Crossing the Red Line
Biden, His Advisors, and Israel's War in Gaza
Biden, His Advisors, and Israel's War in Gaza
MUST READ
Akbar Shahid Ahmed (Author)
Hardcover
$29.81$31.99
Pre-Order(9/22/26)
Ebook
$30.39
This title will be released on
Sep 22, 2026
Description
Following Hamas's horrific October 7 attack, Israel launched an offensive of staggering violence in Gaza, saying it targeted militants while regularly striking hospitals, schools, and homes. Critically acclaimed journalist Akbar Shahid Ahmed offers extensive reporting and chilling new details about how the Biden administration enabled Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu--ignoring warnings from government experts and implicating Americans in thousands of apparent war crimes. Washington did little to free Israeli hostages or shield innocent Palestinians as protests grew nationwide and international human rights principles crumbled. Still, President Joe Biden denied he was giving Netanyahu a blank check. He set a "red line" over the town of Rafah, where more than 1 million Palestinians were sheltering, saying an assault there would risk Israel's pipeline of American bombs. Yet after Netanyahu's advance began, deepening Gaza's humanitarian catastrophe, Biden's team kept weapons flowing.
In vivid prose and with unparalleled access to insiders, Ahmed depicts a White House that resisted a course correction as its failures became undeniable. He probes Biden's inner circle: a paranoid and imperious group shaped by the War on Terror, whose choices fueled tens of thousands of avoidable deaths among Palestinians, Lebanese, and Israelis, torpedoed long-time standards for warfare, and created a more dangerous world for us all. The Biden administration's decisions drove voter backlash that helped Donald Trump regain power, and established patterns of impunity that have spurred wider bloodshed under Trump.
Crossing the Red Line is an urgent reckoning with Biden's record on Gaza that is vital to understanding historic damage to America's standing in the world, and a period whose dark consequences will resonate globally for decades to come.
Product Details
Publisher W. W. Norton & Company
Publish Date September 22, 2026
Pages 368
Language English
Type Hardcover
EAN/UPC 9781324118190
Dimensions 9.2 X 6.3 X 1.3 inches | 1.2 pounds
This Title Is On These ShelvesPolitics
About the Author
Akbar Shahid Ahmed is the diplomatic correspondent at The Washington Sun. For his Gaza coverage, he has received a Writers Guild Award and a New York Press Club Award and has twice been named a finalist for the Livingston Award. Based in Washington, D.C., Ahmed previously covered foreign policy at HuffPost for twelve years. He is a Yale graduate who grew up in Karachi, Pakistan.
Reviews
Robustly reported....[A] detailed, damning assessment of President Biden's response to the war in Gaza.-- "Kirkus Reviews"
Depicts the administration's approach as both inhumane--with some officials overtly dismissive of Palestinian death tolls--and shockingly inept...[A] highly incriminating report.-- "Publishers Weekly (starred review)"
“With exceptional sourcing and clarity, journalist Akbar Shahid Ahmed reveals Israel's U.S.-enabled genocide in Gaza as the greatest moral failing of the Biden administration....that stained what could have been a transformative presidency.--Joy Reid, NAACP Image Award winner and New York Times best-selling author of Medgar and Myrlie”
“The captivating and often disturbing inside story of how the Biden administration, despite having the knowledge and wherewithal to restrain Israeli conduct throughout the war, consistently chose to ignore its own 'red lines, ' with devastating consequences for Palestinians and the entire region....One of the most important political books of our time as well as an indispensable resource.--Khaled Elgindy, senior fellow, Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, and author of Blind Spot”
“This clearheaded and well-documented account constitutes a devastating condemnation of the fecklessness and incompetence of the Biden administration's response to the Hamas massacre of October 7, and its wholesale complicity in the genocidal assault by Israel on Gaza....A must-read for anyone who still cares about the use of American power for good rather than evil and a clarion call to liberate U.S. policymakers from the hold of Israeli extremists and their American lobbyists.--Omer Bartov, Dean's Professor of Holocaust and Genocide Studies, Brown University, and author of Israel: What Went Wrong?”
“A meticulously reported record of the key moments, behind-the-scenes decisions, and political rationalizations of a Biden administration that could not find a way to say no to the unthinkable. This is essential reading.--Ben Rhodes, deputy U.S. national security advisor under President Barack Obama and New York Times best-selling author of After the Fall”
“The Democratic Party is often said to be the lesser of two evils. Akbar Shahid Ahmed, the best journalist covering the Biden-Harris administration's foreign policy, devastatingly chronicles just how evil its support for the Israeli genocide of Gaza was.--Spencer Ackerman, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and author of Reign of Terror”
Akbar Shahid Ahmed (Author)
Hardcover
$29.81$31.99
Pre-Order(9/22/26)
Ebook
$30.39
This title will be released on
Sep 22, 2026
Description
Following Hamas's horrific October 7 attack, Israel launched an offensive of staggering violence in Gaza, saying it targeted militants while regularly striking hospitals, schools, and homes. Critically acclaimed journalist Akbar Shahid Ahmed offers extensive reporting and chilling new details about how the Biden administration enabled Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu--ignoring warnings from government experts and implicating Americans in thousands of apparent war crimes. Washington did little to free Israeli hostages or shield innocent Palestinians as protests grew nationwide and international human rights principles crumbled. Still, President Joe Biden denied he was giving Netanyahu a blank check. He set a "red line" over the town of Rafah, where more than 1 million Palestinians were sheltering, saying an assault there would risk Israel's pipeline of American bombs. Yet after Netanyahu's advance began, deepening Gaza's humanitarian catastrophe, Biden's team kept weapons flowing.
