By Eric Vandenbroeck and co-workers

October 7 In Context

The twin ideas that Hamas was motivated by murderous antisemitism and that they were a carbon copy of ISIS stretched the tolerance of much of the American public and allowed both the president and Congress to support what was sure to be an unprecedented Israeli reaction to an unprecedented Palestinian strike.

On November 19, 2023, the latest in a long line of polls came out demonstrating that US President Joe Biden was losing votes in key sectors due to his support for Israel’s massive assault on the Gaza Strip.1 Since October 7, when the Palestinian group Hamas launched a bloody attack that killed some 1,200 Israelis, injured thousands more, and kidnapped some 250 others, Israel had been relentlessly bombing Gaza, and its troops were, at that point, in the middle of a bloody invasion. As of November 17, Gazan authorities reported that more than 11,000 people had been killed, mostly women and children, and another 27,490 had been injured.2

Biden’s response included mobilizing two massive aircraft carriers, threatening other states against helping the Gazans militarily and asking Congress to approve $14.3 billion in military aid for Israel on top of its annual allotment of $3.8 billion. This policy was controversial, particularly within the president’s own Democratic Party. Many wanted a ceasefire, were uncomfortable with Biden’s full-throated support for Israel, and were appalled at his apparent disregard for the massive destruction Israel was inflicting. Yet the president persisted.

In the United States, it is often said that Israel is a domestic issue. While few Americans are particularly well-informed about the conflict—and many believe they only know what they get from a very narrow range of sources—it tends to generate very strong opinions. Due to the outsized influence the US has on Palestine and Israel, those opinions matter, as do the collective social and cultural responses to events in Palestine and Israel. They influence United States policy in the region and are also important signals to actors in the Middle East.

When Hamas attacked Israel on October 7, there was an enormous outpouring of emotion all around the world, and the US was certainly no exception. A few voices were immediately raised in justifying Hamas’s attack, but the overwhelming message—from opponents of Israel’s policies toward the Palestinians as well as supporters—was one of outrage at the atrocities and sympathy for those killed, injured, and kidnapped, along with their families.

That sympathy started to splinter, however, once Israel began its relentless assault on Gaza. The split widened the longer Israel’s bombing campaign, and then ground offensive, continued. As Israel inflicted unprecedented death and destruction, administration spokespeople and Biden himself took public stands that helped legitimize Israel’s offensive. Notably, Biden called into question the reliability of casualty statistics from the Ministry of Health in Gaza, telling reporters on October 25 that “I have no notion that the Palestinians are telling the truth about how many people are killed.” He said this even as the Ministry of Health’s numbers had been routinely relied on for years by international humanitarian organizations, the United Nations, and even the US Department of State.3

Biden’s lockstep support for Israel despite concerns about the massive civilian casualty figures and widespread devastation of Gaza helped polarize public opinion. Passionate debate raged on college campuses, in public spaces, in Congress, in the media, and within the Jewish community. Whereas before October 7, 2023, the issue of the Israeli occupation and denial of Palestinian rights had long seemed to be fading from the public agenda, its salience in public debate has been firmly reestablished.

 

October 7 In Context

The situation in both the West Bank and Gaza had been deteriorating for years and gotten considerably worse since Biden took office. In 2022, Israelis elected their most right-wing government ever. Meanwhile, the Biden administration preferred to ignore the Palestinian issue in favor of building on President Donald Trump’s success in brokering normalization agreements between Israel and the countries of Bahrain, Morocco, Sudan, and the United Arab Emirates. This combination magnified the feelings of hopelessness among Palestinians and impunity among Israelis. While Israeli settlers attacked Palestinian villages, Israelis within the internationally recognized borders of the state felt a relative comfort, despite occasional attacks, most carried out by rogue Palestinians operating alone or consisting of largely ineffective rockets that typically caused no damage.

Just eight days before Hamas launched its attack, US national security advisor Jake Sullivan declared that “[t]he Middle East region is quieter today than it has been in two decades.”4 Sullivan’s boast reflected the Biden administration’s indifference to both the worsening humanitarian crisis in Gaza and the escalating attacks by Israeli settlers and soldiers in the West Bank. According to United Nations (UN) data, 237 Palestinians had been killed in the seven months leading up to October 7. Twenty-nine Israelis had been killed, all but four in the West Bank.5

Those figures were both the highest in years. But with no major clashes, Sullivan’s statement reflected a general mood in the United States that the Israeli occupation was being effectively “managed.”6 Hamas destroyed that illusion with its attack.

