Intelligence staff faced pressure on Gaza analysis, former officials say
The Guardian on Monday published an excerpt from journalist Akbar Shahid Ahmed’s “Crossing the Red Line: Biden, His Advisors, and Israel’s War in Gaza,” drawing on nearly 175 interviews to detail how the Biden and Harris administrations handled Gaza policy from October 2023 through the 2024 election. Harris’s team declined to comment for the story and ignored Ahmed’s interview requests for nearly two years, according to the excerpt. The book is published by W. W. Norton & Company.
At the 2024 Democratic National Convention in Chicago, party officials gave speaking slots to an architect of Georgia’s strict abortion ban and other conservatives critical of Donald Trump but denied a speech from Georgia state Rep. Ruwa Romman or other Palestinian Americans. “There’s room for an anti-choice Republican but not for Palestinians,” Romman, the first Muslim woman elected to the Georgia House of Representatives, told Ahmed.
Romman said she worries party leaders could repeat old patterns as public sentiment shifts. “Since the beginning of the genocide, there has been a hesitation to talk to Palestinians directly,” Romman told Ahmed. “It’s been great to see some outreach to progressive leaders who’ve stood with us on this issue, but until there is actual dialogue with Palestinians, these efforts will continue to ring hollow.” The previous convention battle, she said, “represented a disregard to the real devastation our tax dollars were causing” and “launched a nationwide rebuke as we’ve seen this past election cycle.”
The excerpt opens with the claim that “when Democrats previously held power, they chose to fuel Israeli violence and collective punishment against Palestinians for 16 months, while never censuring Israel for thousands of apparent violations of international law and American standards for countries receiving military aid, in Gaza, Lebanon, Syria and the occupied West Bank.” Israel denies wrongdoing.
“In covering the Biden White House and 2024 election, and in reporting out my new book, through nearly 175 interviews, I encountered insular decision-making, dismissal of critics, and, above all, deference to US-Israel ties,” Ahmed writes. “Those patterns helped both the administration and the Harris campaign fail at their stated goals, exacting a tremendous cost in Gaza and, eventually, in the US. Democrats now have a chance to adapt to a new playbook on Israel-Palestine.”
“Such an effort by Harris will have to account for her role in Biden’s bear-hug of Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu and the convention rollout,” the excerpt adds. Party insiders Ahmed spoke with are skeptical of her ability to repair the damage, noting that many of the aides who overpowered her during the campaign still wield institutional power. “Meanwhile,” the excerpt states, “Biden’s team is largely dodging responsibility for Gaza’s ongoing nightmare, blaming the ailing former president, Trump, Netanyahu or Hamas, and denying they could have done much differently.”
When Harris became the party’s presidential candidate in July 2024, Netanyahu was scheduled to visit Washington just three days later. Only 23 percent of Democrats approved of the Israeli military campaign by that point, according to the excerpt. Seven major unions called for ending military aid to Israel, and nearly half the Democrats in Congress said they would skip his address. On July 22, the day Netanyahu embarked for the US, the Israeli military intensified its grip on Gaza, once again shrinking its so-called safe zone for Palestinians, this time by more than 15 percent.
Harris had had little experience shaping Gaza policy; one US official told Ahmed her role amounted to no involvement whatsoever. Those around her saw information about Gaza “impacting her,” with one US official noting she had listened to the recording of five-year-old Hind Rajab’s “excruciating death.” People close to her and some observers believed Harris could be more sincere than Biden in applying international law to America’s Israel policy, the excerpt reports.
“The Israeli leader’s visit was the first chance since October 7 for most in Washington to directly confront the person they were enabling: the unapologetic subject of corruption trials at home and international charges of genocide, crimes against humanity, and enforced starvation, a figure who regularly made a mockery of US government pleas,” the excerpt states.
At his congressional address, Netanyahu received “significant applause” and “a show of his stature in America,” the excerpt states. Sen. Chris Van Hollen, a Maryland Democrat, told Ahmed that in smearing anti-war Americans as “useful idiots” manipulated by Iran, Netanyahu cited a July 9 statement from Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines that said Iran’s government was driving activism over Gaza. Van Hollen said he received a classified briefing afterward that provided “extremely limited examples” of Iranian involvement, contrary to Netanyahu’s depiction.
Behind the scenes, a senior administration official told Ahmed that as analysis and briefings were developed, before flowing up to Haines, they were “often shaped by Brett McGurk and Amos Hochstein, two Biden aides known for trusting Israeli narratives about Gaza.” McGurk and Hochstein did not provide comment. Two former US officials said some intelligence staff felt pressure to frame material to support the administration’s preference of staying close to Israel, with one describing pervasive “self-censorship” among intelligence officials from junior analysts to those involved in assembling the president’s daily brief. Separately, a senior intelligence official and a senior State Department official both told Ahmed that the Office of the Director of National Intelligence indicated to other government bodies that any inquiries about Israeli compliance with international law would have to come from the cabinet level — “thereby adopting a higher standard for colleagues’ access to intelligence assessments than the ODNI had for other situations and partner countries.”
