for anything. No money for terror. That’s why you had no terror at all during my administration. This place, the whole world, is blowing up under him.”
For his part, Biden referred to US involvement in Iran’s missile and drone attack on Israel on April 13, saying that he had mobilized 50 countries to defend Israel: “I organized the world against Iran’s attack… Nobody was killed…. We saved Israel.” Biden assailed Trump for not doing much besides talking tough against Iran during his presidency, saying: “Iran attacked our troops, but [Trump] did nothing.”
Trump returned to Israel and Iran in his concluding remarks and said that October 7 wouldn’t have happened with him as president. “We have the Palestinians and everybody else rioting.... The whole country is exploding because of you, because they don’t respect you.”
Debate host broadcaster CNN concluded in its summary: “The next president – be it Biden or Trump – will have a massive job to do. And that’s especially true in Israel and Gaza, where, when the fighting ends, the US and other world powers will be called upon to negotiate some kind of peaceful path forward. But as their performances on Thursday night showed, there are no easy answers and the hard truths will be difficult to come by.”
In the meantime, as the war rages on, we urge President Biden and his administration to exercise the full extent of their power to expedite a deal to return the remaining 120 hostages to Israel, five of whom are American citizens. It can’t wait until November 5.