Khury Petersen-Smith
Since the state
of Israel’s founding, its leaders and supporters have sought acceptance among
other states as a peer, and legitimacy in the eyes of the global public. It has
achieved mixed success on the former — and failed repeatedly on the latter.
The examples are
numerous. The 2022 World Cup, for one, saw a flood of social media videos
involving Israeli reporters pursuing interviews with soccer fans, only to be
rebuffed or confronted for Israel’s treatment of Palestinians. Fans refused to
talk to Israeli journalists on camera. English fans shouted “Free Palestine!”
during an interview. And in an especially telling scene, a group of Moroccan
fans walked away from a reporter after he shared that he was working for
Israeli television, prompting the journalist to yell as they left, “But we have
peace! You signed the peace agreement!”
The Abraham
Accords — which normalized relations between Israel and several Arab states,
including Morocco — may have represented the governments that signed them, but
not necessarily the people who they ruled. Indeed, with pro-Palestine scenes
throughout the event and ubiquitous Palestinian flags, a joke circulated before
the tournament’s conclusion: No need to watch the final, because we already
know which country won the World Cup — Palestine.
The episode was
a reminder of what international law scholar Richard Falk calls “the Legitimacy
War,” in which large numbers of people around the world question Israel’s
claims of self-defense to justify military violence, and many doubt its
legitimacy as a state on Palestinian land. The U.S., however, has been an
outlier: Washington leads the small minority of countries in the UN General
Assembly that vote in opposition to resolutions condemning Israel’s actions.
Those votes have been largely representative of an American public that either
embraces or passively accepts Israeli violence and U.S. support for it.
That is, until
this past year. The genocidal Israeli offensive that began in October 2023,
following a breach of Israeli fences by Palestinians in Gaza and attack on
nearby Israeli towns, is historic for a number of reasons. The first is the
Israeli assault’s sheer brutality, which experts call “by far the most intense,
destructive, and fatal conflict for civilians” in this century. The year of
catastrophic violence is also noteworthy for the outpouring of protest it
sparked in the U.S.
While popular
understanding of the Palestinian struggle in the U.S. is still far from that
elsewhere in the world, there has nonetheless been an enormous shift. The
yearslong, determined but marginalized movement for Palestinian rights in the
U.S. both led and was eclipsed by a massive wave of dissent, which produced
some 3,000 campus protests during the spring 2024 semester alone.
Whereas
majorities of Americans sympathized with the argument that Israel had a right
to self-defense in the days immediately following the October 7 attacks, the
devastating Israeli offensive in its wake pushed many to support a ceasefire.
When polls showed that a whopping 68 percent of people in the U.S. supported a
ceasefire just over a month into Israel’s assault, it marked a breakthrough:
For the first time ever, the majority of Americans aligned with the movement
for Palestinian rights on a policy demand.
Israel’s
horrific offensive has driven this conversation. The apocalyptic toll of its
airstrikes, the impact of its forced displacement of Palestinians across Gaza
into makeshift camps (which Israel has then attacked), and its systematic
targeting of medical and aid infrastructure and personnel have all achieved
coverage in mainstream U.S. media. While those news media largely accept
Israel’s claims of “self-defense” uncritically, their reporting nonetheless
constitutes the most extensive mainstream coverage of the plight of
Palestinians in U.S. history.
Crucially
though, it is Palestinians in Gaza themselves — as journalists and as ordinary
people with phones — documenting their own genocide, narrating their own
stories and rebutting Israeli framing, that have most deeply informed
sympathies in the U.S. public.
For people in
the U.S., this abundant — if devastating — access to the reality in Gaza has
combined with mass protest to produce opposition to the U.S. arming of the
genocide. From highly visible dissent by Jewish activists, to the largest march
against Israeli aggression in U.S. history, to the spring’s student
encampments, the movement demanding a ceasefire was a leading factor in
convincing Americans to adopt that position.
Remarkably, the
protest movement successfully pushed majorities of Americans to go beyond the
call for a cessation of hostilities, with a CBS News poll revealing that 61
percent of Americans polled (and 77 percent of Democratic voters) said the U.S.
