In March 2024, five months into Israel’s war on Gaza, President Joe Biden warned that an Israeli assault on the city of Rafah would cross a “red line” that would make him reconsider America’s unconditional support. At the time around 1.4 million Palestinians were huddled in Rafah, the sole crossing point for aid entering Gaza. “You cannot have 30,000 more Palestinians dead,” Biden said. But Israel went ahead with the attack, US weapons transfers continued after a sole shipment was paused, and another 30,000 Palestinians were killed in Gaza.

Near the beginning of Crossing the Red Line , his revealing book on the Biden administration’s policy in Gaza, the journalist Akbar Shahid Ahmed quotes an unnamed White House official arguing that the president’s warning had in fact worked. The scale of killing in Rafah, the aide insisted, “slowed and it was not just because there was nobody left to kill.” But anyone with an Internet connection can see that Rafah was reduced to rubble.…