On Wednesday afternoon, hundreds of liberal Jewish American activists staged sit-ins in the Capitol Hill offices of top Democrats, including in the senate office of progressive champion Bernie Sanders, to demand a ceasefire in the escalating war between Israel and Hamas.
As they sang in Hebrew and prayed for peace, the House floor resumed legislative activity for the first time in weeks after the election of a new Republican speaker, congressman Mike Johnson.
In his first act, Johnson brought to the floor a resolution declaring US solidarity with Israel after Hamas rampaged through Israeli cities, killing 1,400 people and taking more than 200 hostages, Americans among them. Nearly all House Democrats voted to approve the measure, save for a resolute minority who dissented, citing its failure to address the thousands of Palestinians killed in Israel’s retaliatory bombing campaign of Gaza.
The discontent on display in Washington was a testament to the rising anger among the party’s left over the response from Biden and Democratic leaders to Israel’s war in Gaza. But as many progressives split from the White House over the US’s staunchly pro-Israel stance, there were also splits within the left itself – a sign of the raw emotions stirred by the conflict.
Nor were the scenes in the House the only signs of discontent as US politics – and civil society as a whole – becomes increasingly roiled by Israel’s response to the 7 October Hamas attack.
That same afternoon, Joe Biden was asked about the rising Palestinian death toll during a news conference at the White House. Biden replied that he had “no confidence” in the death count provided by the Gaza health ministry, which says nearly 7,000 Palestinians have been killed since the war began.
“I’m sure innocents have been killed, and it’s the price of waging a war,” Biden said, in comments the Council on American-Islamic Relations described as “shocking and dehumanizing.”
Online, many progressives seethed, accusing Biden of further enabling violence against Palestinians and predicting that he would pay an electoral price next year with Muslim and Arab American voters, who have emerged as an important Democratic constituency in recent elections.
“The White House and many in the US government are clear as they should be that 1,000 Israelis killed is too many,” said Eva Borgwardt, the political director of IfNotNow, a progressive Jewish group leading many of the demonstrations in Washington, including the one at the Capitol on Wednesday. “Our question for them is: How many Palestinian deaths are too many?”
As Israel intensifies its bombardment of Gaza, Biden is facing extraordinary and growing resistance from his party’s left flank, especially from young voters and voters of color, over his steadfast support for Israel. They have staged demonstrations, penned open letters and even tendered resignations in protest of the Biden administration’s handling of a war they say is threatening the president’s standing at home and possibly his chances of winning re-election next year.
A Gallup poll released on Thursday found that Biden’s approval rating among Democrats plummeted 11 percentage points in one month, to a record low of 75%. According to the survey, the drop was fueled by dismay among Democratic voters over Biden’s support for Israel.
Meanwhile, a poll released last week by the progressive firm Data for Progress found that 66% of likely US voters strongly or somewhat agree that the US should call for a ceasefire.
Still, the White House has firmly rejected calls for a ceasefire, which Karine Jean-Pierre, the White House press secretary, initially described as “repugnant” and “disgraceful” in the immediate aftermath of the Hamas attack. The administration’s rhetoric has since evolved, with White House spokesperson John Kirby arguing this week that a ceasefire at this stage “only benefits Hamas”. Asked earlier this week whether the US would support a ceasefire, Biden said: “We should have those hostages released and then we can talk.”
Pressure is building in Congress, where 18 House Democrats – all progressive lawmakers of color – joined a resolution calling for the White House to support “an immediate de-escalation and ceasefire in Israel and occupied Palestine”.
On Capitol Hill, a group of Jewish and Muslim staffers wrote an anonymous open letter to their bosses similarly calling for an “immediate ceasefire” between Israel and Hamas. Urging congressional leaders to act swiftly, they cited the rising death toll in Gaza and the rise of antisemitism, anti-Muslim and anti-Palestinian sentiments in the United States.
Meanwhile, hundreds of former campaign and congressional staffers to progressive senators, including Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, John Fetterman of Pennsylvania and Bernie Sanders of Vermont, have penned open letters urging them to call for a ceasefire.
So far no senator has backed a ceasefire. Warren, Sanders and several other Democratic senators have urged a “humanitarian pause” to allow aid, food and medical supplies to flow into Gaza after Israel ordered a “complete siege” of the territory. It echoes the position of the US secretary of state, Antony Blinken, who said earlier this week that it “must be considered” to protect civilian life.
