Early last month, I described Benjamin Netanyahu as “an intolerable liability.” The White House, I suggested, should “cut him loose.”

A month later, Joe Biden did just that. “I’ve made it clear to Bibi and the war cabinet: They’re not going to get our support if in fact they go on these population centers,” Biden told CNBC escapee Erin Burnett, who jumped ship to CNN 13 years ago this month.

“These population centers” was (obviously) a reference to Rafah, where nearly half of Gaza’s population is trapped between what’s left of Hamas’s rank and file and an IDF still operating under the delusion that you can kill an idea by killing the men who espouse it.

According to media reports, Netanyahu was warned last week by Antony Blinken that Biden was prepared to publicly oppose a Rafah invasion. Biden’s CNN remarks came hours after Lloyd Austin confirmed a halt on the transfer of 2,000-pound bombs to Israel. “From the very beginning we said Israel shouldn’t launch a major attack into Rafah without accounting for and protecting the civilians in that battle space,” Austin told US lawmakers. “As we have assessed the situation, we have paused one shipment of high payload munitions.”

Biden admitted, on television, that US weapons are killing innocents in Gaza. “Civilians have been killed in Gaza as a consequence of those bombs,” he said, of the 2,000-pounders.

Not that anyone was confused about that. But to say it’s rare for a US president to volunteer a quasi-apology for civilians killed by US weapons would be an understatement.

“If they go into Rafah, I’m not supplying the weapons,” Biden went on. “It’s just wrong.”

Of course, Biden was keen to reiterate that the Pentagon would continue to supply Israel with what it needs to keep the Iron Dome in fine fettle, and he insisted the US isn’t “walking away from Israel’s security.” Rather, this White House is “walking away from Israel’s ability to wage war” in population centers.

Biden’s everyone’s punching bag, which means his remarks will draw criticism from the “good people on both sides” of what’s become yet another manifestation of America’s never-ending culture wars. The left will say Biden’s remarks were too little too late. The right will call Biden “weak” and charge him with “caving” to college students and left-wing “radicals.” And both sides will call his pretensions to the moral high ground hypocritical. (Pick a hypocrisy, any hypocrisy. American foreign policy’s chock-full of them and Biden’s been a key player for decades).

Whatever the merits of such criticism, the inescapable fact is that a US pause on weapons shipments to Israel paired with a public rebuke of the IDF’s conduct is an unprecedented development, particularly in the context of a war that Israelis continue to frame as existential for the Jewish people.

This riff was months in the making. On March 25, when the US abstained from a UN Security Council vote calling for a halt to the fighting, I called that abstention a “milestone” (after mercilessly chastising the US delegation for foot-dragging). One reader disagreed, calling it a “non-event.” I didn’t debate the point, but just weeks later, after the US helped Israel intercept a choreographed Iranian missile and drone barrage, the Biden administration advised (read: exhorted) Netanyahu to “take the win.” The implication: The US was growing wary and weary of Netanyahu’s escalatory brinksmanship.

Fast forward another few weeks and here we are: With some weapons deliveries halted and a US president on national television effectively accusing Netanyahu of being derelict in his obligations to civilians during wartime. There’s a name for people derelict in that regard: They’re called war criminals. Biden wouldn’t dream of casting such aspersions, but… well, you’re either checking the boxes when it comes to protecting civilians or you aren’t, and Biden just told the world that in the White House’s view, Netanyahu isn’t.

I’d be remiss not to mention (sensitive though some readers are about the issue) that the last straw wasn’t the 33,000th or the 34,000th dead Gazan. Nor the bombing of Iran’s “diplomatic” facility in Damascus (which, justified or not, was brazen even as IDF strikes go, and it jeopardized the lives of US personnel in Iraq). Nor the deliberate effort to engineer a famine in Gaza. Rather, the last straw was the World Central Kitchen strike, in which the IDF accidentally killed half a dozen white aid workers.

In all, seven people died in the World Central Kitchen debacle. One of them was Saifeddin Issam Ayad Abutaha. That probably would’ve been “fine.” The problem for Netanyahu is that in addition to one Saif, the strike killed a Jacob, two Jamess (one of whom went by “Jim”) and, worst of all, a John. The only thing more egregious would’ve been a dead Mike.

I argued on April 4, and again on April 5, that the nationalities of the six non-Palestinian volunteers killed in that incident mattered in the eyes of the White House. The IDF killed three Brits, an Australian, a Pole and a dual US-Canada national. If you don’t think that was a factor in the White House’s thinking over the last six weeks, you’re naive.

I want to make an important point in closing. On Wednesday, I suggested the Israeli right, and particularly the Israeli extreme right, is engaged in a kind of suicide cult mentality, whereby young, progressive Israelis are presented with a false choice: Stay, with your young family, in a warzone where your children will never be safe, or betray your grandparents and your sacred duty as one of God’s chosen people, by immigrating to safer shores. The same politicians are forcing the diaspora into a false choice: Your politics or your people?

Many young Jews, particularly those who live in America, are liberal or progressive or whatever you want to call it. The idea of an aggressively ethnonationalist, semi-autocratic security state under Netanyahu isn’t something progressive Jews are especially enamored with. They shouldn’t be compelled to choose between their values and their heritage, which is what they’re being asked to do by this Israeli government.

If the Israeli hard right continues to force that choice on Jews living abroad, they shouldn’t be surprised when some (but not all) choose their values over their heritage. Personal autonomy over unquestioning tribal allegiance.

And speaking of heritage and values, is there not something tragically ironic about a Jewish state hell-bent on making refugees of two million people?