Joe Biden is in Israel. No one needs a crystal ball to know what he’s going to do there. He’s already provided military, financial, diplomatic, and rhetorical support for the Israeli military as it engages in an onslaught that’s killed and dismembered vast numbers of Palestinian civilians. After the first few days of carnage, Biden started tepidly suggesting that Israel shouldn’t go too far — but at no point has he so much as hinted that any of the war crimes being committed against the Palestinian population trapped in Gaza could imperil the flow of US aid. And his press secretary, Karine Jean-Pierre, described calls from congressional progressives for a cease-fire “repugnant.” Needless to say, neither Biden nor Jean-Pierre has called Israel ordering more than a million Palestinians to leave their homes — a blatant act of ethnic cleansing — “repugnant.”

We’re so used to seeing American presidents act this way that it’s easy to forget what the alternative might look like. But if he wanted to, Biden could be taking a dramatically different approach. The president of the United States, traveling to the country where the attention of the global media is concentrated, has the biggest megaphone on the planet. He could be using this trip to change course and push hard for an end to the bloodshed.

But he won’t.