Israel’s genocide in Gaza has galvanized massive opposition on the antiwar left and set in motion a sea change in American politics concerning Israel.
Last month, a Quinnipiac poll showed marked declines in almost every metric concerning attitudes toward Israel in the wake of Gaza. Support for Palestinians for the first time exceeds support for Israel (37 to 36 percent). Exactly 50 percent consider Gaza a genocide. Sixty percent oppose further arms shipments to Israel. A similar number oppose Israel’s war on Gaza. A majority (53 percent) opposes Trump’s handling of the Gaza conflict. Forty percent consider US policy “too supportive” of Israel.
These are shocking numbers, which have never been recorded in many years’ worth of previous polls that have consistently reflected strong support for Israel and far less for Palestinians. The call for a suspension of military aid, for example, has been taboo in mainstream discourse for decades. Attitudes hitherto considered unthinkable have now become mainstream.
It is, of course, tragic that it takes genocide to move American public opinion. Decades of activism on the antiwar left barely moved the needle. It took a looming Holocaust to break the barrier. Still, the barrier has broken.
The party has been riven by a schism between a senior leadership aligned with the Israel lobby and the billionaire donor elite; and the left, grassroots youth wing represented by the Squad in Congress. It played out at a recent Democratic National Committee (DNC) meeting at which antiwar Democrats proposed a resolution calling for an end to the war and ban of weapons sales to Israel. DNC senior leaders countered with their own resolution supported by the American Israel Political Action Committee (AIPAC) and its party proxy, the Democratic Majority for Israel, which called only for release of the Israeli hostages. The polling data suggests that these party grandees are wildly out of touch with where their…
Auteur: Richard Silverstein
