About this Event
Following Hamas’s horrific October 7 attack, Israel launched an offensive of staggering violence in Gaza, saying it targeted militants while regularly striking hospitals, schools, and homes. Critically acclaimed journalist Akbar Shahid Ahmed offers extensive reporting and chilling new details about how the Biden administration enabled Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu—ignoring warnings from government experts and implicating Americans in thousands of apparent war crimes. Washington did little to free Israeli hostages or shield innocent Palestinians as protests grew nationwide and international human rights principles crumbled. Still, President Joe Biden denied he was giving Netanyahu a blank check. He set a “red line” over the town of Rafah, where more than 1 million Palestinians were sheltering, saying an assault there would risk Israel’s pipeline of American bombs. Yet after Netanyahu’s advance began, deepening Gaza’s humanitarian catastrophe, Biden’s team kept weapons flowing.
In vivid prose and with unparalleled access to insiders, Ahmed depicts a White House that resisted a course correction as its failures became undeniable. He probes Biden’s inner circle: a paranoid and imperious group shaped by the War on Terror, whose choices fueled tens of thousands of avoidable deaths among Palestinians, Lebanese, and Israelis, torpedoed long-time standards for warfare, and created a more dangerous world for us all. The Biden administration’s decisions drove voter backlash that helped Donald Trump regain power, and established patterns of impunity that have spurred wider bloodshed under Trump.
Crossing the Red Line is an urgent reckoning with Biden’s record on Gaza that is vital to understanding historic damage to America’s standing in the world, and a period whose dark consequences will resonate globally for decades to come.
Akbar Shahid Ahmed is joining us on the Busboys alongside Dr. Nader Hashemi stage to share “one of the most important political books of our time as well as an indispensable resource” (Khaled Elgindy, senior fellow, Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, and author of Blind Spot). Copies of the book will be available for purchase during and after the event, and Ahmed will be signing following the program.
This event is free and open to all. Doors open to guests at 5:30pm. Our program begins at 6:00 pm, and will be followed by an audience Q&A. Copies of CROSSING THE RED LINE will be available for purchase before and after the event. Please note that this event is IN PERSON and will NOT be livestreamed.
We ask that guests RSVP in order to receive direct updates about the event from Busboys and Poets Books
Akbar Shahid Ahmed is the diplomatic correspondent at NOTUS. For his Gaza coverage, he has received a Writers Guild Award and a New York Press Club Award and has twice been named a finalist for the Livingston Award. Based in Washington, D.C., Ahmed previously covered foreign policy at HuffPost for twelve years. He is a Yale graduate who grew up in Karachi, Pakistan.
Dr. Nader Hashemi is the Director of the Alwaleed Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding and an Associate Professor of Middle East and Islamic Politics at the Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University. He is the author of Islam, Secularism and Liberal Democracy and co-editor of The People Reloaded, The Syria Dilemma, Sectarianization and a four-volume study on Islam and Human Rights: Critical Concepts in Islamic Studies. His next book project is entitled: “The Global Divide over Israel and Palestine.” He is also a Non-Resident Fellow at Democracy for the Arab World Now (DAWN).
BOOK DETAILS
Crossing the Red Line
Biden, His Advisors, and Israel's War in Gaza
By Akbar Shahid Ahmed
September 22, 2026 | Hardcover, 368 Pages, $31.99
Event venue & nearby stays
Busboys and Poets, 450 K Street Northwest, Washington, United States
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