With elections looming and the Democratic base overwhelmingly opposed to Israel’s brutal war on Gaza, Joe Biden seems at times to be feeling the heat and talking peace. On May 31, he claimed that Israel had agreed to a “permanent cease-fire.” But Biden was immediately rebuffed when Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu disgracefully rejected that idea, caving to far-right pressure from within his government.

The Democratic leadership should have seized the moment and, in a unified voice, urged the president to defund Israel’s brutal war. That would have been morally right. If successful, that action could have, most importantly, finally halted a genocide. It also could have helped Biden to defeat Donald Trump in the fall.

But that is not what the Democratic leadership did.