Palestine

“Dear White Staffers”, an Instagram account that blew up just a couple of years ago for reporting alleged mistreatment of staff on Capitol Hill, is now under fire from some members of the progressive left for allegedly engaging in performative activism. The account joined Instagram in 2020 and quickly built a reputation for being a place where congressional staffers could anonymously share horror stories about their offices and dissuade others from joining toxic work environments. The account has more than 100,000 followers and is closely watched by members of Congress — and now the Biden administration, as White House employees have started making their own submissions to the “Dear White Staffers” DMs.

Donald Trump’s long march through the Republican primaries leaves little doubt about the inevitability of a Biden-Trump rematch in November — court cases and old age notwithstanding, of course. Unlike previous contests, foreign policy looks set to be at top of mind for many voters. Which, if you’re a Biden supporter, isn’t great news. In a recent AP poll, four in ten American adults named foreign policy as issues the government should work on in 2024. The president’s decisions abroad broadcast weakness, lack of direction and myopia, traits that have come to define his first term. The deadly and chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan was only a sign of things to come, as more conflicts and crises sprang up around the world.

The migraine arrived suddenly and unexpectedly — a headache of global proportion that made every sound a shrieking cacophony, impossible to ignore. Tuning it out, as the Democratic coalition had managed to do successfully for the better part of a decade, was no longer an option. The nightmare had arrived, and it had a throbbing mantra, carried across the bluest corners of the country in pixels and TikToks and in the bellow of a boiling mass of blathering, megaphone-wielding youths: “From the river to the sea.” Even before the horror of the October 7 attack and the war on Hamas that followed, Israel has carried the potential to cause political tribulation for Democrats in the post-Obama era.

Beyond Hamas’s ruthlessness — and Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s fecklessness — one thing that’s become increasingly clear since the October 7 attack on Israel is that social justice groups and identity crusaders no longer possess even a shred of seriousness. How could they, with feminist organizations still questioning the legitimacy of Hamas’s sexual violence against Israeli women? Or lesbian, gay, bisexual and trans groups insisting that “queer issues are Palestinian issues” — despite Hamas’s paper trail of violent queer death? Or the folks from #BlackLivesMatter unwilling even to consider in the slightest that Jewish lives matter too?

If there could ever be a positive that comes out of the horrific terrorist attacks in Israel in October, it’s this — the battle lines have never been clearer. That may seem obvious in the context of Israel versus Hamas, but for Americans, watching the drawing of the fault lines has been extremely clarifying. In the hours that followed the atrocities, the people who reject any sort of nuance in politics wanted to “put into context” the murders of 1,400 Jews — including elderly Holocaust survivors, women and children. The Manhattan chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America, of which Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez remains a member, tweeted support of Palestine and its intention of holding a rally in Times Square.