<div dir="ltr"><div dir="ltr">
<div class="gmail-top-anchor"></div>
<div id="gmail-toolbar" class="gmail-toolbar-container">
</div><div class="gmail-container" lang="undefined" dir="ltr">
<div class="gmail-header gmail-reader-header gmail-reader-show-element">
<a class="gmail-domain gmail-reader-domain" href="https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20241112-voting-against-genocide-how-gaza-defeated-the-democratic-establishment/">middleeastmonitor.com</a>
<div class="gmail-domain-border"></div>
<h1 class="gmail-reader-title">Voting against genocide: How Gaza defeated the Democratic establishment
</h1><div class="gmail-memo-news-author-neme gmail-swift-in-viewport">
by
<a href="https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/6-author/178473/">Dr Ramzy Baroud</a>
</div>
<div class="gmail-memo-news-author-twitter gmail-swift-in-viewport">
<a href="https://twitter.com/RamzyBaroud">
<span class="gmail-memo-news-author-twitter-icon gmail-swift-in-viewport"><i class="gmail-fab gmail-fa-twitter"></i></span></a></div>
<div class="gmail-meta-data">
<div class="gmail-reader-estimated-time">November 12, 2024<br></div>
</div>
</div>
<hr>
<div class="gmail-content">
<div class="gmail-moz-reader-content gmail-reader-show-element"><div id="gmail-readability-page-1" class="gmail-page"><div>
<p>Arab and Muslim American voters did not
remove Democrats from office, nor did they cost Kamala Harris the Oval
Office. They merely sent a strong message that Palestine matters, not
only to Arabs and Muslims but to many Americans as well.</p>
<p>The ones who cost the Democrats the elections are the Democrats
themselves. Their humiliating defeat on 5 November was due largely to
their undeniable role in the Israeli war and genocide in Gaza.</p>
<p>Peter Beinart put it best in his 7 November op-ed in the New York Times,<a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2024/11/07/opinion/democrats-israel-gaza-war.html"> entitled</a> “<i>Democrats Ignored Gaza and Brought Down Their Party</i>.”</p>
<p>“Israel’s slaughter and starvation of Palestinians — funded by U.S.
taxpayers and live-streamed on social media,” according to Beinart, has
“triggered one of the greatest surges in progressive activism in a
generation.” The writer correctly indicates that the core of this
activism was “Black Americans and the young”.</p>
<p>Undeniably, for the first time in US election history, Palestine has
become a domestic American political issue – a nightmare realisation for
those who laboured to maintain US foreign policy in the Middle East as
an exclusive Israeli domain.</p>
<p>Aside from Arab voters, black voters and voters from other minority
groups prioritised Palestine, many white Americans 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.</p>
<p>“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 UK’s <i>Independent </i>newspaper <a href="https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politics/election-trump-harris-demographic-breakdown-b2643412.html">noted</a>.
Knowing the relatively strong support for Palestine among young
Americans, US politicians have much to worry about in coming elections.</p>
<p>We already know that support for Palestine is overwhelmingly strong among young Democrats. A poll <a href="https://news.gallup.com/poll/472070/democrats-sympathies-middle-east-shift-palestinians.aspx">conducted</a>
by Gallup in March 2023 indicated that, for the first time, Democrats’
“sympathies … now lie more with the Palestinians than the Israelis, 49%
versus 38%.”</p>
<p>Even more astonishing, the overall US Democratic constituency is more pro-Palestine than Israel. According to a <a href="https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2024/04/02/younger-americans-stand-out-in-their-views-of-the-israel-hamas-war/">poll</a>
conducted by the Pew Research Centre last April, the overall young
American population “are more likely to sympathize with the Palestinian
people than the Israeli people.” While a third of adults under 30
sympathised “entirely or mostly” with Palestinians, only 14 per cent
sympathised with the Israelis.</p>
<p><strong>OPINION: <a href="https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20241107-the-pas-misplaced-optimism/">The PA’s misplaced optimism</a></strong></p>
<p>These numbers did not seem to matter to the Democrats who continued
to take for granted the votes of youth and other minority groups. They
made a grave mistake.</p>
<p>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 upon their
sense of collective rage to punish the Democrats for what they had done
to the Palestinian people.</p>
<p>According to a <a href="https://watson.brown.edu/costsofwar/papers/2024/USspendingIsrael">report</a> prepared for Brown University’s Costs of War project, the Biden Administration has <a href="https://apnews.com/article/israel-hamas-war-us-military-spending-8e6e5033f7a1334bf6e35f86e7040e14">granted</a> Israel a record of at least $17.9 billion in military aid to Israel in the first year of the war. Additionally, according to a <a href="https://www.propublica.org/article/israel-gaza-america-biden-administration-weapons-bombs-state-department">report</a> published on 4 October by the non-profit investigative newspaper ProPublica, “the US has <a href="https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20240827-israel-receives-500th-us-military-supply-aircraft-since-7-october/">shipped </a>more than 50,000 tons of weaponry” to Israel since 7 October, 2023.</p>
<p>Merely hours after the US presidential election results were announced, the Israeli Ministry of Defence <a href="https://www.defensenews.com/global/mideast-africa/2024/11/07/israel-to-buy-25-f-15s-with-eyes-on-long-distance-combat-punch/">signed</a>
a deal “to acquire 25 F-15IA combat jets from U.S. manufacturer Boeing
for $5.2 billion, with an option to get 25 more,” according to <i>Defense News</i>. In other words, Biden remains unrepentant.</p>
<p>Biden, Harris and others may <a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2024/10/31/bill-clinton-criticised-for-saying-israel-forced-to-kill-gaza-civilians">twist the logic</a>
to justify their support for Israel in any way they wish. However,
there can be no denying that their administration has played a leading
role in the Israeli genocide in Gaza. For this, they were duly and
deservedly penalised by American voters.</p>
<p>The understandable euphoria among many of Palestine’s supporters in
the US notwithstanding, we must not harbour any illusions. Neither
President-elect Donald Trump nor his entourage of right-wing politicians
will be the saviours of Palestine.</p>
<p>We must recall that it was Trump’s first term in office that <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/06/world/middleeast/trump-jerusalem-israel-capital.html">paved the road</a> to the complete marginalisation of the Palestinians. He did so by <a href="https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20171206-trump-recognizes-jerusalem-as-israeli-capital/">granting</a> Israel sovereignty over occupied East Jerusalem, recognising the <a href="https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20190321-breaking-trump-says-time-for-us-to-recognize-israeli-sovereignty-over-golan/">illegal settlements</a> as legitimate, waging <a href="https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20180908-trump-cuts-aid-to-palestinian-hospitals-in-occupied-jerusalem/">financial warfare</a> against Palestinians, and <a href="https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20180829-report-us-to-end-all-funding-for-unrwa/">attempting to destroy</a> the UN refugee agency, UNRWA, among other actions.</p>
<p>If Trump returns to his old destructive policies in Palestine, another war will certainly start.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.’</p>
<p>This time around, however, these chants are backed by solid evidence
that American voters are capable of destabilising the entire political
paradigm, as they did on 5 November, 2024.</p>
<p><strong>READ: <a href="https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20241031-genocide-is-embedded-in-us-diplomacy/">Genocide is embedded in US diplomacy</a></strong></p>
<p>The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not
necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Monitor.</p>
</div></div></div>
</div>
<div>
</div>
<div></div>
</div>
</div></div>