Why Don't Republicans Care About Palestinians?
When It Comes to Israel, Conservatives Betray Their Supposedly Core Values
There’s a deep partisan divide regarding Israel’s response to the October 7 terrorist attacks and it’s largely because Republicans and Democrats are experiencing two completely different wars depending on what media outlets they trust. Is the media to blame for this or is it us, the news consumers who crave coverage that tells us what we want to hear? According to a recent Quinnipiac poll, 73 percent of Republicans approve of Israel’s response to the terrorist attack, compared to just 27 percent of Democrats.
I’m not surprised by the starkly different response because Democrats are seeing and hearing things that consumers of conservative media aren’t—images of flattened neighborhoods, children’s bodies being pulled from rubble, and details regarding the Palestinian death toll, which, as of December 12, stands at more than 18,000, most of them women and children, including more than 6,000 children. Most conservative media outlets, meanwhile, have minimized Palestinian suffering, amplified coverage of the 1,200 Israelis killed on October 7, and hyped incidents of antisemitism on college campuses and at pro-Palestinian protests around the world. I keep on a news mix channel in my office all day that has CNN, Fox News, MSNBC and BBC News, and I’ve read countless articles and listened to many podcasts from both sides and the difference in coverage has been stark.
Sadly, many on the left continue to make excuses for the October 7 massacre. Norman Finkelstein, for example, an academic who is the son of Holocaust survivors, dubbed the attack “a heroic resistance” and wrote that it warmed “every fiber of (his) soul.” In a debate with Piers Morgan, he said that when he wrote the post, he was unaware of the death toll but doubled down on the idea that oppressed Palestinians couldn’t be blamed for any of their misdeeds, no matter how deadly.
I’ve been to the West Bank, so I’ve been through Israeli checkpoints, I’ve seen the settler-only roads and security barriers and have met many Palestinians there and here, so I have some perspective on their situation. I was shocked by how hospitable Palestinians were to me and by how I never detected an ounce of anti-Americanism in my travels around the West Bank. And so, when I see prominent conservatives like Marc Levin dehumanize Palestinians by claiming that there’s no such thing as an innocent Palestinian—even children—I’m disgusted.
The state of Israel comprises 78% of historic Palestine, but decades worth of purposeful Jewish settlement on the West Bank has rendered the idea of a legitimate Palestinian state all but impossible. Israel’s defenders say that the Palestinians were offered essentially everything they wanted but rejected it multiple times over the years. But that’s a myth. In fact, they were offered more of a fragmented series of Bantustans rather than a contiguous, legitimately sovereign nation.
Gazans live under a military occupation and don’t enjoy the basic freedoms and human rights we do and are subject to arbitrary arrest and detentions without trial. Former U.K. Prime Minister David Cameron, a member of the Conservative Party who is presently Foreign Secretary, said in 2010 that Gaza “cannot and must not be allowed to remain a prison camp.” But it has.
In fact, the vast majority of Palestinian prisoners that Israel has released in the hostage negotiations were minors who were never charged with a crime. Under Israeli law, children as young as 12 can be imprisoned without charge for up to six months at a time with renewals. Nearly half the population of Gaza is below 18 and the youth unemployment rate was at 64% in 2021. While Israel allowed some 140,000 Palestinians from the West Bank to work in Israel, where wages are dramatically higher, this year, they granted fewer than 20,000 work permits to Gazans, and no Palestinians have been allowed to work in Israel since October 7. Meanwhile, Israel has also cracked down on free speech inside its borders, arresting dozens of left-wing Israelis and Arab-Israelis for posting messages of support online for Palestinians. The Israeli government and its allies on the American right have also effectively turned a blind eye towards mounting settler violence against Palestinians in the West Bank. The BBC recently documented one example of this in Khirbet Zanuta, where settlers bulldozed a school and most of the village’s homes.
None of this is a valid excuse to engage in acts of terrorism, despite what Mr. Finkelstein and many others on the left like him contend. The vast majority of Gazans haven’t resorted to terrorism, so why make excuses for those who do? But just as I can’t endorse the left’s Palestinians can do no wrong approach to the conflict, nor can I endorse the right’s same approach with respect to Israel.
According to U.N. figures cited by the Associated Press—560 children were killed during the first 19 months of war in Ukraine. That’s less than ten percent of the child death toll in a matter of weeks in Gaza. More women and children have been killed in less than two months in Gaza than were killed during the first year of war in Iraq in 2003, according to Iraq Body County. And U.N. figures show that between two and three thousand children died each year in conflicts around the world in 2022, 2021, and 2020, so the six thousand who have perished in Gaza alone in around fifty days is shocking and unacceptable.
Israel’s defenders say that Hamas is to blame for putting children in harm’s way and operating in civilian areas. Clearly Hamas’s leaders planned the attacks in order to put their cause back on the global agenda—they’ve admitted as much in interviews—knowing full well that Israel would unleash a devastating counter-offensive. But the Hamas leadership lives in Qatar and Turkey and Gaza is one of the most densely populated places on earth, so it isn’t realistic to think that Hamas commanders are going to find uninhabited places to hide.
