The White House has not bowed to Israel’s support despite the chaos on campus

The White House has not bowed to Israel’s support despite the chaos on campus

When President Joe Biden visited Virginia to commemorate Earth Day on Monday, he was joined by Senator Bernie Sanders, a key architect of the clean energy proposal that Biden is rolling out. But that’s not the only thing on Vermont’s independent mind.

Sanders, according to people familiar with the conversation, used rare private time with Biden — a longtime Senate colleague who has been his rival in the Democratic presidential primary — to raise concerns about the administration’s handling of the humanitarian situation in Gaza and urge Biden to use the funding just allowed as leverage over Israel.

“The main message is: ‘You’re going to have it in your pocket … you have to hold it and fix this funding,'” Faiz Shakir, a longtime Sanders adviser and executive director of the More Perfect Union, told CNN. The money “can’t come in and keep going out.”

The demands from the progressive wing of the president’s own party come as protests against the humanitarian crisis in Gaza have grown in number and intensity, particularly on college campuses, where protesters have denounced the stance of “Genocide Joe.” But where the domestic politics of the situation are concerned, the president and his administration remain unyielding.

The rapid spread of college campus encampments this week aimed at protesting the war has increased pressure on the US over its support for Israel. Temperatures have been raised on campuses across the country as protests have been met with concerns about antisemitic comments heard by Jewish students at some of the protests and clashes between protesters and police officers sent to break up the encampment.

Columbia University, the center of the campus protests, switched classes to hybrid mode until the end of the semester when the unrest reached a fever pitch. Second man Doug Emhoff spoke by phone with two Jewish leaders on campus, a White House official said, to discuss the urgent need to address antisemitism on college campuses.

Despite being just a few miles from Columbia and the scene of the most tense protests, Biden will not be making a campus visit as he is holding an event in the New York area on Friday. Aides never took the president’s campus visit seriously, admitting the security situation and political calculus presented too steep a challenge.

Speaker Mike Johnson, the top Republican who helped shepherd the foreign aid package through the House of Representatives, used his visit Wednesday in part to demand action from the Biden administration in protecting Jewish students. Johnson, speaking publicly during his visit, said he planned to call Biden following his visit and demand action, including plans to mobilize the potential National Guard.

“We need to bring order to these campuses. We cannot allow this to happen across the country,” Johnson said. “We are better than this.”

Biden, for months, has taken pro-Palestinian demonstrations in stride — including at many of his public events — and advisers say there are no plans to change course. A lifelong politician, Biden understands there will always be some people who disagree with him, and those people have a right to voice their discontent.

But one of the advisers acknowledged explicit threats targeting Jewish students were particularly troubling.

“Oppose the war all you want,” the adviser told CNN. “What you have no right to do is target Jewish students.”

Several of the president’s senior advisers — closely monitoring the growing unrest — made the case that the protesters comprised a very small percentage of the student body and did not represent the majority view.

A recent poll conducted by the Harvard Kennedy School’s Institute of Politics seems to support that view. While only 18% of 18-29-year-old voters approve of Biden’s handling of the situation in the Middle East, he ranks near the bottom on the issues that matter most to them – with the economy coming first. And young voters polled sympathize in equal numbers with Israelis and Palestinians.

But the situation remains challenging for Biden, who this week signed into law an aid package that provides $16 billion in additional military funding for Israel as protests continue. While the White House is unhappy with the way Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has waged the war against Hamas and the amount of humanitarian aid to Gaza so far, it remains unclear whether that will have a material impact on unwavering support for Israel so far. Biden.

In February, Biden issued a national security memo stating that partners receiving military aid from the US must comply with international humanitarian law. The White House must by May 8 certify whether Israel is in compliance. Although the administration intends to meet that deadline, officials have not yet reached a conclusion, CNN has learned.

During a phone call earlier this month, Biden told Netanyahu that the US could be forced to make changes to free-flowing aid if Israel does not make immediate moves to allow more humanitarian aid into Gaza, CNN reported.

If the US concludes that Israel is withholding aid and not complying with human rights laws, the White House could pursue a response that slows military allocations, restricts financial aid, or drastically increases public pressure on Netanyahu by the president. No decision has been made, officials said.

And while Sanders sought assurances from Biden about how he would approach the situation, the president remained diplomatic, Shakir said, the Sanders adviser said.

“The question for many progressives is, is there any accountability?” he asked.