The conflict between Israel and Hamas appears to be tearing the American hard left apart amid differing reactions to a deadly Hamas attack on Israel that took place on October 7.
Some progressives have sharply criticized Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) for the group’s statement about the attacks, which it blamed on “Israel’s apartheid regime,” while some high-profile left-wing House Democrats have criticized President Joe Biden for his approach to the situation.
Political scientists who spoke to Newsweek suggested that the divisions on the left were a result of long-term differences on the issues involved, and those differences could pose a problem for Biden and the Democrats.
On October 7, Hamas led the deadliest Palestinian militant attack on Israel in history. Israel subsequently launched its heaviest-ever airstrikes on Gaza. As of Monday, at least 1,400 Israelis and at least 4,300 Palestinians have been killed, according to the Associated Press. Nearly 200 people were taken hostage in the October 7 attack.
On the same day, DSA posted about the attack on X, formerly Twitter, saying the group “is steadfast in expressing our solidarity with Palestine.”
“Today’s events are a direct result of Israel’s apartheid regime—a regime that receives billions in funding from the United States,” DSA wrote. “End the violence. End the Occupation. Free Palestine.”
In the same thread, DSA said: “We unequivocally condemn the killing of all civilians. It is imperative for international human rights law to be respected. But we cannot forget that the Israeli state has systematically denied Palestinians the right to self-determination for decades.”
“This was not unprovoked,” DSA went on. “For over 60 years, Palestinians have faced ethnic cleansing, torture, bombings, and housing demolitions. Gaza is still under a blockade. As socialists, we must act.”
Progressives’ Reaction
The DSA’s statement earned a rebuke from Los Angeles City Council Member Nithya Raman, the first DSA member elected to the city council. Raman issued a statement on X on October 10 that said DSA’s statement had “failed to reckon with the horrors committed by Hamas and was unacceptably devoid of empathy for communities in Israel and at home who are living in fear and mourning.”
New York Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, a member of the House’s progressive “squad,” criticized DSA for promoting a pro-Palestinian rally days after the Hamas attack, while Representative Jamaal Bowman has reportedly allowed his DSA membership to lapse.
Bowman criticized the rally in a statement on X, saying that Hamas’ actions “are unequivocally abhorrent and must be strongly and clearly condemned.”
“We must remember that Palestinian civilians are not responsible for Hamas’s actions,” the New York congressman said in the statement. “We must ensure we center human rights and be clear-eyed about the loss of life that will unnecessarily be inflicted upon all innocent civilians.”
Representative Shri Thanedar of Michigan renounced his membership of DSA after the New York City chapter backed the pro-Palestinian rally.
“After the brutal terrorist attacks on Israel, which included the indiscriminate murder, rape, and kidnapping of innocent men, women, and children, I can no longer associate with an organization unwilling to call out terrorism in its forms,” Thanedar wrote on X.
“Sunday’s hate-filled and antisemitic rally in New York City, promoted by the NYC-DSA, makes it impossible for me to continue my affiliation,” he said.
Newsweek has reached out to DSA’s press team via email for comment.
Representative Rashida Tlaib, another squad member, faced criticism for refusing to apologize for blaming Israel for a deadly strike on a Gaza hospital in a post on X on October 17.
Speaking in Israel, Biden said that the “other team,” not Israel, was responsible for the explosion at the hospital. U.S. intel has also said that Israel did not attack the hospital.
Newsweek has reached out to Tlaib’s office via email for comment.
Both Tlaib and squad member Representative Ilhan Omar have criticized President Biden for his reaction to the conflict.
Speaking at a pro-Palestinian rally in Washington, D.C., on Wednesday, Tlaib said: “I’m telling you right now, President Biden: not all America’s with you on this one, and you need to wake up and understand that.”
“We are literally watching people commit genocide and killing the vast majority just like this [clicks fingers]. And we still stand by and say nothing,” she said.
“How is it that we have a president who is talking about releasing hostages, who is talking about getting American citizens out of Israel, but could not get himself to say, ‘I want to save and work to save the hundreds, thousands of Americans stuck in Gaza.’ What is wrong with you?” Omar said at a press conference on Friday, calling for a ceasefire.
A Spectrum of Opinion
Different views on the left about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict are not new, says Paul Quirk, a political science professor at the University of British Columbia in Canada.
“There has long been a spectrum of left-of-center opinion in the U.S. on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict—from full endorsement of hardline Palestinians’ demands and approval of their conduct, including terrorist attacks, to more restrained criticism of Israeli governments, alleging intransigence in negotiations, disproportionate violence, and indifference to the suffering of innocent Palestinians” Quirk told Newsweek.
“The conduct of the right-wing Israeli government in recent years—from expanding settlements to bulldozing Palestinian neighborhoods in the West Bank, and in the current crisis, blocking movement of food, water, fuel, and medicine into Gaza while preventing civilians’ escape from the bombing—has shifted the weight of opinion sharply toward the extreme anti-Israeli end of that spectrum,” he said.
Quirk said that some leftwing demonstrators “have openly celebrated Hamas’ massacre of hundreds of Israeli civilians.”
“For the most part, leaders of such demonstrations, and progressive legislators, such as Representatives Rashida Tlaib and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortz, have instead insisted on distinguishing innocent Palestinians from the terrorist Hamas,” he said.
“On the far left—for example, in self-identified socialist circles—there is now sharp conflict between those who deny Israel’s right to exist and those, including many Jews, who merely condemn the Netanyahu government and demand that the U.S. impose humanitarian constraints on Israel’s conduct of the war,” Quirk added.
A Problem for Democrats
Divisions on the left could pose a problem for Democrats more broadly—and for President Biden.
“Like every other hot-button issue, the Israel-Hamas war has the potential to hurt Democrats insofar as they allow the far-left to define their agenda,” Thomas Gift, the founding director of the Centre on U.S. Politics at University College London, told Newsweek.
“When voices like Rashida Tlaib drown out those of moderates, swing voters will invariably be turned off,” he said.
“Her recent comments siding with Hamas over the Biden administration regarding the source of the explosion at a Gaza hospital are a gift to Republicans who want nothing more to than to paint all Democrats with a broad, anti-Israeli brush.”
Paul Quirk told Newsweek that for the Biden administration, “the divisions among far-left activists are less important than the shift against Israel in left-of-center and Democratic Party opinion, more broadly.”
“In a recent poll, a majority of Democrats opposed new military aid for Israel,” Quirk noted, referring to a CBS News/YouGov poll in which 53 percent of Democratic respondents said the U.S. should not send weapons and supplies to Israel, while 47 percent said the U.S. should do so.
Quirk noted that in the House of Representatives, “fifteen Democrats, led by Representatives Cori Bush and Tlaib, introduced a resolution calling on the Biden administration to work for an immediate ceasefire.”
“In effect, it calls for a reversal of the Biden administration’s strong endorsement of Israel’s determination to eliminate Hamas,” Quirk said. “Biden faces a very difficult challenge of providing politically sustainable support for an Israeli government that has appeared largely oblivious to humanitarian concerns.”