US diplomacy on Palestine had been virtually non-existent for a decade. After talks broke down in 2013, President Barack Obama turned his focus to Iran. Trump, Obama’s successor, did not take a serious approach to the issue and made numerous moves that deeply alienated the Palestinians, particularly his decision to relocate the US embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. Biden, for his part, has preferred to maintain the status quo. In fact, the major battleground over Israel’s occupation and its denial of Palestinian rights in the United States just before October 7 was a contested definition of antisemitism, which encompassed criticism of Israel, effectively collapsing antisemitism and anti-Zionism; and the attempt to label the movement for boycott, divestment, and sanctions (BDS) against Israel an expression of antisemitism.

The International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) definition of antisemitism came with several examples of purported antisemitism that consisted of nothing more than criticisms of Israel.7 It was adopted in 2016 and the debate around it grew steadily over time. Though championed by large Jewish organizations, such as the Anti-Defamation League and American Jewish Committee, it met with significant opposition from other Jewish groups as well as Palestinians and those in solidarity with them.

That debate, often heated, was linked to ongoing tensions over the BDS movement. Launched in 2005, BDS calls for equality for all Israelis and Palestinians, including Palestinian refugees. It has been besieged for years by Israel and its supporters worldwide. Rather than accept that Palestinians had found a nonviolent method of fighting for their liberation after the second intifada, pro-Israel forces delegitimized the movement as antisemitic and primarily interested not in Palestinian liberation but in harming, or even annihilating, Jews.

With little diplomacy to influence, the contest over Palestinian rights in the United States had thus been largely relegated to a battle over the very legitimacy of support for those rights. In the courts, the streets, and even in the halls of Congress, the question of whether support for Palestinian rights was inherently antisemitic was the subject. Naturally, this was not explicit; defenders of Israeli policies claimed that Palestinians should be free, but that security concerns forced Israel’s hand. Nonetheless, they responded to nearly every criticism of Israel with accusations of antisemitism and the claim that the criticisms were being leveled not to defend human rights but to “delegitimize” Israel. Criticism of the far-right government headed by Benjamin Netanyahu was fair game only because there was such massive protest against it in Israel and because the major legacy Jewish organizations saw a threat to their ability to defend Israel in the extremist government. The fact that the Israeli protest movement intensely resisted any connection to Israel’s ongoing occupation of the West Bank and siege of Gaza allowed for this exception.

The controversies over IHRA and BDS did little to change the minds of people involved in or observing the debates. But they put the idea in the minds of Americans—who, for the most part, were not deeply involved in or concerned with the question of Palestine and Israel—that criticizing Israel at least ran the risk of antisemitism, and often was thought to be inherently antisemitic. This fed, in turn, into a broader atmosphere of Islamophobia in the United States. As Professor Sahar Aziz and I observed:

Islamophobia is juxtaposed against antisemitism, portraying Muslims globally and domestically as agents of antisemitism; attempting to create a competition or even a zero-sum scenario between Muslims and Jews … As a result, legitimate efforts to combat antisemitism are disingenuously co-opted to undermine Palestinian aspirations for self-determination and human rights, as well as to defame Muslim and Arab human rights defenders as inherently antisemitic. Palestinian aspirations are often portrayed by the media and Zionist organizations as a cover for a uniquely Arab and Muslim antisemitism.8

 

This Was The American Atmosphere That The Hamas Attack Of October 7 Appeared In.

The killing begins Any student of history knows that one of the most fundamental choices one must make, when trying to convey a historical subject, is where to start. For most Americans, and certainly for the overwhelming majority of American leaders and media, the history of what Hamas called Operation Al-Aqsa Deluge and Israel called Operation Swords of Iron began on October 7, 2023. In the days after Hamas’s attack and the beginning of Israel’s response, it seemed almost de rigueur that the Hamas attack be described as “unprovoked.” This was not the usual skirmish over semantics. As Yousef Munayyer, Senior Fellow at the Arab Center, Washington DC, wrote, [t]o call this “unprovoked” … is to ignore the daily and constant Israeli violence and war crimes against Palestinians which has only escalated in recent years. It is language that erases Palestinians and enables continued violence against them.9

Indeed, the presumption that the attack was unprovoked provided the basis for the common narrative in the United States that Hamas was uninterested in Palestinian liberation but only wanted to kill Jews. It allowed for the equating of Hamas—undoubtedly as violent and militant a group as any, but also a political entity with a distinctively nationalist ideology—to groups like al-Qaeda or ISIS, which are motivated by zealous visions of global jihad that Hamas does not share.10

The twin ideas that Hamas was motivated by murderous antisemitism and that they were a carbon copy of ISIS stretched the tolerance of much of the American public and allowed both the president and Congress to support what was sure to be an unprecedented Israeli reaction to an unprecedented Palestinian strike.

