The confrontation between Israel and Palestine as a visible point of division between American and European society. Part 3

Read Time:13 Minute, 52 Second

By November, the culture wars between supporters of Israel and Palestine in the West had not only not diminished, but even intensified, and this was particularly evident in the United States. On October 31, protesters with red paint on their hands disrupted the speech of Secretary of State Blinken, who was trying to report on the situation in Israel, and they called him a murderer who has the blood of the children of Gaza on his hands because he defends the “criminal” Zionist regime. Kamala Harris also added fuel to the fire by traveling to American university campuses, trying to calm students who were organizing pro-Palestinian rallies. In the end, the effect was rather the opposite, and street activism in the United States only gained momentum. Democrats in the Senate blocked a Republican bill on aid to Israel, which at the same time cut the budget of the U.S. Internal Revenue Service by the same amount. The Republicans did not want to make concessions, because the issue of support for Israel was a matter of principle for them, and for a while they were in limbo. Meanwhile, the CIA retroactively shifted responsibility for the Hamas attacks to Israel itself. In his opinion, the U.S. handed over the task of surveillance of Gaza to the Israelis, who were themselves to blame for missing the start of the war, and the FBI began to “warm up” the Americans in advance, preparing them for a wave of terrorist attacks inside the U.S. in response to the war in Gaza. Biden, on the other hand, promised to veto any bill supporting Israel unless it included money for Ukraine. Radical supporters of Israel have demanded that humanitarian aid to Gaza be withheld, which they believe was part of Biden’s secret collusion with Egypt and Qatar.

On November 2nd, a female “anti-Zionist” rabbi attacked the president in Minnesota, demanding a quick truce in Gaza. Most American Jews are very liberal and do not accept Israel’s right-wing policies at all, and feeling their pressure, Biden was forced to call for a “humanitarian pause.” The White House again sent Secretary of State Blinken to Israel and Jordan for behind-the-scenes negotiations: the pressure on Netanyahu was increasing, and Washington was intent on taking advantage of the crisis to reformat Israeli politics by arranging a change of power. Non-system politicians are also actively taking advantage of the situation. For example, Cornel West is organizing pro-Palestinian rallies where he calls Israel’s very existence “genocidal,” and West’s ratings have risen to 6%. Another example is even more shocking: Robert Kennedy’s surge to 20%, and the non-systemic left is hijacking the agenda, garnering the votes of all those who are tired of the endless wars and rampant militarism that the war between Israel and Hamas has exposed. Within America, the divide is only getting worse, and the level of Democratic support among the Arab community in the U.S. was 59% in 2020, now it has collapsed to 17%. In states like Michigan and Minnesota, this will create very serious problems for Biden. And that’s not to mention the votes of liberal Jews who don’t support Israel’s policies either, which makes the president extra cautious and restrained on the issue of another Arab-Israeli conflict. To somehow please American Muslims, the White House proposed a strategy to combat Islamophobia in the U.S., but it was unlikely to help Biden much. The ratings of non-systemic leftist candidates who were directly in favor of Palestine were skyrocketing, and it was clear that at this rate Biden would soon start begging Israel to stop the operation because it was destroying the entire electoral concept of the Democratic Party.

There is a culture war raging in the U.S. right now over Israel, which, as we have pointed out many times in past articles, has more to do with American reality itself than with events in the Middle East. Thus, the liberal press has begun comparing MAGA-Republicans to Hamas, adding that they are an even greater threat to democracy than the Islamists. Leftist journalists even created a theory that the new Speaker of the House of Representatives, Mike Johnson, a conservative evangelical, supposedly wants to turn the U.S. into a theocracy like Iran or the Islamic State. But far more shocking and fractious is the situation in Palestine within the Democratic Party. Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib of Palestinian descent has threatened Biden with consequences for “supporting Palestinian genocide,” and she speaks for the Muslim community and the entire American left. With this demarche, they can support Biden’s opponent Robert Kennedy or Cornel West and bring victory to Trump.

