Nearly two years into the Gaza genocide, the Associated Press is still referring to the Israeli onslaught as a war and recently referred to it as a “war in Israel.” And nearly one year after the 2024 election, defeated Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris is still at a loss as to why some Democrats were so upset at the Biden administration’s funding of that genocide.

In an article late last month about Harris’ book tour being met by pro-Palestinian protesters in New York City, AP journalist Steve Peoples asserted, “Few issues have divided the nation – and the Democratic Party – more than the war in Israel.”

Journalists at AP did not respond to my request for a correction. That “war in Israel” language – rather than “genocide in Gaza” or at least “war in Gaza” wording – remains in AP articles published by both PBS and CNN. The journalist did get it right elsewhere in the article with two references to “war in Gaza.”

Regarding the divide in the Democratic Party, a University of Maryland Critical Issues Poll administered in late July and early August found that 49 percent of Democrats “sympathize” more with Palestinians while 6 percent “sympathize” more with Israelis. This is a sea change, but a reality that still isn’t reflected by elected Democratic officials – the “Undemocratic Party” as The Electronic Intifada’s executive director Ali Abunimah termed it on Thursday.

A New York Times and Siena University poll administered in late September found a slightly less dramatic split among Democrats, but still a stark change in sympathies from just two years ago. Now, 54 percent of Democrats say they “sympathize” more with Palestinians while only 13 percent “sympathize” more with Israel.

By contrast, just under two years ago, 34 percent of Democrats sympathized more with Israel while 31 percent indicated they stood more with Palestinians.

This is despite scant reporting invoking the term “genocide” by mainstream US media. Social media, moral consistency and common sense are largely responsible for this emerging point of view from grassroots Democrats whose elected officials lag far behind them.

Genocide and MTG

The number of Democrats in the US Congress recognizing the Gaza genocide remains under 10 percent. For Republicans, the number is under 1 percent and represented by Christian nationalist Marjorie Taylor Greene.

In a recent interview with The New York Times, she said, “You can’t unsee dead children.”

She elaborated, “That’s not fake. It’s not war propaganda. They’re not actors. And journalists getting murdered and blown up? I don’t see that happening in any other war, and that’s shocking to me.”

Strikingly, she added, “I spoke to several Christian pastors. They’re saying this is really a genocide, innocent people are being killed. That was easily enough for me.”

If Greene helps get this viewpoint on the Gaza genocide to take root in evangelical churches that have historically been staunch supporters of whatever Israel does, it would be a momentous development. This seems unlikely, but just over a year ago Greene didn’t remotely seem like a candidate to recognize the reality of the Gaza genocide.

Republican Greene’s new position is making her a possible target for AIPAC in the 2026 election, a common experience for the occasional Democrat willing to challenge Israeli occupation policies. AIPAC spokesperson Marshall Wittmann has compared her views to those of Ilhan Omar and Bernie Sanders – on the left of the American political spectrum – while claiming her stance is “completely contrary to those of President [Donald] Trump and her Republican colleagues, who solidly stand with the Jewish state.”

According to The New York Times, Greene isn’t worried.

“It would surprise everyone. This is the Bible Belt – Deep South conservative Christians,” she stated. “They said, ‘Marjorie, we agree with you that it’s a genocide.’”

The University of Maryland poll indicates 6 percent of Republicans regard what is happening in Gaza as genocide and 8 percent see it as “major war crimes akin to genocide.” Yet the figure could be higher in a congressional district where the representative is making the case that it is, in fact, genocide.

Greene’s stance is surprising. As I have noted, I did not anticipate her changing viewpoint because of her long-standing Islamophobia.

But it is a notable development that she has moved this far – last year even recognizing informal Trump adviser Laura Loomer’s racism directed at Vice President Kamala Harris – and is exercising a significant degree of independence from the White House and Republican Party and their support for funding the genocide.

Loomer had claimed that if Harris won the presidential election “the White House will smell like curry and White House speeches will be facilitated via a call center and the American people will only be able to convey their feedback through a customer satisfaction survey at the end of the call that nobody will understand.”

