By Dan Steinbock
After the Gaza genocide, bipartisan consensus over US-Israel ties is crumbling. As legal debate is expanding, the political foundation of unconditional U.S. military support for Israel has entered its most serious crisis in decades.
For decades, U.S. support for Israel rested on one of Washington’s strongest bipartisan assumptions: that military assistance was strategically necessary and politically untouchable. But Gaza has weakened that consensus.
Critics now see Israeli military aid as a misguided strategy and political target. The most visible shift has occurred inside the Democratic Party.
A collapsing bipartisan consensus on Israel
Driven by voter and demographic shifts, humanitarian concerns in Gaza, and the unwarranted conflict with Iran, more than 100 House Democrats recently supported an amendment seeking to block billions of dollars in Israel-related assistance, an extraordinary departure from previous voting patterns.
House Democratic leadership (including Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries) has officially called for a “major reset” in U.S.-Israel relations.
Senate efforts to restrict weapons transfers have also attracted substantial Democratic support, reflecting growing concern about civilian casualties, international law, and U.S. responsibility.
Accountability after mass atrocities has increasingly examined not only battlefield actors but also the widening web of political leaders.
The Republican coalition is also less unified than before. While most Republican lawmakers remain strongly supportive of Israel, MAGA-aligned figures influenced by anti-interventionism, “America First” priorities, and skepticism toward foreign aid have increasingly questioned open-ended commitments.
Growing opposition within the MAGA movement to U.S. arms transfers centers on a deep ideological rift over foreign interventionism. Former Georgia Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene left office in January 2026 after a bitter falling out with President Trump.
While much of the base supports President Trump’s foreign policy, a growing, vocal faction—backed by prominent voices like Tucker Carlson, Candace Owens, and Representative Thomas Massie—challenges continued, unconditional weapons shipments.
The result is a new political landscape: traditional pro-Israel Democrats, evangelical conservatives, progressive Democrats, libertarian Republicans, and anti-interventionist conservatives now approach the issue from fundamentally different premises.
The debate is therefore no longer simply “pro-Israel versus anti-Israel.” It concerns whether U.S. strategic interests, domestic law, international obligations, and humanitarian concerns can continue to be reconciled under existing policy.
From political controversy to legal challenges
At the same time, legal initiatives accusing U.S. officials of complicity or failure to prevent alleged Israeli violations have moved the debate from politics into courts, international institutions, and questions of historical accountability.
The legal debate has developed along several tracks. The most significant U.S. case was Defense for Children International–Palestine v. Biden, brought by Palestinian organizations, Gaza residents, and Palestinian-Americans against President Biden, Secretary of State Antony Blinken, and Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, for their alleged “failure to prevent and complicity in the unfolding genocide against Gaza.”
Along with the human rights organizations, the lawsuit was promoted by Josh Paul who had resigned from the U.S. State Department over arms shipments to Israel; Jewish Voice for Peace; and genocide and Holocaust scholars spearheaded by international lawyer William Schabas.
The plaintiffs proposed that a genocide, or serious risk of genocide, of Palestinians in Gaza was occurring. They also argued the U.S. is violating its duties under international law to prevent and not be complicit in the genocide. Those U.S. failures were seen to contribute to the erosion of “long and widely held norms of international law,” including the Genocide Convention and Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
The Palestine et al. v. Biden et al. case was dismissed by the U.S. Court with a ruling that “while it is plausible that Israel’s conduct amounts to genocide,” U.S. foreign policy was a political question over which courts lacked jurisdiction. In a written decision, U.S. District Judge Jeffrey White quoted approvingly from a prior preliminary ruling (by the ICJ in the case brought against Israel by South Africa). It found Israel’s conduct in Gaza may amount to genocide and ordered it to stop killing and wounding Palestinians.
Other initiatives include advocacy and legal campaigns by groups such as Democracy for the Arab World Now (DAWN), which warned U.S. officials that continued assistance after awareness of alleged violations could raise questions of aiding and abetting.
DAWN wanted the ICC to investigate Biden, Blinken, and Austin for violating Articles 25(3)(c) and (d) of the Rome Statute. These crimes featured those identified in the ICC arrest warrants against Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his former Defense Minister Yoav Gallant. Intriguingly, the DAWN submission widened the net of “accessorial liability” to include several other U.S. officials as well.
More recently, DAWN and allied organizations have also challenged Trump administration’s measures targeting ICC-related advocacy.
Genocide scholar William Schabas and other international-law experts have supported arguments that third-party states may face responsibility if they knowingly facilitate atrocities. In the mainstream corporate media, these remain contested (though increasingly popular) legal interpretations. Yet, the latter have expanded the debate beyond Israel itself to states providing weapons, diplomatic protection, or political cover.