When UN Secretary-general António Guterres stated, correctly, that the Hamas attack didn’t happen in a vacuum—a reference to the ongoing conflict, the occupation since 1967, and the blockade of Gaza since 2006, as well as the increasing Israeli violence against Palestinians and provocations on the Temple Mount in Jerusalem since Israel’s far-right government came to power in 2022—the response from Israel was to call for his resignation. While American leaders largely kept quiet about this demand, they were quite vocal on the matter of a ceasefire. White House press secretary Karin Jean-Pierre, when asked about the very few members of Congress who were calling almost immediately for a ceasefire, responded:

I’ve seen some of those statements this weekend. And we’re gonna continue to be very clear. We believe they’re wrong. We believe they’re repugnant and we believe they’re disgraceful … There are not two sides here. There are not two sides.11

In fact, whereas many Hamas members doubtless harbor little love for Jews, Hamas did not attack anyone because they were Jewish on October 7. It murdered and brutalized people because they were Israeli. This crucial difference in no way mitigates, much less justifies, Hamas’s criminal and bloody actions. But understanding what happened and why is important if we want to stop the suffering, stop the killing, and make sure that Israelis and Palestinians can all live with the rights that all humans are entitled to.

Nor should we underestimate the magnitude of Hamas’s crime and the shock it caused Israelis and anyone, this author included, who has friends and relatives in Israel. This was an unprecedented attack in the history of a state that has seen many of them in its relatively brief existence. The rage and grief it produced, regardless of the circumstances, were enormous, as befits a crime of that magnitude. The response from Israel was universally expected to be extreme. But the massive toll on civilians and the brazen declarations from Israeli leaders of disregard for those civilian casualties led to a sharpened split in American attitudes. While some saw an overriding need to eliminate Gaza, others saw the casualties and destruction in Gaza as far too high a price to pay, whatever their feelings about Hamas.

Dividing opinions These ideological divisions often play out most visibly on college campuses, and this time was no exception. Reporting of those conflicts frequently focused on discomfort felt by Jewish students and encapsulated some of the factors that distort thinking in the US about the conflict.

On the macro level, the dependence of the American university system on wealthy donors was again exposed for the harm this can cause to academic freedom and liberty of speech. As students on campuses came out in support of either Israel or the Palestinians, those donors—naturally disposed to right-wing and conservative views due to their position of wealth and power and motivated by an equally radical and right-wing support for Israel—came out overwhelmingly in support of Israel. More to the point, they pressured universities to take action against students who were protesting Israel’s massive bombardment of Gaza.

On November 10, Columbia University, which has been a site of some of the fiercest campus battles over Israel, Palestine, and academic freedom, suspended two student groups—Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) and Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP)—claiming safety concerns.12 This was the clearest example of an atmosphere of tension, even fear, among university administrations, created by a large wave of donors cutting off their support to both private and public educational institutions.13 Columbia’s suspension of JVP and SJP was indicative of the panic this phenomenon caused.

Media of all kinds discussed the massive spike in reported antisemitic, Islamophobic, and anti-Arab incidents across the United States since October 7. Some news items focused on one or the other and some on both. In all cases, we saw reports of assaults, vandalism, threats, harassment, and other kinds of intolerable abuse. But the coverage of Jewish students also brought forward complaints about their comfort level that highlighted the difficulties in conversations about Israel and Palestine.

One New York Times article, headlined “After Antisemitic Attacks, Colleges Debate What Kind of Speech Is Out of Bounds,” typified this problem.14 While the article cited some very disturbing examples of antisemitism, its focus was on the discomfort of Jewish students at expressions of a Palestinian narrative that is valid, fact-based, and worthy of respect. The article opened with the example of Max Strozenberg, a Jewish student at Northwestern University. Mr. Strozenberg was upset because he saw a poster in a public area in his dorm that referred to Gaza as a “modern-day concentration camp” and later heard protesters on campus chanting, “Hey, Schill, what do you say, how many kids did you kill today?”—referring to Northwestern’s president Michael Schill, who is Jewish, and to ongoing efforts by student activists to get Northwestern to divest from Israel.15

According to the Times, these incidents prompted Mr. Strozenberg to say that he feels unsafe and that the mood on his campus “is not pro-Palestinian, it’s antisemitic.” The focus of the Times piece was on the question of what is and is not “acceptable language” of protest. Yet consider what Mr. Strozenberg is presented as reacting to. Nothing about either incident is specific to Jews. While “concentration camps” are obviously associated deeply with the Holocaust, it is not unique to that act of genocide. It’s a distinct term that long predates World War II and has been applied in many other cases.

