The latest conflicts between Israel and the Palestinians have shown exactly how much the political center of gravity in the American Democratic Party has shifted in recent years on the issue of conflict.
"The change is drastic; it's tectonic," says pollster John Zogby, who has tracked American attitudes toward the Middle East for decades.
Younger generations in particular sympathize significantly more with the Palestinians - and the generation gap has come to full expression within the Democratic Party.
And while US President Joe Biden expressed more traditional views, insistently repeating that Israel has the right to defend itself against Hamas rocket fire, he found himself in a growing rift in a party that is currently at least as concerned about the conditions on the ground for Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank - and Israeli policies are seen as partly responsible for their suffering.
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Democratic diversity in Congress
In order to get a clearer picture of the change of attitude in the Democratic Party on Israel and the Palestinians, it is enough to start from the most representative American political institution, the Congress.
In the national legislature, American foreign policy sympathies have historically tilted toward Israel's position on conflicts in the Middle East—in part because of the preferences of Jewish voters (a key Democratic constituency) and evangelicals (important to Republicans).
As the US Congress became an increasingly diverse body, however, this had some serious consequences for US policy towards Israel.
A record 23 percent of House and Senate members in 2021 were black, Hispanic, Asian-Pacific or Native American, according to a Pew Foundation study.
Two decades earlier, that figure was 11 percent.
In 1945, it was one percent.
The diversity of origins has led to greater diversity of attitudes and dispersion of power.
The influential group of young liberal congresswomen known informally as "The Squad" includes Palestinian-American Rashida Tlaib of Michigan and Somali refugee Ilhan Omar of Minnesota, for example.
The most prominent member of the group, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York, won the seat in Congress by replacing senior Democratic congressional leader Joe Crowley, who has consistently sided with Israel in past conflicts over the occupied territories.
Overall, the party — and its voters — look a lot more like the 31-year-old Puerto Rican Ocasio-Cortez than the 59-year-old Crowley — and that makes a big difference.
"You have a non-white population, especially among Democrats, who are very sensitive about the treatment of non-white colleagues," Zogby said during recording of the BBC's Amerikast podcast.
"They see Israel as an aggressor."
They don't know about Israel's early history and unlikely triumph over a more numerous enemy, he says.
"They know the time after the intifada; they know the various wars, the asymmetric bombing that was carried out, the innocent civilians who died."
"The Bernie Factor"
If the increasing diversity in Congress is in part the result of the left-wing progressive movement electing politicians like Ocasio-Cortez, that progressive movement owes much to one man, Vermont Democratic Socialist Bernie Sanders.
Early in his career, Sanders - who grew up Jewish and spent some time in Israel in the XNUMXs - was generally sympathetic to Israel's policies.
By the time he first ran for president in 2016, however, he was voicing greater support for the Palestinian cause — a stance that set him apart from the rest of the Democratic field.
In a debate with Hillary Clinton during the race for the party's presidential candidate, held during a wave of Hamas rocket attacks on Israel in March 2016, Sanders spoke directly about the suffering of the Palestinians, their unemployment, "decimated homes, decimated health care, decimated schools."
As the Guardian's Ed Pilkington pointed out at the time, it broke the "unwritten rule" that talking about Palestinian suffering is a losing topic for politicians who want to win higher office.
Sanders, of course, lost both races for the presidential nomination.
The popularity of his outspoken views, however, opened the door for Democrats on the bottom half of the ballot to take the issue public — as they took up other parts of his progressive platform, including expanded health insurance, free college education, a higher minimum wage and environmental reform.
Since then, Sanders has stepped up his condemnation of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, whom he called a "desperate, racist autocrat."
And last week he wrote a guest column for the New York Times, which, while not holding back, no longer seems like a fringe Democratic position.
"The point is that Israel remains the sole sovereign authority in the territory of Israel and Palestine," Sanders wrote.
"Instead of preparing the ground for peace and justice, it further consolidates its unequal and undemocratic control."
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Palestinian lives matter
Sanders concluded that column for the Times by announcing the rise of a "new generation of activists" in the US.
