Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-MD) buried the most important part of his recent op-ed on U.S. support for Israel near the end of his argument:
Democrats must stand firm against these headwinds. Primary voters won’t trust any Democratic presidential candidate who does not have a record of moral and strategic clarity on these issues, especially if, as a legislator, he or she voted to send Mr. Netanyahu bombs even as his government imposed a total blockade on Gaza. Nor will they support a candidate who plans to re-enlist the senior Democratic decision makers who whitewashed the truth during the Biden administration and refuse to acknowledge their complicity [bold mine-DL].
Senior Biden administration officials faced a critical test with the war in Gaza in 2023 and 2024, and they completely failed it. They had an obligation to withhold support and weapons from a government deliberately starving millions of people, and they found every excuse they could think of to ignore that obligation. They had a duty to prevent and punish genocide, and they shirked that duty. They were required by law to stop arming a military that was committing myriad war crimes, and they chose to break the law to keep the weapons flowing. A party that continues to look to the likes of Tony Blinken and Jake Sullivan for foreign policy guidance has already proven that it cannot be trusted with power.