That doesn’t diminish Mr. Strozenberg’s visceral reaction. But Gaza is commonly referred to as an open-air prison, even as the Strip’s dense population and the problems that brings with it are not fully encompassed by that term. It isn’t unreasonable to choose “concentration camp” as a closer reflection of life in Gaza before October 7, as prominent Israeli officials as well as commentators have done.

Similarly, while the chant that disturbed Mr. Strozenberg might have been directed at a person who happened to be Jewish, it was not the Jewishness of the man in question, but rather his position as president of the university, that made him the target. The chant itself is a very familiar one that has been heard at American protests since the 1960s and has nothing in it that can reasonably be interpreted as expressing any comment at all about Jews. And if it was the accusation of children being killed that discomforted, that was simply a factual aspect of Israel’s campaign in Gaza, which killed thousands of Palestinian children in a small area of land, half of whose population are under the age of eighteen.

Mr. Strozenberg was not alone. On CNN, Jake Tapper interviewed a young Jewish woman, Talia Kahn, on a similar topic. Ms. Kahn is a student at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). When Tapper asked her why she felt unsafe, she responded that the campus and local “anti-Israel groups” had staged protests at the entrance of the campus and the student center. As Tapper tried to get some concrete example of a reason to fear for her safety, Ms. Kahn could only point to language that supported Palestinian resistance to Israeli oppression and the fact that the groups tried to enter specific offices that promoted partnership with Israel.

Ms. Kahn also relayed that, during the protests, the university administration advised parents to pick up their children from the university day care center because they were “worried that it would get violent.” But no such thing happened.16

These students were doubtless experiencing real fear. But that fear was not grounded in the experience of actual violence. They were, to be sure, being confronted with significant anger by Palestinian students and their supporters, but those feelings were at least as legitimate as those of the Jewish students, especially under the circumstances of week after week of massive Palestinian death tolls.

The fear Jewish students experienced, though an authentic emotion, was also at least in part a product of the Islamophobic dynamics of American society, culture, and politics. These dynamics are particularly strong with regard to Palestinians, who are routinely associated in the American mind with violence.17 The Bridge Initiative at Georgetown University explains:

One of the most common tropes about Muslims is that they have a unique penchant for violence or that their religion encourages it. This narrative is often reinforced by media coverage which primarily reports on Muslims in the context of violence and terrorism. Bound up with this narrative is the idea that the more religious a person becomes the more violent he/she is likely to become.18

In an atmosphere informed by this trope, it is unsurprising if protests led by Muslims, Arabs, or their supporters, and using the phraseology of Palestinian resistance, produces visceral fear reactions. But for Jewish students whose identity is strongly connected to Israel it is even more powerful.

Yet the wall of propaganda around Israel remains steadfast. Indeed, it is this wall of false perception, reinforced by a fantastical version of both Israel and the Palestinians put forth by American political leaders,19 that challenges young Jews, as it is relentlessly contradicted by the reality of Palestinian experience. Most American Jews, especially younger Jews, hold to liberal values. While supporters of Palestinian rights may sometimes be glib about the ability of American liberals—Jewish and not—to suspend their principles as they make an exception for Palestine, it is important to recognize that this apparent double standard, based on a version of Israel and the Palestinians that is largely detached from reality, is what allows many Jews, young and old, to avoid having to truly choose between their liberal values and their identification with the Jewish state.

In that context, we can better understand why protest for Palestinian rights evokes a visceral reaction for Jews. That reaction is perhaps most acute for the young, who are also being exposed every day at university to sharp, and often angry, support for Palestinians. But it is very real for all Jews who associate their Jewish identity strongly with Israel.

It is this visceral reaction that the push to adopt the IHRA definition of antisemitism and the demonization of BDS seeks to exploit. By construing all criticism of Israel as antisemitism, those who support the IHRA definition and demonize BDS play on deep anxieties harbored by many Jews attempting to reconcile Israeli behavior with their values. Understandably, then, many people feel nervous, as the Times and CNN reported, whenever support for Palestinians is expressed, particularly when expressed in Palestinian terms.

Yet these attempted conflations fail badly to account for the deep divisions among American Jews on Israel generally and on the assault on Gaza in particular. The major American Jewish institutions have historically dominated the policy conversation on Israel, giving the impression of uniformity, if not on all policies, then at least on the basic question of Zionism. Long before October 7, 2023, that impression was being challenged by anti-Zionist groups like Jewish Voice for Peace or groups that were noncommittal on that issue such as IfNotNow (INN).