After meeting with both Biden and Harris, Netanyahu’s officials quickly leaked that even a hint of a rebuke upset Netanyahu and “tried to undercut Harris by deploying a line Washington and Tel Aviv used against even mild questioning of the US-Israeli approach, saying ‘daylight’ between the countries aided Hamas and Iran.” Harris said afterward, “We cannot allow ourselves to become numb to the suffering. And I will not be silent.” The next day, Netanyahu and his wife, Sara, “flashed huge smiles as they posed with Trump at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida.”
Ahead of the convention, Harris discussed the war with the mayor of Dearborn, Michigan, and her aides invited Uncommitted leaders Abbas Alawieh and Layla Elabed to greet Harris before an August 8, 2024 rally in Detroit. In brief separate conversations, each asked Harris for a meeting about halting weapons for Israel. Both told Ahmed she agreed, with Elabed describing “genuine sympathy” and Alawieh saying Uncommitted felt it had “secured something after months of being totally ignored by Joe Biden.” After the group announced Harris’s “openness” to a meeting about an arms embargo, “the campaign panicked.” A Harris aide told Ahmed the team was “super fucking pissed” and felt they had “no choice but to slap them down.” National security advisor Philip Gordon announced she did not support an embargo, emphasizing her support for Israel’s defense. Gordon later suggested Biden had defied US law to sustain weapons shipments to Israel, the excerpt reports.
The mood around the young campaign was hardly conducive to introspection, Ahmed reports. “Before Biden dropped out, we were so done with him. We didn’t care if we were going against him or not,” a Democratic congressional aide told Ahmed. Once Harris took over, the thinking shifted to “let’s win this and then we’ll figure it out.” Israel-Palestine — an issue seen as hurting Biden’s image and easy to write off as intractable — “especially aggravated party loyalists, even when raised by those who agreed that Trump should not regain the White House,” the excerpt states. Lawmakers who had been calling for limiting American support to Netanyahu grew quieter.
The campaign itself remained “98% Biden-land,” in the words of one Harris staffer, “dominated by figures like chair Jen O’Malley Dillon.” Campaign leaders resisted recommendations for Harris to deviate from Biden on Gaza among other matters, citing the short span of her campaign and past vice-presidents’ White House bids. Influential Democratic consultants also argued that Harris, as a woman of color, “might not be seen as strong.”
Democrats had drafted their 2024 platform in July, before Biden quit the race. Although “a possible arms embargo on Israel was the chief sticking point,” the platform committee did not consider the question. On August 19, the party adopted a platform “echoing Biden’s talk of a ceasefire and a two-state solution without specifying how the United States could make Israel serious about those goals.”
At the convention, the party organized “the first-ever official Democratic national convention event on Palestinian rights.” Uncommitted had for weeks been requesting Gaza-focused remarks from the convention stage and had narrowed its request to two speeches, one from Dr. Tanya Haj-Hassan, a volunteer doctor, and one from a Palestinian American. After the panel, two operatives praised the event but offered no news about a speaker; Elabed was told they were still waiting. Waleed Shahid recalled that credentials were handed out “as if they were $1m checks.”
On Monday night, the first major reference to Gaza from the convention stage came from Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who credited Harris with “working tirelessly to achieve a ceasefire” without acknowledging continued US weapons shipments to Israel, sparking backlash. Uncommitted had been winning over convention attendees, who called themselves “ceasefire delegates” and sported keffiyehs, buttons, and T-shirts, subtly raising Gaza throughout the gathering.
On Tuesday, “Hope is making a comeback!” Michelle Obama proclaimed from the stage, drawing visible emotion from the crowd. Former Virginia governor Terry McAuliffe asked Ahmed “whether, given October 7 and Netanyahu’s personality, Biden could really have done better” without a “high-profile call for a change on Gaza.”
That evening, the convention stage featured Jon Polin and Rachel Goldberg, whose son Hersh was captured as he celebrated his 23rd birthday. “Support for his family helped them breathe,” Polin said, “in a world without air.” Hadar Susskind, who ran Americans for Peace Now, told Ahmed he had sought a Palestinian American address too, because the convention denying a platform to someone “from the anguished community on the other side of the war” would be “immensely stupid politics but also just wrong.”