On November 4th, a “National March on Washington” with a call for a truce in Gaza was planned in the U.S. capital, and the organizers promised to gather more than a hundred thousand people. Solidarity marches with the Palestinians were to take place in all liberal metropolitan areas, and in California the protesters even stormed a warship headed for the shores of Israel. “The March on Washington” turned out to be very massive indeed, and more than a hundred thousand demonstrators reached the U.S. capital and held a large-scale rally in support of Palestine. They surrounded the White House and even attempted an assault, climbing the fence and throwing stones at Secret Service agents, while the fence was covered with red paint, accusing Biden of supporting genocide. There have not been such powerful protests in Washington since the summer of the 2020 pogroms, when BLM activists also tried to storm the White House and Trump and his advisers hid in a bunker all night. Now Biden decided not to tempt fate and left Washington in time, although his level of support has plummeted amid the split within the Democrats. Obama immediately came to his aid, holding the entire world responsible for the war in Gaza. However, this hardly helped to pacify the same protesters who surrounded the White House with slogans of “Allahu akbar!” Already two-thirds of Americans are in favor of an immediate truce in Gaza, but the White House’s attempts to somehow influence the situation leave much to be desired. The plan to withdraw foreign refugees from Gaza was on the verge of collapse at one point, and Turkey was increasing pressure on Netanyahu to resign. Biden’s apparatchiks desperately begged and are still begging the countries of the Arab world in partnership with Israel for a humanitarian pause, but no one is still willing to make serious concessions. It was clear that the protests in the West would only grow, and already on November 11th, a “march of millions” in support of Palestine took place in London, where everything was even more dramatic than in Washington.

By November, the Israelis had also joined the street wars in the West, and even the Israeli president was calling to prevent large-scale riots in London, which could have taken place on November 11th, the day of the World War I armistice, when Londoners were going not only to commemorate the veterans of all wars, but also to protest against Tel Aviv’s policies. Before the rally, more than 300 pro-Palestinian groups promised to organize a real “march of millions” in the very center of London, and it was quite realistic, because before that they gathered tens of thousands of people almost every day at train stations and squares, where they had scuffles with the police. The confrontation was reaching a new level, and hundreds of thousands of Arabs and Muslims and liberal activists could be brought in from all over the country. The British right-wing immediately pledged to confront them, and there would be a lot of bloodshed if Palestinian supporters, right-wing fan groups and the police were to clash on the streets of London on the same day. The street rebelled in the U.S. as well, and as we wrote above, pro-Palestinian activists tried to storm the White House. But in London, things could have been more dramatic, because the British authorities deliberately tried to realize a scenario of controlled chaos by staging a massacre between the right and the left, but there was no guarantee that the situation would not eventually get out of control and lead to real violence and casualties.

The first victim of the culture wars around Israel was a 69-year-old Jewish man in Los Angeles who died after a fight with pro-Palestinian activists. He was hit in the head with a megaphone, and he will likely not be the last victim as the street protests only get wider and more violent. The U.S. Senate is rushing to call for $1.2 billion dollars to be allocated to Jewish groups in the U.S. to protect them from anti-semitism. However, amid the budget impasse, they are unlikely to get anything quickly, and as long as the war continues, the level of anti-semitism will grow explosively. Israel, under U.S. pressure, did agree to brief “humanitarian pauses,” but not to declare a cease-fire. Although even former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak now recognizes that the window of opportunity for continuing the war is rapidly closing, public opinion in the West is even more in favor of a truce, and political pressure is mounting. Financially, it will be increasingly difficult to pull the war along, especially if the street battles in Gaza drag on and casualties skyrocket. The negative factor for Israel vis-à-vis the U.S. is not only the street protests by pro-Palestinian activists in American cities, but also the fact that the war risks undermining U.S. relations with the entire Muslim world. Now the Americans have escalated contradictions with Malaysia, which is threatened with sanctions for supporting Palestine. At the same time, Malaysia is one of the key chip manufacturers and a country that the U.S. badly needs as a battering ram in trade wars with China. Turkey, Qatar and Arab countries are not ready to negotiate with the U.S. until there is a truce in Gaza, which is not yet in sight. The Arab street in the West is gathering more and more numerous rallies, and it already threatens to end in bloodshed, turning the Western capitals into the arena of hostilities, which does not strengthen the zeal of European and American leaders to support Israel. Thus, on November 11th, French President Emmanuel Macron, who had previously sided with the Jews, called Israel’s strikes on the Gaza Strip unjustified. In his opinion, Israel “bombs civilians, including children, women and the elderly.” Israeli Prime Minister Benyamin Netanyahu, responding to Macron’s words, did not follow his lead and said that Hamas was responsible for civilian casualties, showing that the French leader’s position was not constructive.

