How Palestine has become a domestic US political issue

Arab and Muslim American voters did not remove the Democrats from office, nor did they cost Kamala Harris the Oval Office. Last week’s elections merely sent a strong message that Palestine matters, not only to Arabs and Muslims but to many other Americans as well.

The people who cost the Democrats the elections were the Democrats themselves. Their humiliating defeat on Nov. 5 was due largely to their undeniable role in the Israeli war and genocide in Gaza.

Peter Beinart put it best in his Nov. 7 op-ed in The New York Times, entitled “Democrats Ignored Gaza and Brought Down Their Party.” He wrote: “Israel’s slaughter and starvation of Palestinians — funded by US taxpayers and live-streamed on social media — has triggered one of the greatest surges in progressive activism in a generation.” Beinart correctly indicated that the core of this activism was “Black Americans and the young.”

Undeniably, for the first time in US election history, Palestine has become a domestic American political issue — a nightmare realization for those who labored to maintain US foreign policy in the Middle East as an exclusively Israeli domain.

Aside from Arab voters, Black voters and those from other minority groups who prioritized Palestine, many white Americans also felt the same way. This claim is particularly important, as it suggests that American voters are challenging the identity politics paradigm and are now thinking around common struggles, values and morality.

American voters are challenging the identity politics paradigm and are now thinking around common struggles, values and morality

Dr. Ramzy Baroud

“Democrats may no longer be able to rely on young voters to boost numbers, as Harris appears on track to have the lowest support among voters aged 18-29 in this century,” a report in the British Independent newspaper noted. Knowing the relatively strong support for Palestine among young Americans, US politicians have much to worry about in coming elections.

We already know that support for Palestine is overwhelmingly strong among young Democrats. A poll conducted by Gallup in March 2023 indicated that, for the first time, their “sympathies … now lie more with the Palestinians than the Israelis, 49 percent versus 38 percent.”

Even more astonishingly, the overall US Democratic constituency is more pro-Palestine than pro-Israel. According to a poll conducted by the Pew Research Center in April, the overall young American population is “more likely to sympathize with the Palestinian people than the Israeli people.” While a third of adults under 30 sympathized “entirely or mostly” with Palestinians, only 14 percent sympathized with the Israelis.

These numbers did not seem to matter to the Democrats in the recent election campaign, as they continued to take for granted the votes of young people and minority groups. They made a grave mistake.

The Biden administration has played a central role in funding and sustaining the Israeli war machine, thus facilitating the Israeli genocide in Gaza. Millions of Americans took notice and acted on their collective sense of rage to punish the Democrats for what they had done to the Palestinian people.

According to a report prepared for Brown University’s Costs of War project, the Biden administration granted Israel a record of at least $17.9 billion in military aid in the first year of the war. Additionally, according to a report published on Oct. 4 by the nonprofit investigative newspaper ProPublica, the US has shipped more than 50,000 tonnes of weaponry to Israel since Oct. 7, 2023.

And just hours after the US presidential election result was announced, the Israeli Ministry of Defense signed a deal “to acquire 25 F-15IA combat jets from US manufacturer Boeing for $5.2 billion, with an option to get 25 more,” according to Defense News. In other words, Biden remains unrepentant.

Democrats continued to take for granted the votes of young people and minority groups. They made a grave mistake

Dr. Ramzy Baroud

Biden, Harris and others can use twisted logic to justify their support for Israel in any way they wish. However, there can be no denying that this administration has played a leading role in the Israeli genocide in Gaza. The Democrats were duly and deservedly penalized by American voters.

However, the understandable euphoria among many of Palestine’s supporters in the US notwithstanding, we must not harbor any illusions. Neither President-elect Donald Trump nor his entourage of right-wing politicians will be the saviors of Palestine.

We must recall that it was Trump’s first term in office that paved the road to the complete marginalization of the Palestinians. He did so by granting Israel sovereignty over East Jerusalem, recognizing the illegal settlements as legitimate, waging financial warfare against Palestinians and attempting to destroy UNRWA, among other actions.

If Trump returns to his old destructive policies in Palestine, another war will certainly start.

This means that the pro-Palestine camp, which has managed to convert solidarity into decisive political action, must not wait for the new US administration to adopt a more sensible political line on Palestine. Judging by the history of Republican support for Israel, no such sensibility should be expected.

Thus, it is time to build on the existing solidarity among all American groups that voted against genocide in the latest elections. This is the perfect opportunity to translate votes into sustained action and pressure, so that all aspects of the US government may hear and heed the deafening chants of “ceasefire now” and “free, free Palestine.”

This time, these chants are backed up by solid evidence that American voters can destabilize the entire political paradigm.

• Dr. Ramzy Baroud is a journalist and author. He is editor of The Palestine Chronicle and nonresident senior research fellow at the Center for Islam and Global Affairs. His latest book, co-edited with Ilan Pappe, is “Our Vision for Liberation: Engaged Palestinian Leaders and Intellectuals Speak Out.” X: @RamzyBaroud