With the Hamas attack and the subsequent Israeli onslaught on Gaza, JVP and INN took on much greater prominence, leading dramatic demonstrations all over the country and making clear that Jewish support for Israel’s campaign of total destruction of Gaza was far from absolute. Perhaps most dramatically, JVP led protests that shut down business in the Hart Senate office building and disrupted a meeting of the Democratic National Committee in Washington20 as well as Grand Central Station in New York.21

A pro-war demonstration was organized by the larger and better-funded Jewish organizations, which descended into controversy when Pastor John Hagee—a so-called “Christian Zionist” leader who once claimed that Hitler was sent by God to force the Jews to settle in Palestine—was invited to speak.22 The bloodthirstiness of the gathering was made clear when one speaker, the liberal CNN commentator Van Jones, was shouted down with chants of “no ceasefire” when he dared say that he wanted to see bombs and rockets stop falling on both sides.23

That single rally, though, had little impact when compared to the many anti-war demonstrations held all over the United States throughout October and November 2023.24 On November 4 alone, some 300,000 people reportedly gathered in Washington to support the Palestinians—by far the largest such gathering ever in the United States.25 This matched the estimate organizers reported for the far better-funded pro-war march.26

Censuring “from the river to the sea” These dynamics played out as well in the distortion of the common Palestinian slogan, “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free.” That phrase, in one form or another, has been used for many years by Palestinians, while some Israelis also use “from the river to the sea” to designate all of Israel, the West Bank, and Gaza. But after October 7, especially, the slogan’s use by Palestine solidarity activists was labeled antisemitic by pro-Israel forces. They argued that it called for the elimination of Israel and of Jews from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea, the bodies of water on either side of Israel and Palestine.

As Professor Maha Nassar of the University of Arizona explains, “[t]he majority of Palestinians who use this phrase do so because they believe that, in 10 short words, it sums up their personal ties, their national rights, and their vision for the land they call Palestine.” As a popular Palestinian phrase, it is hardly surprising that Hamas would also use it. And it absolutely is connected with the contention that Zionism is incompatible with true democracy or political, cultural, and social equality in the state. That is its own debate, but as Professor Nassar elaborates, “[m]ost Palestinians using this chant do not see it as advocating for a specific political platform or as belonging to a specific political group. Rather, the majority of people using the phrase see it as a principled vision of freedom and coexistence.”27

Bad faith actors have arbitrarily translated the slogan as calling for a Palestine “free of Jews,”28 but Professor Nassar notes that the phrase in the original Arabic, “Filastin hurra, means liberated Palestine. ‘Free from’ would be a different Arabic word altogether.” So while the phrase is contentious, no reasonable person could conclude that it can only be said with antisemitic intent.

Yet it was uttering that phrase that led Rep. Rashida Tlaib—the only Palestinian-American in Congress and one of only three Muslims—to be censured, a highly unusual practice in the House of Representatives that has only occurred twenty-six times in the chamber’s 234-year history. In recent years, there have been several incidents of censure along party lines, but in Rep. Tlaib’s case, twenty-two members of her own party voted to censure her, a remarkable feature of this episode.

Yet it was uttering that phrase that led Rep. Rashida Tlaib—the only Palestinian-American in Congress and one of only three Muslims—to be censured, a highly unusual practice in the House of Representatives that has only occurred twenty-six times in the chamber’s 234-year history. In recent years, there have been several incidents of censure along party lines, but in Rep. Tlaib’s case, twenty-two members of her own party voted to censure her, a remarkable feature of this episode.

The censure resolution,29 which contained numerous errors of fact and some outright false accusations, specifically cited Tlaib’s use of the phrase “from the river to the sea” among the charges. Yet no official objections were raised to the words of Rep. Brian Mast, during a speech he made on the floor of the House of Representatives. “I would encourage the other side to not so lightly throw around the idea of innocent Palestinian civilians,” Mast admonished during debate on an amendment to a bill whose purpose was to reduce aid to civilians in Gaza. “I don’t think we would so lightly throw around the term ‘innocent Nazi civilians’ during World War II. It is not a far stretch to say there are very few innocent Palestinian civilians.”30

The comparison of Palestinians to Nazis was bad enough, but the legal implication of stating that there are few Palestinian civilians in Gaza ran dangerously close to endorsing the indiscriminate killing of Palestinians. One Democrat, Rep. Sara Jacobs, filed a motion to censure Mast, but when she tried to force a vote on the measure, the bill was pulled from consideration by Democratic minority leader Hakeem Jeffries. Whereas nearly two dozen Democrats voted to censure Tlaib, no Democrat would agree to cosponsor Jacobs’s resolution against Mast, and those who spoke, even when critical of Mast, expressed no support for censure.31

