A palpable shift on the question of Israel’s genocide in Gaza is transpiring in American politics.
Over the past week, prominent figures who have said nothing about or even actively supported Israel’s nonstop killing spree have suddenly woken up with the same disgust and heartache as the rest of us who have watched this obscenity for two years. We’re seeing it from politicians who have made slavish fealty to anything Israel does core to their brand, like former New York governor Andrew Cuomo, Sen. Cory Booker, and Reps. Richie Torres, Hakeem Jeffries, and Dan Goldman. We’re seeing it from Barack Obama, who has largely been too busy producing a sketch show to bother weighing in until now. And we’re seeing it from Amy Klobuchar, who two weeks ago posed grinning alongside Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu, the man responsible for what she now says is “unacceptable” human suffering.
We’re seeing it from Marjorie Taylor Greene, the MAGA congressperson who has become the first Republican lawmaker (and one of the first lawmakers from any party) to call what’s happening in Gaza a genocide. We’re even, to some extent, seeing it from Donald Trump himself, who publicly contradicted Netanyahu to acknowledge the starvation in Gaza.
We’ve also seen it among media figures like the conservative Ross Douthat, the pro-Israel Yair Rosenberg, and pro-Israel outlets like the Forward. And we’re seeing it from supine world leaders like the UK’s Keir Starmer, Australia’s Anthony Albanese, and France’s Emmanuel Macron.
All of them are unequivocally condemning the human-made famine Israel has deliberately engineered in Gaza, and expressing in often emotional terms their outrage at that unspeakable crime and sympathy for its Palestinian victims, most of them children.
This might not sound like much. You’re supposed to condemn the deliberate starvation of children, after all. And yet, getting US politicians and the mainstream…
Auteur: Branko Marcetic
