Outrage and indignation from the President of the United States and his aides, no matter how great, no matter how many times expressed or leaked to the press, will not save the suffering people of Gaza. Nor will they restore the high standing previously enjoyed by the Biden administration’s foreign policy.

Neither, sadly, will more “or else” conversations between President Joe Biden and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu like the one that took place on Thursday.

The White House indicated that in the conversation, the president “made clear that U.S. policy with respect to Gaza will be determined by our assessment of Israel’s immediate action on reducing civilian harm, stabilizing the humanitarian situation, and protecting innocent civilians.” There have been too many such conversations and too few constructive results.

Shortly after the meeting, Israel did announce the opening of another crossing into Gaza to enable the flow of humanitarian aid. While positive, this is just one step among many needed to stop the mass tragedy in Gaza.

To achieve the big changes that are urgently needed, only additional concrete actions—that thus far the U.S. has been reluctant to take—will suffice. Specifically, only an acknowledgement that providing arms to a murderer is irresponsible—and has made the United States complicit in the mass murder of innocents in Gaza—will do that.

Only using all the tools available to the world’s most powerful nation to both influence Israel to end its brutal rampage in Gaza and to embrace the only path to peace in the region—one that serves the goal of establishing two secure states, one for Israelis and one for Palestinians—will do that.

Sadly, it seems every U.S. administration must have a foreign policy debacle in the Middle East. It ought to be a source of humility for U.S. policymakers. But instead it is an enduring blind spot, apparently afflicting even among the most conscientious and gifted members of the U.S. policy community, such as those that lead the Biden foreign policy team.

A woman mourns as Palestinians gather around the burned and destroyed Al-Shifa Hospital as Israeli forces withdrew in Gaza City.

George W. Bush committed the greatest foreign policy error in modern U.S. history when he invaded Iraq, an act that even today makes Benjamin Netanyahu’s bloody slaughter in Gaza pale in comparison. Barack Obama’s sins were those of inaction, of inertia in the face of brutality in Syria and his failure to end the war in Afghanistan—even as many around him, including his vice president, were urging him to wind it down. Donald Trump’s withdrawal from the Iran nuclear deal—at the urging of Netanyahu—made the region incalculably more dangerous and has enabled Iran to come to a point today where it is a borderline nuclear power, months away from possessing the ultimate weapon.

So, Biden is not alone in making a grave mistake in his Mideast policy. But his error is particularly poignant, because he understood so well the errors we have made before, and........

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