The two incidents exemplify the overwhelming, bipartisan support in Congress for Israel’s assault on the Gaza Strip. But they obscure the views of the American public, which supported a truce in Gaza and Israel soon after October 7, even as it sympathized with Israel. An October 20 poll by Data for Progress found that fully 66 percent of respondents supported a ceasefire.32 A November 15 poll by Reuters/Ipsos found that 68 percent of Americans wanted the United States to call for a ceasefire and negotiate a settlement between Israel and the Palestinians.33 That remarkably consistent result demonstrated the disconnect between American opinion and congressional views.

As of November 18, only thirty-six members of the House of Representatives and one senator had called for a ceasefire. Though the list was growing, it was doing so slowly. The foot-dragging in Washington was, however, far from unanimous.

Dissent in the establishment Less than two weeks into Israel’s bombing campaign against Gaza, stories began appearing about problems at the State Department. These internal rifts were so severe, they were described by one State Department staffer as a brewing “mutiny.”34 In early November, more reports surfaced of “dissent memos” sent by State staffers to the top of the agency, including Secretary Antony Blinken.35

The complaints included a letter from employees of USAID, the State Department’s international development agency. Their communication, signed by over a thousand staffers, informed the secretary that they were “alarmed and disheartened at the numerous violations of international law; laws which aim to protect civilians, medical and media personnel, as well as schools, hospitals, and places of worship.”36

The complaints included a letter from employees of USAID, the State Department’s international development agency. Their communication, signed by over a thousand staffers, informed the secretary that they were “alarmed and disheartened at the numerous violations of international law; laws which aim to protect civilians, medical and media personnel, as well as schools, hospitals, and places of worship.”36 Indeed, it was apparent from the outset, and became clearer as the days wore on and the death toll mounted, that US policy on Israel’s actions was being made by a small, insular group at the very top and was not drawing on the expertise available among White House and State Department staff. Essentially, the president was deciding these matters alone, with his closest advisors there to support his decisions.37

It was so bad that an eleven-year veteran director at State, Josh Paul, resigned from his position handling arms sales to foreign countries, a role he acknowledged often came with difficult moral compromises. “I have had my fair share of debates and discussions and efforts to shift policy on controversial arms sales,” he explained. “It was clear that there’s no arguing with this one. Given that I couldn’t shift anything, I resigned.”38

Finally, on November 14, Blinken felt he had to address his critics. His reported response condescended to the diplomats in his department by suggesting they were letting their sympathy for the suffering of Palestinians in Gaza trump their policy judgment. He acknowledged that they had disagreements about policy and simply offered dissatisfied officials a forum where they could be “heard.” This did little to still the dissenting voices.

The disconnect between establishment leadership and staff was reflected in US media as well, as mainstream outlets such as the New York Times and CNN came under withering attack for their biased coverage of Israel’s onslaught. A letter signed by over 1,200 professional journalists on November 9 sharply criticized mainstream news coverage.39 The Los Angeles Times informed its reporters and staffers who signed the letter that they were barred from covering the Gaza war.40

Accusations of media bias have long been a focal point of contention for supporters of both Israel and Palestine. This time, however, we saw a significant number of journalists willing to put their professional futures at risk to speak out against anti-Palestinian bias in American media.

An overdue awakening Given the forces of politics, media bias, and Islamophobia, it is remarkable that Americans were so consistent in preferring a ceasefire to maintaining Israel’s ability to wage a war that had no defined endpoint. It is even more telling that this opinion held even though there was no evidence that people had forgotten the bloody events of October 7 or that their outrage over Hamas’s brutality had diminished. Rather, the message one got from the zeitgeist in the United States was a simple yearning for the atrocities to end.

There was also a deep disappointment evident from significant sectors of the US public in the administration of Joe Biden. While Biden had the enthusiastic support of the pro-Israel community, key sectors that Biden counts on for support were alienated by his policy of full support of Israel regardless of the level of death and destruction Israel visited on Palestinian civilians.

Democratic activist and Arab-American leader Jim Zogby spoke about the plummeting support among Arab and Muslim Americans for Biden’s re-election campaign. He shared that White House staff dismissed these concerns, saying those communities “are not going to vote for Donald Trump, because they don’t want [to return to] what he was doing during his four years, and so they’ll come around in a year.”41

This smug attitude, Zogby said, was “insulting and dismissive,” and the voices of Muslim and Arab Americans, as well as their allies, echoed that sentiment. The National Muslim Democratic Council pledged “to mobilize Muslim, Arab, and allied voters to withhold endorsement, support, or votes for any candidate who did not advocate for a ceasefire and endorse[d] the Israeli offensive against the Palestinian people.”42 Muslim voters are key in some of the most contested states in presidential elections.