Prior to the truce, Israel instituted collective punishment on 2.3 million Gazans, denying them food, water, fuel, electricity and medicines. All too often, they’ve bombed areas knowing that there would be a massive loss of civilian life. Gaza is in ruins, in part thanks to U.S.-supplied 2,000 pound bunker buster bombs that have been critical to an offensive that’s inflicted mass casualties and has driven 1.7 million Gazans (81% of the population) from their homes.
Republican politicians have been largely unconcerned by the civilian carnage. The GOP Presidential candidates have competed to see who can out-pro-Israel the other, and other Republicans have followed their lead. Max Miller, a Republican congressman from Ohio, said of Palestinians on Fox News, “They’re not a state, they’re a territory that’s about to be eviscerated and go away here shortly as we’re going to turn that into a parking lot.” Montana congressman Ryan Zinke, also a Republican, introduced legislation with ten Republican co-sponsors to expel Palestinians who are legally present in the country and bar others from arriving based solely on their nationality.
Conservatives who have strayed from the pro-Israel narrative have faced sharp backlash. Ben Shapiro, co-founder of the Daily Wire, called fellow Daily Wire podcaster and conservative Candace Owens “disgraceful” for diverging from the Israel can do no wrong party line. Charlie Kirk, founder of the conservative student group Turning Point USA, was criticized by others on the right for questioning why Israel bombed a 1,700 year old Greek Orthodox church in Gaza where civilians were sheltering, resulting in the deaths of more than a dozen civilians.
The GOP controlled House passed $14.3 billion in aid for Israel with just a handful of dissenting votes, mostly from the far left. Just one Republican, Kentucky’s Thomas Massie, voted against the aid package. “If Congress sends $14.5 billion to Israel, on average we’ll be taking about $100 from every working person in the United States,” Massie said on X. “This will be extracted through inflation and taxes. I’m against it.” (The non-partisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO) says the Israel aid bill, which is coupled with equivalent spending cuts to the IRS, would add more than $26 billion to the deficit by reducing what the IRS would take in through taxes.)
Apparently not satisfied with their 412-10 margin of victory on the vote, The American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), the largest pro-Israel lobbying organization, chastised him and he now claims that pro-Israel lobbyists are targeting him with negative ads. The price of dissent is clear, but it isn’t antisemitic to question the cost of uncritical support for Israel’s war. As of March, America has given $158 billion in aid to Israel, far more than any other country. It’s fair game to ask how more aid will prevent future attacks if past support didn’t stop the October 7 attackers but virtually no Republicans are willing to go there.
Most conservative media outlets have presented one-sided coverage minimizing Palestinian casualties while stoking alarm that Hamas terrorists might attack the U.S. homeland next. For example, when a vehicle recently exploded on the Rainbow Bridge in Niagara Falls, Fox News was the only major news outlet to immediately brand it an attempted terrorist attack. I was watching the news mosaic so I could see them hyping the incident in real time while CNN, MSNBC and BBC cautiously, and correctly as it turned out, said it was too early to say if there was a connection to terrorism.
Over the course of a few hours, Fox personalities and guests made nearly 100 claims that it was a terrorist attack even as no other credible news outlet did so. Fox News anchor John Roberts claimed that Hamas might be behind the attack, opining that the “unrest in the Middle East has spilled out past Israel,” while claiming that “there could be operatives in this country sympathetic to terrorists who want to send a message here in the United States.” Senior correspondent Eric Shawn and former Homeland Security adviser Frances Townsend also speculated that Hamas might have been responsible for the attack. “We don't know yet whether or not this is attributed — can be attributed to Hamas or another terrorist group, but I will tell you from our own experience we know that this sort of bomb, this kind of a vehicle bomb is sort of a classic technique of, you know, jihadists,” Townsend said.
In fact, the two individuals in the car had no connections to terror groups. They owned a hardware store near Buffalo and were driving home from a casino in their Bentley when they perished while driving at a high rate of speed. News outlets make mistakes, but quality ones own up to them. Fox’s media critic, Howard Kurtz, instead bogusly claimed the “cable news networks” were guilty of a “rush to a judgement” even though it was only Fox which made the claim. Fox’s coverage of the war has been little more than pro-Israel cheerleading, with endless coverage of every offensive sign held by Palestinian protesters and every Israeli flag desecrated but complete silence regarding Palestinian civilian casualties.
The Israel-Palestine debate has become so unhinged that some even called for the singer Alicia Keys to be cancelled for the sin of mentioning paragliding and wearing green (the color of Hamas) in a social media post. Popular podcast host Megyn Kelly didn’t buy Keys’ apology and explanation that her post was had nothing to do with the Middle East.