"We saw these activists on the streets of America last summer after the murder of George Floyd," he wrote.
"We see them in Israel. We see them in the Palestinian territories."
His closing words directly take over the words of the Black Lives Matter movement: "Palestinian Lives Matter."
Sanders highlighted what has become apparent during the clashes between Israeli forces and Palestinians over the past two weeks.
Americans who found their political voice during last summer's activism in American cities are now shifting their attention and rhetoric to what they perceive as similar unchecked repression in the Middle East.
"St. Louis sent me here to save lives," Congresswoman Cory Bush of St. Louis — who unseated the longtime Democratic politician in a party-line election last year — said on the House floor Thursday.
"This means opposition to our money going to finance military control, occupation and systems of violent repression and trauma.
"We are against war, against occupation and against apartheid. Period."
That has turned into more and more calls to suspend US military aid to Israel - or at least to use the threat of doing so to pressure Netanyahu to abandon his aggressive policy in the occupied territories.
The slogan "defund the police" now has a counterpart in foreign policy: "defund the Israeli army".
Donald and Bibi
Further complicating matters for traditional supporters of Israel in the Democratic Party is that American policy toward the Jewish state, like almost anything in national politics, has become increasingly polarized along party lines.
The long-time Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who recently built closer ties with the American right, contributed to this to a significant extent.
Obama-era Democrats have not forgotten Netanyahu's address to a joint session of Congress in 2015 at the invitation of Republicans, during which he tried unsuccessfully to undermine congressional approval of the administration's most recognizable diplomatic initiative, the Iran nuclear deal.
During that time, Donald Trump spent four years flaunting close ties to Netanyahu and the Israeli political right.
He cut off humanitarian aid to the Palestinian Authority, moved the US embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem and bypassed the Palestinians in diplomatic negotiations over the Middle East.
That double political blow by Trump and Netanyahu was more than enough to make even some Democrats from the center reconsider their attitudes towards the Palestinian situation.
That trend could continue, in part because, Zogby says, Trump's efforts to pander to Israeli interests have not resulted in support among Jewish voters for Republican candidates.
"It was wishful thinking on their part," Zogby says.
"American Jews are a fundamentally liberal-to-progressive voting entity."
If the Democrats can satisfy their progressive base and not alienate traditional Jewish voters, then it becomes a much safer political move.
Biden as old school
If the debate about Israel among Democrats in Washington is changing, the direction in the White House has only now slowly begun to reflect it.
Biden and his top brass have been slow to call for a cease-fire between Israel and Hamas — trailing even such traditional Israeli supporters as Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer.
They persistently blocked a United Nations Security Council resolution that also advocated a cease-fire.
Transcripts of Biden's phone calls with Netanyahu repeatedly show the president stressing Israel's right to self-defense, with very little hint of criticism.
There was no question of conditionality on US military aid to Israel - and, in fact, before the most recent eruption of violence, Biden even approved the sale of $735 million worth of arms to the Jewish state, much to the displeasure of progressives in the party.
During the party's 2020 presidential race, he called calls by Sanders and others to condition US aid to Israel "outrageous."
The risk on this issue for Biden, however, is obvious.
The president needs the support of progressive leftists in his coalition if he wants to pass his legislative agenda, including an ambitious infrastructure and welfare package.
Until now, that support has been there.
But if the Democratic left believes that Biden is turning his back on what they perceive as Israel's blatant human rights abuses, they may abandon him.
"We're seeing a steady increase in support for the Palestinians, but it's never really been a high-intensity issue before," Zogbi says.
"It's becoming that now. It also becomes a big issue of divisiveness, especially among Democrats, driven by non-white voters and younger voters, progressives in general."
For that to happen in the foreign policy arena, in the Middle East, which has been a low priority during Biden's presidency so far, would be especially painful — and that's one reason why supporters of Israel in the Democratic Party worry that Biden's support would , which was mostly unwavering during decades of civil service, could now become shaky.
Politicians. namely, they cannot stay too long out of step with their own political base.
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