Biden cabinet’s accessorial liability
Critics of the Biden administration argue that responsibility cannot be limited to the president alone. They point to a broader decision-making network involving arms transfers, diplomatic protection, intelligence coordination, and political messaging.
During her failed presidential campaign, Vice President Kamala Harris touted her readiness for executive responsibility by supporting continued military aid to Israel. Although she acknowledged that Gaza was a “humanitarian catastrophe,” she said that she would not shift policy from Biden. Nor would she end arms sales to Israel.
The role of Secretary of State Antony Blinken was most critical because he served as Biden’s right-hand in the Middle East and led the administration’s (largely futile) diplomacy in the region. The State Department oversees diplomatic relations, arms approvals, and implementation of human-rights-related foreign assistance standards.
U.S. military support relied on his subordinates who failed to raise the alarm on the use of arms transfers to Israel in disregard of U.S. foreign policy, domestic legal standards, and international obligations, including Bonnie Jenkins, the Under Secretary of Arms Control and International Security, and Stanley L. Brown, acting as Assistant Secretary Political-Military Affairs, which coordinates between the State and Defense Departments on arms transfers and oversees the Directorate of Defense Trade Controls.
Along with Blinken, Pentagon had the vital role. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin and senior officials were involved because the Department manages military assistance and security cooperation. Israel’s military support relied on senior officials like Amanda Dory, Under Secretary of Defense for Policy, who provided strategic direction for international arms sales, and Mike Miller, as Director of the Defense Security Cooperation Agency.
Other officials identified by critics include National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan who advised the President on the strategic implications of arms transfers and ensured the coordination between defense, diplomatic, and intelligence agencies. In turn UN Ambassador Linda Thomas-Greenfield had a high-profile role in the UN Security Council. She vetoed seven resolutions calling for immediate ceasefire, humanitarian assistance and limits to Israeli attacks against civilians. She was the public face of a cabinet that was more willing to finance arms for genocide than to end the atrocities.
As Secretary of Treasury, Janet Yellen may look like a gentle grandmother, but she also pledged the U.S. could afford to offer huge amounts of military aid to Ukraine and Israel at the same time, enabling the ceaseless flow of arms in both wars. She warned Iran that nothing was “off the table” for sanctions if Tehran were to be linked to the Hamas-led attack on Israel.
Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo oversaw dual-use technology exports. CIA Director William J. Burner and the Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines were intimately linked with the Biden cabinet’s actions regarding Gaza.
So, in addition to the big three and the supportive six members of the Biden cabinet, the widening net of accessorial liability includes at least half a dozen other heads of executive departments and some ten cabinet-level officials.
The legal question is not whether every official who supported policy decisions shares identical responsibility. The narrower issue is whether individuals who knowingly continued, facilitated, or defended policies that allegedly contributed to unlawful acts and mass atrocities could or should face political, reputational, or legal consequences.
Historically, accountability after mass atrocities has increasingly examined not only battlefield actors but also the widening web of political leaders, administrators, financiers, and institutions that enable military campaigns.
Are mass atrocities crimes without punishment
In Dostoyevsky’s Crime and Punishment, Raskolnikov thought he was above ordinary morality. Since some are destined to rise beyond good and evil for a higher purpose, he commits a murder but discovers that he will gain no salvation without atonement. Raskolnikov’s unraveling reveals a deeper truth. No mind, no matter how brilliant, can erase its own humanity.
But perhaps things have changed since Dostoyevsky.
After leaving office, many senior Biden officials moved into academia, consulting, publishing, advisory boards, and policy institutions. Today they pontificate on their great achievements in the Biden cabinet.
After leaving office on January 20, 2025, former President Joe Biden has been writing his White House memoir. Thanks to a deal with Creative Artists Agency (CAA), a Hollywood giant, he hopes to cash on future opportunities. He has made only selective public appearances, due to ongoing treatment for prostate cancer.
Having served as Biden’s echo chamber on Gaza, Vice-President Kamala Harris moved to Los Angeles with her family. Like Biden, she, too, signed with CAA to focus on speaking and publishing.
Former State Secretary Blinken entered the policy and academic circuit. He has a book deal with Crown Publishing. The memoir promises to provide a “candid” and “rare glimpse” of the Russian invasion of Ukraine and the war in Gaza. Blinken is likely hoping a new post in a post-Trump Democratic administration or a return to lucrative private sector consulting.
Former Defense Secretary Austin has also returned to defense-policy and advisory circles. Prior to the Biden White House, he earned seven figures from defense companies, while working alongside Blinken at Pine Island Capital Partners, a private equity firm investing in defense companies. In summer 2025, he rejoined the Carnegie Corp., while launching a consulting firm, Clarion Strategies, with former NATO officials. As CEO and co-founder, he now stood to benefit from the global defense industry.
