The US sends wrong signals on Israel and democracy

President Biden recently declared that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is not doing enough to reach a deal with Hamas to free the hostages the terrorist organization has been holding since last Oct. 7. This pronouncement was both ill-targeted and ill-timed, proving once again that Washington often doesn’t know when and when not to meddle in the affairs of other nations.

Biden’s rebuke, which he directed against the leader of America’s closest regional ally, came a day after Israel Defense Forces found the bodies of four male and two female hostages in Hamas’ tunnels under Gaza. Hamas executed the six with “multiple close-range gunshots,” in all likelihood when it discovered that the Israeli military was about to rescue them after nearly 11 months.

His rebuke also came 15 years after President Obama took a decidedly different approach toward America’s fiercest regional adversary, at a time when millions of demonstrators across Iran were protesting the results of a blatantly fraudulent election that returned hard-line President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to power.

In the early days of a government crackdown that left dozens killed, hundreds arrested and thousands beaten, Obama refused to put Washington on the side of democracy-seeking protestors, saying, “[I]t’s not productive, given the history of U.S.-Iranian relations, to be seen as meddling — the U.S. president meddling in Iranian elections.”

Biden and Obama are both Democrats, but this is no partisan affliction. Presidents of both parties have often chastised our democratic allies while refusing to support democratic stirrings in authoritarian lands.

In August of 1991, the Soviet Union seemed on the verge of collapse and its various republics were eying independence, including Ukraine, whose people had suffered for centuries under Russian, Soviet and other outside oppression.

President George H. W. Bush favored ongoing U.S.-Soviet ties and continued global stability over the democratic aspirations of the Ukrainian people when he told Ukraine’s parliament, “Americans will not support those who seek… to replace a far-off tyranny with a local despotism. They will not aid those who promote a suicidal nationalism based upon ethnic hatred.”

What does all this show? That Washington continues to get things backwards. Broadly speaking, the United States advocates the ideals of freedom and democracy. All too often, however, we take our democratic allies to task even though their people have the means to choose, and change, their own government. At the same time, we often fail to put America on the side of those seeking freedom and democracy in authoritarian nations, for fear of complicating relations with their governments.

All that weakens the U.S. abroad. Allies wonder whether we’re a reliable partner; adversaries question whether we’ve got the fortitude to protect our interests; and pro-democracy activists who seek our backing (and perhaps our clandestine help) later remember whether we provided it.

We weaken ourselves in another way as well. All else being equal, a freer, more democratic world is a safer, more prosperous one. Democracies rarely if ever go to war with one another, and they trade and invest more with one another. The more we can strengthen our democratic allies and inspire would-be democrats, the more that Americans will reap the benefits in more security and prosperity.

As we continue sending the wrong signals to allies and adversaries, our timing couldn’t be worse. China, Russia, Iran and other like-minded nations are promoting an authoritarian model of governance around the world as an alternative to U.S.-led democracy. Their efforts — and the growing inability of our own democracy to perform even basic functions — are having a discernable effect.

In February, Freedom House reported that global freedom fell for the 18th straight year in 2023, marking the longest such trend since the nonprofit began tracking political rights and civil liberties around the world in 1972.

As for Israel, the retrieval of the bodies of six slain hostages has ignited public protests as hostage families and others demand that Netanyahu ink a hostage deal with Hamas. The prime minister faces mounting criticism from defense officials and a wide range of Israeli opinion leaders that he hasn’t done enough to make it happen.

Maybe so. But as the angry protests and robust debate in Israel make clear, that’s an issue that Israelis themselves have the power to decide.

The people of Gaza have no such power. Hamas rules the territory with an iron fist, brooking no dissent.

Rather than chastise the leader of a vibrant democracy that’s fighting wars on multiple fronts, America’s leaders should aim their ire at the genocidal autocrats who slaughtered 1,200 Israelis, continue to hold about 100 hostages, threaten to kill them rather than allow their rescue, and – by the way — continue to oppose any deal that would not let them regroup to launch more attacks on the Jewish state.

Lawrence J. Haas is a senior fellow at the American Foreign Policy Council and the author of, most recently, “The Kennedys in the World: How Jack, Bobby, and Ted Remade America’s Empire.”