Has Biden doomed his 2024 reelection bid by insisting on blind support for Israel? Only time will tell, and the specter of another Donald Trump presidency may yet be enough to compel voters to support Biden despite the blood on his hands.

But he has gone against the wishes of the American public, not least his voters, as 80 percent of Democrats attested in the polls cited above. In another poll at the end of November, not only did 77 percent of Democrats back a ceasefire, but so did 58 percent of Republicans and 60 percent of unaffiliated voters.43 Among young voters—a Biden demographic—fully 70 percent said they disapproved of Biden’s policy in Gaza, while Biden’s overall approval rating among that group fell to 31 percent in mid-November.44 Democrats generally rely on younger voters turning out to win elections.

This level of public criticism is unlike what has come before. While many Palestine solidarity groups reported increases in membership and support during previous Israeli assaults on Gaza, polling numbers never shifted this dramatically. For example, a January 2009 survey taken at the height of Israel’s massive bombing campaign dubbed Operation Cast Lead showed little change in either American support for Israel or desire for greater US action.45 The rifts Gaza has aggravated in American society over the entire Israel-Palestine question will no longer be so easily shunted aside as a topic of conversation best avoided.

It is crucial that it not be. 

 

1. Mark Murray, “Poll: Biden’s Standing Hits New Lows Amid Israel-Hamas War,” NBC News (19 November 2023).

2. United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), “Hostilities in the Gaza Strip and Israel: Flash Update 42,” ochaopt.org (17 November 2023).

3. Akbar Shahid Ahmed, “Biden Cast Doubt on Gaza’s Death Statistics—But Officials Cite Them Internally,” huffpost.com (26 October 2023). Gabrielle Tétrault-Farber, “Despite Biden’s Doubts, Humanitarian Agencies Consider Gaza Toll Reliable,” Reuters (27 October 2023).

4. Gal Beckerman, “‘The Middle East Region Is Quieter Today Than It Has Been in Two Decades’,” Atlantic (7 October 2023).

5. UN OCHA data.

6. Mitchell Plitnick, “In Latest Visit Blinken Offers Nothing to Palestinians,” Mondoweiss (3 February 2023). 

7. IHRA, “What is Antisemitism?” holocaustremembrance.com (n.d.). 

8. Mitchell Plitnick and Sahar Aziz, “Presumptively Antisemitic: Islamophobic Tropes in the Palestine-Israel Discourse,” Rutgers University Center for Security, Race, and Rights (November 2023). 

9. Yousef Munayyer, post on X (formerly Twitter), 7 October 2023. 

10. For a deeper examination of the history and ideology of Hamas, cf. Tareq Baconi, Hamas Contained: The Rise and Pacification of Palestinian Resistance (Stanford University Press, 2018).

11. Alex Gangitano, “White House Calls Lawmakers Not Backing Israel ‘Wrong,’ ‘Disgraceful’,” thehill.com (10 October 2023). 

12. “Statement from Gerald Rosberg, Chair of the Special Committee on Campus Safety,” Columbia News (10 November 2023).

13. Andrew Jack, “US Universities Lose Millions as Donors Pull Funding Over Hamas Stance,” Financial Times (19 October 2023). 

14. Anemona Hartocollis and Stephanie Saul, “After Antisemitic Attacks, Colleges Debate What Kind of Speech Is Out of Bounds,” New York Times (9 November 2023).

15. Joyce Li, “NU Students for Justice in Palestine Leads Walkout, Calls for University Divestment and Support for Palestinians,” The Daily Northwestern (26 October 2023).

16. “Jewish Student Tells Jake She Doesn’t Feel Safe at MIT,” The Lead—CNN (14 November 2023). 

17. Cf. Sarah O’Neal, “US Media Outlets Smear Palestinians as Inherently Violent in January Coverage,” palestine-studies.org (26 April 2023). 

18. Bridge Initiative Team, “Factsheet: Common Anti-Muslim Tropes,” Bridge: A Georgetown University Initiative (4 December 2018).

19. Marc Lamont Hill and Mitchell Plitnick, Except for Palestine: The Limits of Progressive Politics (The New Press, 2021).

20. Justin Papp, “Protesters Calling for Cease-Fire in Gaza Keep Up Drumbeat on Capitol Hill,” Roll Call (16 November 2023).

