LEILA FADEL, HOST: Nearly three years since the start of the war in Gaza in response to a devastating Hamas attack on Israel, journalist Akbar Shahid Ahmed has written an account detailing the period, October 7, 2023, to January of 2025. It's focused on the Biden administration's decisions in that time. And it's called "Crossing The Red Line: Biden, His Advisors, And Israel's War In Gaza."

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FADEL: I'm thinking of a line that you had kind of near the end of your book. And you wrote, in less than two years, Joe Biden irreversibly changed America's role in Israel-Palestine and may have permanently altered America's approach to foreign affairs. Say more.

AHMED: The Biden administration's Gaza policy created a more dangerous world for us all. It's a period that reshapes the standards of warfare. It becomes a question not only of danger and influence globally, but a question of democratic accountability to what Americans want their country to be doing on the world stage.

FADEL: Right, because all of the leading officials that were involved are still successfully employed.

AHMED: And positioning themselves for future administrations. A lot of these officials are now saying, well, in retrospect, I would've done things differently, but under President Biden, it wasn't possible. My book makes the argument and offers significant evidence that we shouldn't let that line be sufficient, that we actually should hold these officials responsible for their choices at junctures where they could have saved Palestinian lives and also Israeli lives - and gotten us off a path, I really feel, a path from enabling Israeli escalation in Gaza, consistent escalation then into Lebanon, into now the Iran war and real risk to American lives and many others.

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