“should not send weapons and supplies to Israel.”
Decisions by the
International Court of Justice that Israel was plausibly committing genocide in
Gaza, and by the International Criminal Court to charge the Israeli prime
minister and defense minister with war crimes and crimes against humanity, only
fueled this sentiment.
Rooted in the
protest movement, opposition to U.S. support for the Israeli slaughter, calls
for ceasefire and support for an arms embargo even found expression in
Washington’s halls of power. This began with Biden administration staff
confronting their high-ranking supervisors, and in some cases resigning from
their positions. It culminated in November, with 19 senators voting in favor of
joint resolutions of disapproval against shipments of certain U.S. weapons to
Israel.
While recent
years have seen isolated but bold critique of U.S. arming of Israeli violence
by some members, Congress has institutionally remained adamant in its support
for continuing the decadeslong policy of arming Israel without reservation.
In 2024, the
number of members challenging that support grew. Not long ago, it was hard to
imagine that nearly a fifth of members of one of the most elite political
institutions at the core of U.S. power — the Senate — would challenge U.S.
pro-Israel orthodoxy. By virtue of a movement that has shaken the country, it
happened.
That vote only
shows part of the story, of course. The core leadership of the U.S. political
class has taken many opportunities to remind members of Congress who question
unconditional aid to Israel of their minority status in that body. Israeli
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s address to a joint session of Congress in
July was a dramatic illustration. Invited by congressional leadership —
including Democratic Sen. Chuck Schumer and House Minority Leader Hakeem
Jeffries — Netanyahu repeated the narrative that it is Palestinians who are
genocidal, and that Israel was acting in self-defense. The prime minister spoke
to thunderous, standing ovations by members of Congress.
But ironically,
the event illustrated the growing cleavage between the U.S.’s political class
and its population. Indeed, the heavily policed, thousands-strong protest
outside of the Capitol during Netanyahu’s speech was more representative of
U.S. popular sentiment than the applause of Congress members inside.
Dozens of
members — and then-presidential candidate Vice President Kamala Harris —
skipped the prime minister’s speech. Most did so quietly, and if they were not
necessarily acting out of respect for Palestinian rights, they had at least
concluded that being seen at the speech and associated with Netanyahu may be a
liability, rather than a boon, to their political fortunes.
When the White
House hinted in May at the possibility of consequences for Israel’s conduct in
Gaza, Netanyahu responded with bravado: “If we have to stand alone, we will
stand alone.”
“But it is an
empty promise,” said David E. Rosenberg, economics editor for the Israeli
newspaper Haaretz. “As large and technologically sophisticated as Israel’s arms
industry is, it could never fulfill the country’s needs for basics such as
fighter jets, submarines, and bombs.”
The fact is that
Israel’s legitimacy in the eyes of the world — especially among the public of
its primary patron, the U.S. — is critical for the state to carry out its plans
in Gaza, the occupied West Bank, Lebanon, and beyond.
That legitimacy
is fragile, relative to other states. A combination of the recency of its
founding, the colonial violence central to its establishment (and every day of
its operation since) and the Palestinian refusal to dissolve as a nation, puts
the unquestioned assumption of legitimacy that other states enjoy into the
spotlight when it comes to Israel. This is why it is so common for
conversations about Israel’s egregious acts to quickly escalate to the
question: “Do you think that Israel has the right to exist?” States everywhere
do horrendous things, but Israel’s fundamental illegitimacy requires constant
justification of its actions and its existence by its supporters.
And while
Israel’s legitimacy is more secure among older Americans, and hegemonic among
senior U.S. officials, “the longer-term outlook for Israel is less certain,”
writes Rosenberg. Americans under 29, he notes, “hold a more favorable view of
Palestinians as a people than they do of Israelis. If these opinions stay with
the young as they grow older and advance to positions of power and influence
(and assuming that the Israel-Palestine dynamic remains unchanged), Israel
could be in for tough times.”
Indeed, the
triumph of referendums supporting divestment among college students, including
on elite campuses like Yale and Princeton, suggests a rising generation with an
outlook on Israel that diverges from current U.S. policy.