Chartreuse genocide

Harris, nearly a year after her presidential defeat, still doesn’t acknowledge her chartreuse genocide in her new book, 107 Days, about her abbreviated campaign to win back voters, some of whom had fled from President Joe Biden over his incompetence and others who had departed due to his unrelenting embrace of Zionism and genocide.

As even Harris writes: While Biden “could passionately state, ‘I am a Zionist,’ his remarks about innocent Palestinians came off as inadequate and forced.”

But Harris is wrong to think her words came off much better.

In the book, Harris continues to play up her long-time pro-Israel bona fides. She recalls, as The Electronic Intifada has reported previously, her fundraising for the Jewish National Fund, a discriminatory organization contributing to the theft of Palestinian land.

Lest anyone forget, she reminds readers of her long support for Israel. “What I’m not ambivalent about is Israel’s security. As a young girl I carried around a little blue box for the Jewish National Fund, soliciting support to plant trees in Israel.”

She then adds: “I believe Israel was right to respond to the atrocities of October 7. But the ferocity of [Benjamin] Netanyahu’s response, the number of innocent Palestinian women and children killed, and his failure to prioritize the lives of the hostages had weakened Israel’s moral position internationally and created angry dissent within Israel itself.”

In her worldview, Palestinian men are guilty and aren’t worth mentioning among the victims of the Gaza genocide. She speaks of the “angry dissent within Israel,” while failing to understand the disgust then, and now, among grassroots Democrats with the situation in Gaza.

Instead, Harris is still blaming protesters. She writes that at a rally in Detroit, “a noisy group chanted: ‘Kamala, Kamala, you can’t hide. We won’t vote for genocide.’ The threat to withhold their vote got to me. It felt reckless. Either Trump or I would be elected. The issue was not binary, but the outcome of this election certainly was.”

Her comments on what was certainly a low moment for protesters of the Gaza genocide are telling. The Detroit speech was the moment it became clear her heart wasn’t willing to listen to those appalled by the Gaza genocide. Her political instincts didn’t realize or didn’t care that many Muslim, Arab and young voters would not support a candidate unwilling to stand up to the Israeli military’s terrible violence in Gaza.

In fact, she received nearly 6.3 million fewer votes than Biden in 2020.

Harris didn’t grasp the urgency of the moment or the need to take a much stronger stand, one in opposition to Biden’s fervent support for Israeli war crimes over Palestinian freedom.

“You know what?” she asked in Detroit. “If you want Donald Trump to win, then say that. Otherwise, I’m speaking.”

Demonstrating she still doesn’t understand that genocide is a red line, she writes: “Why weren’t they protesting at Trump rallies? I wondered. I wished they would understand that sitting out the election or voting for a third candidate would elect Trump and kill any effort for a just peace, any hope for a two-state solution.”

They weren’t protesting at Trump rallies because he was out of power and it was already known – from recent experience – that he was unlikely to do anything on behalf of Palestinian rights. Protesters held out hope for better from Harris and were rejected.

Her endless invocation of the moribund two-state solution also fails to grapple with the land grabs Israeli settlers have been making in the West Bank, thereby foreclosing on that possible outcome. She certainly doesn’t mention equal rights for all in one state.

Harris self-lauds her handling of Gaza in her convention speech, where no slot was provided to a Palestinian to speak about the horrors the US was funding in Gaza.

“I knew that the section of my speech dealing with the Gaza war had a lot riding on it. As David Von Drehle wrote in The Washington Post, it was ‘the rockiest, most perilous passage: her 5.0-degree-of-difficulty straddle on the war in Gaza. She charged right in and defended Israel, and just as it felt as though the room might split, she affirmed the humanity and suffering of the Palestinians. She then moved into a peroration on the subject that everyone was able to cheer for. And, behold, she had her boat through the impossible strait.’”

An “impossible strait” that said nothing of genocide and her adminstration’s arming of Israel for war crimes and crimes against humanity. That take on the speech surely does not reflect the thinking of Democrats and independents outraged by the Gaza genocide.

One year later, Democratic candidates for elected office still haven’t adequately wrestled with the reality of being a party whose leaders are overwhelmingly willing to fund and arm an apartheid army in Israel for genocide in Gaza and ethnic cleansing in the West Bank.

Mid-term elections are little more than a year away with many elected Democrats remaining out of step with constituents on Gaza.

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