After six months, a spreading famine, the possible outbreak of regional war, and more than 33,000 Palestinians killed, President Joe Biden finally acted like the leader of the world’s only superpower, and one on which Israel’s war on Gaza is completely reliant. After what the president described as a “very blunt and straightforward” phone call with Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu last week, in which he at long last threatened some — any — consequences for Israel’s repeated, humiliating flouting of US requests, the Israeli government seemed to finally budge. Within hours, the Israeli government announced, as per Biden’s demand, that it was immediately opening the Erez crossing and Ashdod port to allow the humanitarian aid it had been blocking to finally flow into the famine-stricken territory.

The move was bitter vindication for the many voices who had spent months calling on Biden to use the United States’ enormous leverage over Israel to, if not end the genocidal war it has been waging on Gaza, at the very least minimize its barbarity. Others took the opportunity to laud the president’s leadership and toughness, however late it had come.

“This is as close to a ‘come to Jesus’ moment as you can get,” Steven Cook of the Council on Foreign Relations told Reuters. Headlines blared that with Netanyahu quickly and obediently opening the aid corridors, the Israeli leader was “bowing to US pressure,” while the president was “watching Netanyahu after their ‘blunt’ talk.” A CNN report on the “pointed phone call” reveled in the details fed to the network by someone close to the president, with Netanyahu allegedly telling him, “Joe, we’re gonna do it.”