Sanders’ resistance to back a ceasefire has disappointed some of even his most loyal followers, in a sign of how emotionally fraught the debate over Israel has become on the left.
Though the 2024 presidential election is a year away, many progressives, and especially younger activists, have threatened to withhold support for Biden, while Arab and Muslim Americans have expressed deep alarm over the president’s actions and rhetoric.
Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib of Michigan, the only Palestinian American in Congress, has accused Biden of abetting the deadly war. “We will remember where you stood,” she wrote in a social media post tagging the president.
At his press conference on Wednesday, Biden also cautioned Israel to be “incredibly careful to ensure they’re going after the folks propagating this war”. For many on the left, the warning was buried behind his comments casting doubt on the scale of war deaths in Gaza.
“Like many progressive Democrats, I have applauded and been pleasantly surprised by President Biden’s actions on climate and the economy,” Waleed Shahid, a progressive strategist tracking the administration’s response to the war, wrote on X, formerly Twitter. “But he’s crossed a moral line with nearly every Muslim, Arab and anti-war young voter I know.”
The White House said on Thursday the Biden administration did not dispute that thousands of Palestinians had been killed and emphasized that the health ministry was run by Hamas.
Even a slight erosion in support could spell danger for Biden, who was already struggling with low enthusiasm, particularly among young voters.
In polling conducted after the Hamas attack, a Quinnipiac survey found that slightly more than half of voters under 35 say they disapprove of the United States sending weapons and military support to Israel in the wake of the Hamas attack. By contrast, nearly six in 10 voters between the ages of 35 and 49 support sending weapons to Israel, with older age groups offering even stronger approval.
Biden’s allies have largely downplayed the disagreements among the party’s grassroots. They note that most Democrats, including the party’s congressional leaders, the senator Chuck Schumer and the congressman Hakeem Jeffries, are strong supporters of Israel and fully back the president’s handling of the conflict. In the coming weeks, their caucuses are expected to overwhelmingly support a White House request to send $14.3bn in security aid to Israel.
A letter to Biden, signed by a majority of House Democrats, including every Jewish member of their caucus and several liberal members, praises his ”strong leadership during a tragic and dangerous moment in the Middle East”.
It further commends Biden for displaying “steadfast support for our ally Israel in a moment of need and horror” while also making “clear statements regarding the fundamental importance of ensuring that the humanitarian needs of the civilian population of Gaza are met”.
Deep, abiding support for Israel among Democrats on Capitol Hill obscures a shift among the party’s voters, and especially among those who came of age in a post-9/11 US. A Gallup poll conducted in March found for the first time that a greater number of Democrats say they sympathize more with Palestinians than Israelis.
Republicans have sought to exploit those divisions in an attempt to cast the Democratic party as anti-Israel, a narrative progressives say media coverage has unfairly promoted.
Many liberal Democrats, including the congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York, have forcefully denounced pro-Hamas or antisemitic sentiments expressed by the party’s activist fringe. At the same time, they contend that there is a double standard in the way elected officials speak about Palestinians.
They point to comments from Republicans like the senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, who described the conflict as a “religious war” and said Israelis should “do whatever the hell you have to do to defend yourself. Level the place.”
Senator Tom Cotton, a Republican from Arkansas, made a similar remark, saying in an interview: “As far as I’m concerned, Israel can bounce the rubble in Gaza.”
“I have long found the ignoring and sidelining of Palestinians in the US House of Representatives, the humanity of Palestinian populations, in the five years I have been in Congress, quite shocking,” Ocasio-Cortez said recently on MSNBC.
With expectations that a large-scale Israeli invasion of the besieged territory is imminent, demands for an immediate ceasefire have grown louder and more urgent.
In a statement on Friday, amid intensifying bombing and a communications blackout in Gaza, Alexandra Rojas, the executive director of the progressive group Justice Democrats, implored the president to act now to prevent a ground invasion that would “ensure thousands more civilian casualties, bring us closer to an all-out regional conflict in the Middle East, and thrust the United States into another endless war”.
Looking to the future, progressives say the administration must be prepared to dramatically reshape Washington’s decades-long approach to Israel and Palestine.
“If we want to take a consistent policy towards human rights, we cannot always be focused on supporting the rights and security of one side here,” said Matt Duss, a former foreign policy adviser to Sanders.
“The status quo,” he said, “is clearly unsustainable.”