Kelly pointed out that Keys’ husband, Swizz Beatz, is Muslim and that the two share a son named Egypt. “I still am shocked that she has not been canceled by major corporations. You know she is the voice of All State,” Kelly’s guest, Daily Mail columnist Maureen Callahan, said. “She should lose that sponsorship; she should lose that job.”
Conservatives drop many of their supposedly core convictions when it comes to Israel. For years, we’ve lamented the left’s embrace of cancel culture and their efforts to ban speech they dislike by branding it “hate speech” for example on LGBT issues, affirmative action and immigration. But now many Republicans seem eager to silence pro-Palestinian voices, particularly those on college campuses, under the sometimes-dubious guise of battling antisemitism. Along these lines, 95 Democrats and every Republican in the house save Rep. Massie voted for a resolution which bluntly states that “antizionism is antisemitism.” This despite the fact that there are a host of Jewish groups who oppose Zionism and want Israel to be a secular democracy rather than a Jewish state.
Legitimate antisemitism must be fought in all its forms but all too often we see overly zealous pro-Israel supporters conflating legitimate critiques of Israel’s actions with antisemitism. Students must always feel physically safe and should always be free to express their opinions, free from intimidation. But conservatives are supposed to oppose safe spaces and the idea that people must be protected from speech that offends them or hurts their feelings. Conservatives are also supposed to oppose identity politics and victim culture but when it comes to Israel, they betray these supposedly core convictions. Israel could drop a nuclear bomb on a refugee camp in Gaza and many on the right would cheer because, for them, Israeli Jews are perennial victims and can do no wrong, while Palestinians deserve whatever they get. During the BLM protests of 2020, conservatives argued that All Lives Matter, but many clearly don’t feel that way about Palestinians.
America First conservatives oppose sending aid to Ukraine but are all for effectively unlimited aid to Israel are also ideologically inconsistent at best. At least give Rep. Massie points for consistency in arguing that we can’t afford to aid either country. Israel had the sympathy of the world following the 10/7 attacks but the court of public opinion has swung against them dramatically as casualties have escalated in recent weeks. The U.N. General Assembly voted 153-10 on December 12 on a resolution calling for an “immediate humanitarian ceasefire.” Other than the U.S. and Israel, the only other countries voting no were Austria, Czechia, Guatemala, Liberia, Micronesia, Nauru, Papua New Guinea and Paraguay—not exactly a list of geopolitical heavyweights.
Israel’s ongoing incursion into Gaza isn’t in Israel’s best interests or America’s—and yes, our national interests are distinct. Leaked audio of meetings between released hostages—including some who say they were shelled by the IDF (Israeli Defense Forces) while in captivity—and the Netanyahu government illustrate that many were more afraid of being killed by Israel than Hamas and felt that the Israeli military was more focused on revenge than their safety.
I understand the national security imperative to defeat Hamas. But there’s no way for Israel to bomb its way to safety. Even if it kills every top Hamas commander in Gaza, others will rise up to take their places. When you kill too many civilians and destroy too many homes, schools, and places of worship, you risk further radicalizing people who otherwise might have opposed Hamas, both in Gaza and across the Muslim world. We’ve already seen support for Hamas grow in the Palestinian Authority controlled West Bank and additional bloodshed is only likely to accelerate that dangerous trend.
As Israel’s main benefactor, its actions have direct consequences on our homeland security and national security interests. In 2011, when we learned that Osama Bin Laden was hiding out in a compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan, we didn’t just turn the whole neighborhood to rubble. We tried to capture him and wound up killing him. It likely isn’t possible for the IDF to repeat the same feat with dozens of Hamas commanders, but they’re clearly not taking enough steps to minimize civilian casualties, despite what Republicans and conservative pundits claim.
In recent days, Biden Administration officials, including Kamala Harris, are starting to speak out about the high civilian death toll in Gaza. And they’ve announced a visa ban on Israeli settlers who commit violent acts in the West Bank. But at the same time, we’re continuing to send Israel 2,000-pound bombs largely because Democrats are terrified of the pro-Israel lobby and of giving Republicans a potentially potent campaign issue if they’re deemed insufficiently supportive of Israel.
In explaining our no ceasefire vote at the U.N., Linda Thomas Greenfield, the U.S. Ambassador to the U.N., said, “any ceasefire right now would be…dangerous to Israelis who would be subject to relentless attacks, and also dangerous to Palestinians who deserve the chance to build a better future for themselves free from Hamas.” And so—try to follow along here—the 2,000 pound bombs dropping on their neighborhoods are supposedly somehow less dangerous than a ceasefire, according to the world’s leading superpower.
Our political landscape is ever divisive. But we ought to be able to unite across party lines around a few core beliefs. One of those is the protection of civilians, especially children. Democrats are at least claiming that they’re concerned about civilian casualties in Gaza, even if their actions suggest otherwise. Republicans won’t even go that far. We lose moral authority and jeopardize our national security when we signal to the world that we only care about the loss of civilian lives on one side of this intractable conflict.