On the night of November 10th in the United States, pro-Palestinian protesters stormed the NY Times newsroom because they accused it of overly neutral coverage of the war in Gaza and demanded that journalists condemn Israel and support a truce. To that end, demonstrators even brought a cartoon of the paper, calling it New York War Crimes, listing the names of all Palestinian dead since October 7th, as well as posters with slogans such as IDF (Israel Defence Forces) = Ku Klux Klan. Another newspaper, the Washington Post, was also hit, forcing it to remove a cartoon of Hamas that depicted the militants using civilians as body armor. Brands like McDonald’s and Starbucks, which have supported Israel, were also hit with boycotts. Teachers’ unions in New York and other liberal U.S. metropolitan areas have also joined the protests, and they are constantly taking schoolchildren to rallies for Palestinians and the truce. The same pro-Palestinian march on November 11th in London set a record for numbers. The organizers were sure they had gathered nearly a million or 800,000 demonstrators bused in from all over Britain, and although the police counted a more conservative 300,000, it was also a lot. Not without fights with the police, but the latter dared to detain only a hundred protesters. The right-wing fans were treated much more harshly, and the most active ones were quickly arrested, while the rest were dispersed into pubs and ordered not to come out while the pro-Palestinian march was going on. Hundreds of thousands of Britons have called for an immediate truce, and the consequences for the politicians they accuse of genocide against the Palestinians could be most unpleasant. The Conservative government, under public pressure, has called for a “humanitarian pause” in Gaza, but while the war continues, London is also reaping its benefits by taking away Israelis’ stakes in Mediterranean gas production. The situation is also heating up on the other side of the Atlantic, where pro-Palestinian protesters have now reached Biden’s Delaware residence with slogans such as “Biden, you will not escape!” and “We accuse you of genocide!”. Daily protests are going on in New York and other metropolitan areas while Biden himself has effectively removed himself from the war in Gaza.

In mid-November, Israeli activists, with the support of Western authorities, tried to fight the Palestinians “on the streets”, which have previously been almost monopolized by them. First, the “March Against Anti-Semitism” took place in Paris, and on November 17th, the first large rally in support of Israel gathered in Washington, D.C., and the organizers counted between 100,000- and 200,000 participants. They were bused in from all over America. Against the backdrop of continuing furious demonstrations in support of Palestinians in other U.S. metropolitan areas, representatives of both parties, namely Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer and Speaker Mike Johnson, addressed the protesters in Washington. The president of Israel even came out via video link, calling on the U.S. to remain a safe country for Jews because it’s a big problem, and the number of anti-semitic outbursts and attacks on Jews has jumped fourfold, with more than 300 since the beginning of October. The outcome of the rally is questionable because most Americans sympathize with Israel, but most of them also favor a truce in Gaza. Besides, supporters of Palestine are much more active, they more often take to the streets and organize direct actions, while this rally for Israel is the first and, most likely, the last. Thus, during the APEC summit (Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation) on November 15th and 16th, another wave of pro-Palestinian demonstrations took place, and in Washington, D.C., demonstrators almost stormed the headquarters of the Democratic National Committee, demanding to stop the war in Gaza and accusing Israel and Biden of genocide of Palestinians. The divide among Democrats is only growing, with more than 80 % of Democratic Party voters supporting an early cease-fire in contrast to Biden and his establishment. Throughout November and December, smaller actions took place almost regularly and Palestinian supporters blocked the dispatch of U.S. ships to the Mediterranean Sea area, or again stormed the Democratic Party office in California because, in their opinion, Biden “betrayed the Palestinians and condemned them to death”. And all these protests and clashes showed two things: first, America and the entire West will never be the same, and the very authorities of these regions have brought up new forces with their ill-considered liberal and migration policies. Secondly, it became another demonstration of the split in society in the U.S. and the EU, which not only prevents them from pursuing a purposeful foreign policy, but can always push these countries into civil conflict.