Pro-Palestinian activists and supporters as well as some Democratic members of Congress are pleading with the Biden administration to exert influence on Israel to curtail its military campaign in Gaza, which the Hamas-run Gaza Health Ministry says has killed an estimated 30,000 Palestinians including 13,000 children.
In addition to issuing some mild public rebukes, the sternest action Mr. Biden has taken since the start of this latest Israel-Hamas war was to issue a memorandum restating U.S. law that places humanitarian conditions on arms transfers. The administration also has repeatedly blocked U.N. Security Council resolutions calling for an immediate ceasefire.
In this episode of History As It Happens, we look back at the 1982 Israeli invasion of Lebanon, when an American president, outraged at the loss of civilian life in Beirut, pressured Israel to withdraw without severing the relationship between the two countries. President Reagan also cut off shipments of cluster shells to Tel Aviv. Throughout his presidency, Reagan chastised Israel when he believed its actions damaged U.S interests or the prospects for peace in the Middle East, allowing 21 U.N. resolutions to pass “that directly or indirectly condemned Israeli behavior,” according to Lawrence Korb, who served as an assistant secretary of defense in the first Reagan administration.
Historian Salim Yaqub of the University of California-Santa Barbara discusses why Reagan tried to act as a neutral broker rather than take one side or the other.
“This is a fascinating drama when you look at it closely… The Democratic Party was for a few decades arguably the party that was more supportive of Israel… The Israeli invasion of 1982 was a significant event in the gradual transformation of that picture,” said Mr. Yaqub, an expert of U.S. foreign relations in the Middle East post-1945.
SEE ALSO: History As It Happens: The looming quagmire
To Reagan, the Israeli offensive threatened to set the Middle East aflame as Lebanon had become a battlefield of foreign powers hostile to the Jewish state, namely Syria. Today, critics say Mr. Biden is risking a wider war by not backing an immediate ceasefire in Gaza. They point to recent hostilities between Israel and Iran that took great diplomatic effort to prevent from escalating into open combat.
History As It Happens is available at washingtontimes.com or wherever you find your podcasts.