Jake Sullivan, the former National Security Advisor joined Harvard Kennedy School as the inaugural Kissinger Professor of the Practice of Statecraft and World Order. After the Gaza genocide, he teaches international affairs and global strategy.
Linda Thomas-Greenfield, the public face of the Biden cabinet in the UN, works as a senior advisor at the global advisory and advocacy firm APCO Worldwide. Over the years, APCO’s multiple controversies include corporate campaigns for the tobacco industry, lobbying for foreign governments with poor human rights records, ties to Israeli defense contractors, and investigations into spying on journalists.
Gina Raimondo, former Secretary of Commerce, joined the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) as a distinguished fellow, co-chairing a task force on economic security.
After her role in arms transfers to Israel and the Gaza genocide, Bonnie Jenkins serves as a visiting professor of international affairs at George Washington University. Specializing in security assistance, weapons destruction, and international security operations, Stanley Brown continues to do what he did during the Gaza genocide.
Janet Yellen, William Burns, and other former officials transitioned into advisory, institutional, or private-sector roles.
Supporters argue these transitions reflect normal democratic circulation between government, academia, and policy institutions. Critics say they demonstrate a structural problem. Officials involved in controversial foreign-policy decisions often face limited consequences and can continue operating within elite networks. Revolving doors between the White House and the private sector compound the problem.
The broader issue is institutional rather than personal. If officials who design or defend disputed policies face no meaningful review, future administrations are likely to conclude that reputational costs are manageable and legal risks minimal.
The Trump escalation: Gaza, Iran, the ICC, and complicity allegations
The second Trump administration has transformed the Gaza debate from a question of U.S. military support into a broader confrontation over the limits of executive power, international law, and American responsibility for allied conduct.
Critics argue that President Donald Trump, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, and Mike Waltz, ex-Security Adviser and current US Ambassador to the UN, and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent have moved beyond Biden-era policies by rejecting many external constraints on U.S. and Israeli actions.
On Gaza, the Trump administration has supported positions that critics describe as facilitating potential war crimes, crimes against humanity, or forced displacement.
The most controversial proposal was Trump’s suggestion that the U.S. could take control of Gaza and relocate its Palestinian population — a plan critics argued raised serious questions under international humanitarian law, while supporters presented it as a reconstruction and security initiative.
As the Trump administration pursued policies hostile to international accountability mechanisms, the confrontation with the International Criminal Court (ICC) became a defining issue. Trump issued Executive Order 14203 imposing sanctions and other restrictions on ICC officials involved in investigations affecting U.S. personnel or Israeli officials, arguing that the Court had acted illegitimately against American sovereignty and its allies.
Critics argue that attacking the ICC while shielding Israeli officials facing allegations of war crimes and crimes against humanity severely risks weakening global accountability mechanisms.
In Iran and the wider Middle East, the administration adopted a “maximum-pressure” strategy, restoring sanctions and intensifying efforts to constrain Iran’s nuclear program, regional networks, and military capabilities. Critics warn that escalation policies — including support for Israeli military actions against Iran and threats of overwhelming retaliation — risk expanding regional warfare, generating new civilian harm and participating in war crimes and mass atrocities.
The central legal argument against the administration is not that every official personally committed crimes, but that senior policymakers may incur political or legal exposure if they knowingly authorize, facilitate, or shield actions that violate international humanitarian law.
The historical question is whether these policies will be remembered as necessary exercises of state power — or as a precedent where a great power increasingly exempts itself and its partners from the rules they claim to defend.
Collapse of credibility
The central question is whether controversial wartime policies become temporary exceptions or permanent precedents. If extensive civilian harm, unrestricted weapons transfers, collective punishment allegations, or attacks on the accountability of institutions become politically acceptable, the consequences will extend beyond Gaza.
The central question is whether controversial wartime policies become temporary exceptions or permanent precedents.
The United States has historically promoted international legal norms with strategic exceptions. The Gaza debate exposes that contradiction more sharply than many previous conflicts because Washington is simultaneously a military supplier, presumed diplomatic protector, and global advocate of a “rules-based order.”
The ultimate issue is therefore the collapse of the U.S. institutional credibility, due to the fatal gap between Washington’s stated values and observable events.
There is no return to status quo ante Gaza.
The original version was published by the Informed Comment (US) on July 21, 2026.
About the Author
Dr Dan Steinbock, an expert of the multipolar world, is the founder of Difference Group and has served at the India, China and America Institute (US), Shanghai Institute for International Studies (China) and the EU Center (Singapore). He is also the author of two new books on the Middle East crises: The Obliteration Doctrine (Sept. 2025) and The Fall of Israel (Oct. 2024). For more, see https://www.differencegroup.net/
Dr. Jack Rasmus
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