In vivid prose and with unparalleled access to insiders, Ahmed depicts a White House that resisted a course correction as its failures became undeniable. He probes Biden's inner circle: a paranoid and imperious group shaped by the War on Terror, whose choices fueled tens of thousands of avoidable deaths among Palestinians, Lebanese, and Israelis, torpedoed long-time standards for warfare, and created a more dangerous world for us all. The Biden administration's decisions drove voter backlash that helped Donald Trump regain power, and established patterns of impunity that have spurred wider bloodshed under Trump.
Crossing the Red Line is an urgent reckoning with Biden's record on Gaza that is vital to understanding historic damage to America's standing in the world, and a period whose dark consequences will resonate globally for decades to come.
Product Details
Publisher W. W. Norton & Company
Publish Date September 22, 2026
Pages 368
Language English
Type Hardcover
EAN/UPC 9781324118190
Dimensions 9.2 X 6.3 X 1.3 inches | 1.2 pounds
This Title Is On These ShelvesPolitics
About the Author
Akbar Shahid Ahmed is the diplomatic correspondent at The Washington Sun. For his Gaza coverage, he has received a Writers Guild Award and a New York Press Club Award and has twice been named a finalist for the Livingston Award. Based in Washington, D.C., Ahmed previously covered foreign policy at HuffPost for twelve years. He is a Yale graduate who grew up in Karachi, Pakistan.
Reviews
Robustly reported....[A] detailed, damning assessment of President Biden's response to the war in Gaza.-- "Kirkus Reviews"
Depicts the administration's approach as both inhumane--with some officials overtly dismissive of Palestinian death tolls--and shockingly inept...[A] highly incriminating report.-- "Publishers Weekly (starred review)"
“With exceptional sourcing and clarity, journalist Akbar Shahid Ahmed reveals Israel's U.S.-enabled genocide in Gaza as the greatest moral failing of the Biden administration....that stained what could have been a transformative presidency.--Joy Reid, NAACP Image Award winner and New York Times best-selling author of Medgar and Myrlie”
“The captivating and often disturbing inside story of how the Biden administration, despite having the knowledge and wherewithal to restrain Israeli conduct throughout the war, consistently chose to ignore its own 'red lines, ' with devastating consequences for Palestinians and the entire region....One of the most important political books of our time as well as an indispensable resource.--Khaled Elgindy, senior fellow, Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, and author of Blind Spot”
“This clearheaded and well-documented account constitutes a devastating condemnation of the fecklessness and incompetence of the Biden administration's response to the Hamas massacre of October 7, and its wholesale complicity in the genocidal assault by Israel on Gaza....A must-read for anyone who still cares about the use of American power for good rather than evil and a clarion call to liberate U.S. policymakers from the hold of Israeli extremists and their American lobbyists.--Omer Bartov, Dean's Professor of Holocaust and Genocide Studies, Brown University, and author of Israel: What Went Wrong?”
“A meticulously reported record of the key moments, behind-the-scenes decisions, and political rationalizations of a Biden administration that could not find a way to say no to the unthinkable. This is essential reading.--Ben Rhodes, deputy U.S. national security advisor under President Barack Obama and New York Times best-selling author of After the Fall”
“The Democratic Party is often said to be the lesser of two evils. Akbar Shahid Ahmed, the best journalist covering the Biden-Harris administration's foreign policy, devastatingly chronicles just how evil its support for the Israeli genocide of Gaza was.--Spencer Ackerman, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and author of Reign of Terror”
Crossing the Red Line: Biden, His Advisors, and Israel’s War in Gaza
Akbar Shahid Ahmed. Norton, $31.99 (368p) ISBN 978-1-324-11819-0
HuffPost correspondent Ahmed debuts with a withering account of the Biden administration’s response to the war in Gaza. The October 7 attacks caught the White House flatfooted, as the administration had deprioritized the Israel-Palestine conflict, Ahmed writes. He recaps the administration’s early inability to constrain Israel’s outsize retaliation, Israel’s continual violation of Biden’s supposed “red lines,” and Vice President Kamala Harris’s 2024 election loss, in part brought about by the administration’s disregard for growing antiwar sentiment. With input from copious anonymous insider sources, Ahmed portrays Biden as “deeply averse to wielding American leverage” against Israel and surrounded by a tight inner circle of pro-Israel hardliners, which left other staff “censoring themselves” and “doubting their instincts.” The author depicts the administration’s approach as both inhumane—with some officials overtly dismissive of Palestinian death tolls—and shockingly inept, such as in a callous response to reports of famine deaths that left one humanitarian aid expert “flabbergasted.” The most damning evidence of the administration’s intentions toward Gaza is the short-lived improvement in aid after the IDF killed seven World Central Kitchen workers in April 2024. The policy quickly reversed, Ahmed notes, and he claims that, even after Trump’s reelection, the Biden administration “kept fueling preventable, likely illegal killing.” It’s a highly incriminating report. (Sept.)
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