A state’s
legitimacy does not need to be vanquished for it to go into crisis. When it is
simply seriously contested, that undermines a state’s ability to act. Hence
Israel’s enormous investment in shoring up support and normalization of its
membership in a global society, including a multimillion-dollar budget for its
Ministry for Strategic Affairs, tasked with buttressing Israel’s image. And
Israel’s government just proposed the largest public relations budget ever for
the Foreign Ministry.
Director General
of the Ministry of Strategic Affairs Sima Vaknin-Gil said in 2016, “Today,
among the countries of the world, Israel is a pariah state. Our objective is
that in 2025 nobody in the world will raise the question ‘does Israel have the
right to exist?’”
As we enter
2025, majorities of Americans support cutting military support for Israel.
Witnessing the annihilation of sections of Palestinian society in Gaza in an
assault that Israeli officials describe as “existential,” more Americans than
ever are questioning the legitimacy of Israel.
The movement for
Palestinian rights must grapple with the new political possibilities and
responsibilities to advance support for Palestinian rights that come with
irreversible damage to Israel’s credibility.
In 2016,
Vaknin-Gil said that “success will be a change in the narrative about Israel in
the world. That the narrative in the world won’t be that Israel equals
apartheid.”
As we enter
2025, the Strategic Affairs Ministry is even further from its goal than when
its director general articulated it. Because actually, the growing
understanding around the world — and in the United States — is that Israel
equals genocide.
Jake
Johnson
Israeli
forces early Thursday carried out another attack on a so-called humanitarian
"safe zone" in southern Gaza, killing at least 11 people—including
three children—as the assault on the Palestinian enclave raged with no end in
sight.
Reutersreported
that at least 15 people were also wounded in the attack on Al-Mawasi, an
overcrowded tent city on Gaza's southern coast that Israel has repeatedly
bombed. In one case late last year, the Israeli military used 2,000-pound bombs
supplied by the United States to attack the camp filled with displaced
families.
The
Israel Defense Forces (IDF) confirmed in a social media post that it carried
out the strike on the designated humanitarian zone, claiming it targeted Hassam
Shahwan, whom the IDF described as the head of Hamas Internal Security Forces
in southern Gaza.
Thursday's
attack underscored humanitarian aid groups' warning that nowhere is truly safe
for Gazans as Israeli forces carry out deadly airstrikes across the besieged
enclave. Al Jazeera reported early Thursday that in addition to the IDF's
attack on Al-Mawasi, "there has been a significant escalation of strikes
in central Gaza."
"Palestinians
are mourning those killed in an Israeli strike on civilians in the suburb of
central Deir el-Balah city," the outlet reported. "The
bodies—shredded into pieces—have been brought to Al-Aqsa Hospital."
"In
northern Gaza," Al Jazeera added, "seven civilians were killed in
Jabalia following an Israeli attack. In the Shati refugee camp, reports are
emerging of three people killed in an attack at the central market."
Israel's
incessant bombing is fueling a devastating humanitarian crisis worsened by
falling temperatures. At least six Palestinian children—including several who
were living in makeshift shelters in Al-Mawasi—have died of hypothermia in
recent days.
"Last
winter—although people were already displaced and the conditions were
harsh—there were still some buildings to take shelter in," Pascale
Coissard, emergency coordinator at Doctors Without Borders, said Thursday.
"Today, after 14 months of war and destruction of infrastructure, most of
the people in Gaza are living in tents that barely isolate the cold wind and
rain. Just in the past 12 hours, the rain hasn't stopped."
"Even
before their lives have started outside the womb, babies are at risk of disease
and death," Coissard added. "Once born, babies face immediate and
extreme challenges: displaced in the cold of winter, without adequate access to
warmth, shelter, or healthcare, as Israel continues to bomb Gaza and restrict
essential supplies from entering the strip, while looting of aid trucks within
the enclave is making it difficult for that small amount of aid allowed by
Israeli authorities to reach those in need."
CNNnoted
earlier this week that "the cold weather has not only claimed the lives of
children."
"On
Friday, the health ministry said a nurse was found dead in his tent in
Al-Mawasi on Friday due to severe cold," the outlet reported.
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