21. “‘Let Gaza Live’: Calls for Cease-Fire Fill Grand Central Terminal,” New York Times (31 October 2023).

22. “March for Israel Speaker Pastor Hagee Once Said God ‘Sent Hitler to Help Jews Reach the Promised Land,’” Democracy Now! (15 November 2023).

23. Ali Harb, “‘No Ceasefire’: Israel Supporters Gather in Washington, DC, Amid Gaza War,” aljazeera.com (15 November 2023).

24. For a partial list of the demonstrations and groups involved, cf. Heather Hollingsworth and David Crary, “Longtime Israeli Policy Foes Are Leading US Protests Against Israel’s Action in Gaza. Who Are They?” apnews.com (16 November 2023). Ali Harb, “Group Stages ‘Die-Ins’ Across Washington, DC to Raise Awareness for Gaza,” aljazeera.com (28 November 2023).

25. Kelly Hayes, “This Weekend’s DC Protest Was Largest Pro-Palestine Mobilization in US History,” truthout.org (5 November 2023).

26. “Estimated 290K Attend March for Israel in Washington DC,” ABC 7 Chicago (14 November 2023).

27. Maha Nassar, “‘From the River to the Sea’—a Palestinian Historian Explores the Meaning and Intent of Scrutinized Slogan,” theconversation.com (16 November 2023).

28. Anti-Defamation League, “Allegation: ‘From the River to the Sea Palestine Will be Free’,” adl.org (26 October 2023).

29. “Censuring Representative Rashida Tlaib for Antisemitic Activity, Sympathizing With Terrorist Organizations, and Leading an Insurrection at the United States Capitol Complex,” H. Res. 829, 118th Congress (1 November 2023).

30. Akela Lacy, “GOP Representative Denies Existence of ‘Innocent Palestinian Civilians’ and Tries to Hobble Aid to Gaza,” theintercept.com (1 November 2023).

31. Mychael Schnell and Mike Lillis, “House Democrat Pulls Resolution to Censure GOP Rep. Mast,” thehill.com (8 November 2023).

32. “Voters Agree the US Should Call for a Ceasefire and De-Escalation of Violence in Gaza to Prevent Civilian Deaths,” dataforprogress.com (20 October 2023).

33. “Reuters/Ipsos Survey: Israel Hamas War and the 2024 Election,” ipsos.com (15 November 2023).

34. Akbar Shahid Ahmed, “Exclusive: ‘Mutiny Brewing’ Inside State Department Over Israel-Palestine Policy,” huffpost.com (19 October 2023).

35. Nahal Toosi, “US Diplomats Slam Israel Policy in Leaked Memo,” politico.com (6 November 2023).

36. Michael Birnbaum and John Hudson, “Blinken Confronts State Dept. Dissent Over Biden’s Gaza Policy,” Washington Post (14 November 2023).

37. Akbar Shahid Ahmed, “Biden’s Israel-Gaza Approach Sidelines State Department, and Officials Fear the Worst,” huffpost.com (2 November 2023).

38. Akbar Shahid Ahmed, “‘I Couldn’t Shift Anything’: Senior State Department Official Resigns Over Biden’s Gaza Policy,” huffpost.com (19 October 2023).

39. “A Statement by Journalists: We Condemn Israel’s Killing of Journalists in Gaza and Urge Integrity in Western Media Coverage of Israel’s Atrocities Against Palestinians,” protect-journalists.com (9 November 2023). For empirical support for allegations of pro-Israel media bias, cf. Conor Smyth, “For Cable News, a Palestinian Life Is Not the Same as an Israeli Life,” fair.org (17 November 2023).

40. Max Tani, “LA Times Blocks Reporters Who Signed Open Letter Criticizing Israel From Covering Gaza,” semafor.com (17 November 2023).

41. “‘No Ceasefire, No Votes’: Arab American Support for Biden Plummets Over Gaza Ahead of 2024 Election,” democracynow.org (7 November 2023).

42. National Muslim Democratic Council, “2023 Ceasefire Ultimatum,” muslimdems.org (30 October 2023).

43. Kathy Frankovic and David Montgomery, “Americans Support Ceasefires in Both Israel-Hamas and Russia-Ukraine Wars,” yougov.com (29 November 2023).

44. Sharon Zhang, “Biden Approval Hits Low With 70 Percent of Young Voters Opposing His Gaza Policy,” truthout.org (21 November 2023).

45. “Modest Backing for Israel in Gaza Crisis,” pewresearch.org (13 January 2009).

 

 

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