How the October 7, 2023, Attack Reshaped American Politics and Attitudes Toward Israel

Douglas Murray, writing in The Free Press, reflects on the second anniversary of the attack on Israel by Hamas terrorists:

"Two years after October 7, Israel has defeated its enemies. The West is still surrendering to them."

Certainly not everyone in the West is "surrendering" to Hamas or advocating for a Palestinian state. But in America, the intelligentsia, academia, much of the media, and most of the Democratic Party are standing in line, waiting their turn to bend the knee to the Palestinians and welcome the bloody terrorists into the community of nations.

How did the victims of slaughter become "purveyors of genocide" in the space of less than two years? It's complicated.

In the United States, it's a mixture of domestic political warfare and a latent antisemitism disguised as "anti-Zionism." The Democratic Party political machine now includes dozens of international non-governmental organizations (NGOs) whose Jew-hatred runs deep and resentment toward Israel is a given. The Democrats rely on these groups to fill the ranks of volunteers who do most political campaign scutwork.

Also, Democrats oppose Israel because Donald Trump and most conservatives support the Jewish state. The Democratic cadres of youthful activists, radicalized on college campuses, waving Palestinian flags and chanting, "From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free," aren't exactly sure why they oppose Israel, except it's the fashionable thing to do. They swallow whole Hamas propaganda and mouth the platitudes taught to them by professors who know exactly what the propaganda they're spouting means for Israel.

University leaders who mostly agree with Hamas had been used to occupying a privileged position in American society. All they had to do in the past to defend themselves against charges that they tolerate antisemitism on campus was to piously proclaim their allegiance to "academic freedom."

It didn't work this time. And it set off a bomb in the academy and on campuses across the country. Several prominent university presidents have already paid the price for their smug acceptance of antisemitism on campus. And the reckoning has hardly begun.

Douglas Murray in The Free Press:

Even 10 years ago it would have seemed impossible that Ivy League universities in America would have become epicenters of support not for the Palestinian cause but for Hamas. If you had told me 25 years ago, when I first visited Princeton, that students at the university in the 2020s would be found chanting “Glory to our martyrs,” even in my most pessimistic moments I would have accused you of being an alarmist.
Why did the lie that Israel was committing—and indeed intended to commit—“genocide” in Gaza take root? Why did some of the world’s most prominent politicians, podcasters, pundits, and others take the charges of the most intense anti-Israel activists and repeat these claims as accepted fact? Why did many of the most educated people in the West take the side of death cults from the very moment that Hamas attacked Israel? How was it that in every major city across Europe the streets have been clogged up with anti-Israel protests week in and week out, but that a brave young Iranian holding up a sign stating British government policy in London (“Hamas are terrorists”) should be repeatedly detained by the British police?

“In the post-Oct. 7 political world, progressive supporters of Israel find themselves increasingly unwelcome on the left. In progressive spaces, Zionism is a dirty word akin to ‘Nazism’ and those who consider themselves Zionists are being shown the door," writes reporter James Kirchik.

This is the most profound change in American politics over the last two years. It was the Democratic Party in America whose enthusiastic support for a Jewish state enabled President Harry Truman to push through UN Resolution 181 in 1947, creating the state of Israel. There followed more than 50 years of reliable Democratic backing for the state of Israel in war and peace, regardless of which party or prime minister was in charge.

That has ended as the Democrats have chosen the wrong side of a very clear divide between right and wrong, good and evil.

"As extremists have risen, mostly on the left, but with growing pockets on the right as well, antisemitism is no longer the purview of university Middle East departments, but a core element of critical race theory, Marxism, anti-capitalism, pro-trans extremism and pro-choice illiberalism on the left," writes Danielle Pletka, distinguished senior fellow in foreign and defense policy studies at the American Enterprise Institute.

Jews in Western countries are under attack, unlike at any point in recent history. We'd have to go back to the early years of the 20th century through World War II to see a similar assault on the Jewish people. The casual antisemitic obscenities, the Nazi graffiti smeared on synagogues, community centers, and other places where Jews gather, and the growing number of physical assaults, murders, and atrocities committed against Jews throughout the Western world are growing in number and intensity.

Meanwhile, the left continues to repeat Hamas propaganda and claim that Israel is committing "genocide" when it's apparent to any reasonable observer that no such action is being undertaken by the Jewish state.

With the bipartisan consensus supporting Israel having collapsed, what will become of U.S.-Israel relations? We are entering a whole new era in our relations with the Jewish state, with significant implications for the future of both nations.

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