The choice conveyed to Uncommitted on Wednesday night was no speech. On that morning, Jeremiah Ellison, a Minneapolis council member and son of influential Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison, emphasized at a Uncommitted press conference that anti-war organizers supported a speech by relatives of a Hamas hostage and saw remarks from a Palestinian American as providing “equal footing.” The group had narrowed its demand to just one speech. Surrounded by allies, the group’s leaders began a sit-in outside the convention center. Throughout the night, multiple lawmakers endorsed the protest, but no speaking slot was offered. Uncommitted members later received several explanations: that the push might overshadow Harris’s moment; that the Palestinian Americans mentioned had accused Israel of genocide, which could upset Jewish Democrats; and that speakers did not pass vetting. The vetting narrative especially stung Romman, the excerpt notes, because the convention had featured an anti-abortion Republican from her state among several conservative Trump critics.
Two senior Democrats told Shahid and Alawieh more candid explanations, the excerpt reports. “On issues as delicate as Israel, decisions were made at a different level — among ‘the people who paid for that stage,’ namely donors,” one said. Another cited Harris’s sensitivity toward Biden, particularly as Biden struggled to handle Netanyahu, and pointed to “the network of uncompromisingly pro-Israel Democrats who could exacerbate ‘disunity in the ranks,’” like Sen. John Fetterman.
A campaign staffer told Ahmed that defenders of the decision said the Palestinian American speaker might not fully reflect the DNC’s position or, if the speaker did, be “attacked as an Uncle Tom.” Jeremy Ben-Ami, president of J Street, called the choice “a missed opportunity” but said the speech should have been planned weeks in advance — “the route Uncommitted attempted.”
“Fundamentally,” Ahmed writes, “most arguments revolved around what Shahid called the defining factor in the decision: ‘fear of a Palestinian voice.’” What’s certain, he adds, “is the group at the heart of the Democratic national convention comprised an opaque team of insiders, facing a challenging campaign but also fundamentally guarded; it was a parallel of the circle running Gaza policy at the Biden White House, and the similarities extended to defensiveness and ultimately sending a message that some lives mattered less.”
On the convention’s final day, Alawieh told reporters he was “so proud” and the failure was not that of the anti-war movement but of the party: “I feel bad for them because they are out of step.” Shoulder to shoulder, Uncommitted delegates walked in to take their places among the party faithful.
Harris’s nomination acceptance speech offered “nothing new on Israel-Palestine but a promise to ensure the United States had ‘the strongest, most lethal fighting force in the world.’” Beth Miller, political director of Jewish Voice for Peace Action, called the moment “the final proof the party was uninterested in anti-war votes.” “I can’t imagine a message less appealing to people who are trying to push toward a human rights–focused foreign policy,” Miller told Ahmed. “It got almost the entire Democratic party — except for Arab Americans,” the aide told Ahmed of the address months later. The end of the convention left Uncommitted members fearful and humiliated. After Harris’s speech, thrilled Democrats filed out laughing and cheering; several told Ahmed they were fired up to help her win.
The morning after Harris’s speech, Secretary of State Antony Blinken appointed Mira Resnick — one of the administration’s “most steadfast supporters of US weapons for Israel,” according to the excerpt — as the State Department’s new top official for Israeli-Palestinian affairs. “I spotted a convergence between Washington and Chicago,” Ahmed writes: “as Gaza bled, Democrats’ rigidity about their policy remained strong enough to keep defining both the Biden administration and the Harris campaign.”
Ahead of and during the convention, party officials resistant to concessions to Uncommitted suggested its demands were never clear and that the outreach they made to antiwar groups should be sufficient. “The spin could not obscure daily footage of US-backed killing in Gaza or the evidence that after choosing a new candidate through tough introspection, Democrats were rejecting a similar process regarding the US-Israel relationship, even as they knew it was skewed and harmful morally, strategically, and politically,” Ahmed writes. Privately, administration officials distanced themselves from Gaza decision-making by saying it was a matter of Biden’s “old-fashioned thinking and instincts.” “The president’s grip had slipped, however,” the excerpt states, “and those around him were still choosing a policy failing Palestinians. In the months ahead, leading up to the election, that choice would only encourage Netanyahu down a maximalist path and further strengthen Trump’s election chances.”
The convention’s Gaza posture reverberated in 2026 Democratic primaries, where voters “rejected many of the party establishment’s choices, including a 15-term congresswoman in Colorado and the chair of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus,” according to the excerpt. The winners “emphasized empathy and accountability for Palestinian losses in Gaza.” Abdul El-Sayed, who won Michigan’s Senate primary, “made opposition to the ardently pro-Israel group AIPAC central to his candidacy.” A May poll cited in the excerpt found 60 percent of potential Democratic voters sympathizing more with Palestinians than Israelis and 48 percent saying the party has been too supportive of Israel.