In the United States, the political landscape is finally shifting. Donald Trump’s assault on basic constitutional order has driven his approval into the gutter, and it is easy to forget we are still within the first year of his second term. As millions lost SNAP benefits this weekend, Trump hosted a “Great Gatsby” Halloween party at Mar-a-Lago. The disconnect is staggering. Last month, more than seven million people joined the No Kings protests. In New York City, a generational shakeup is underway, with Zohran Mamdani likely to become mayor. Politicians are beginning to step away from the Israel lobby. In one vivid moment, activists in Netanyahu masks showered Cory Booker with fake cash to thank him for backing Israel’s war on Gaza. We are living through an organized attempt to replace democratic norms with authoritarian rule. That outcome is not inevitable. Many more people oppose these retrograde and cruel policies than support them, and our task is to hold the line and widen it without trading away core principles.
One of those principles, solidarity with Palestine and opposition to Israeli occupation, apartheid, and genocide, is no longer a fringe position; it is now mainstream. In New York, Mamdani’s long record on Palestine was supposed to be a wedge. It is not working. Across the country, candidates who assumed automatic political gain from supporting Israel are finding the ground has moved. The test is flipping. Support for Palestine is becoming a deciding factor for voters. It is very possible that the current wave of authoritarianism in the United States and beyond will meet its defeat in part because people refuse to abandon Palestinian freedom.
This week, Amy Hagopian describes how a public health association punished her for protesting genocide, a sign that authoritarian habits are spreading inside civic institutions that should be defending dissent. Adrienne Lynett and Mira Nabulsi show that public opinion has shifted after two years of genocide in Gaza, and that Palestine now carries real electoral weight in the United States. Phil Weiss sees Zohran Mamdani’s mayoral bid as a turning point in U.S. politics and in Jewish life. He argues that more Jews are rejecting Zionism, and this realignment opens new space for pro-Palestine politics.
Tareq Hajjaj details a pattern in which Israeli forces break the ceasefire in Gaza, claim a flimsy pretext, halt for a moment, then repeat the cycle. Majd Jawad gathers testimony that Israeli forces used Palestinian women as human shields and shows this was a pattern well known to military commanders. Louis Allday’s conversation with Sabri Jiryis situates the genocide in a longer history of Zionism. Hassan El-Nabih adds the human texture of survival, a meeting with a former student that holds both relief and sorrow at once. Abdaljawad Omar explains how even the debate over the name of the war reveals a deeper commitment to colonial violence.
Must read: Zohran Mamdani’s historic run will also help free Jews, and U.S. politics, from Zionism
Phil Weiss: Zohran Mamdani’s historic campaign for New York mayor marks a significant moment for Jewish identity as more Jews distance themselves from Zionism. This will be a fierce generational fight with wide-reaching effects on American politics.
Genocide in Gaza
🇮🇱 Tareq Hajjaj: Here’s Israel’s strategy to continue the war on Gaza: find a pretext, no matter how baseless, use it to kill dozens of civilians and fighters, stop fire, and claim you’re honoring the ceasefire. Then do it again.
🇵🇸 Louis Allday: Mondoweiss speaks to celebrated Palestinian scholar Sabri Jiryis about his life, Zionism, the genocide in Gaza, and the judgments of history.
🇮🇱 Abdaljawad Omar: Throughout the Gaza war, Israel has debated what to call it. The military says “October 7 War,” while Netanyahu wants “War of Redemption.” What’s clear is that Israel believes it can only resolve its ongoing cycle of crisis through genocidal violence.
🧕 Majd Jawad: Throughout the Gaza genocide, testimonies have documented the Israeli army’s use of Palestinian women as human shields. These are not isolated acts by rogue soldiers but a systematic practice known to Israeli commanders and acknowledged by soldiers.
🤝 Hassan El-Nabih: A chance encounter with one of my past students at the Islamic University of Gaza highlighted the paradox of surviving the Gaza genocide: feeling joy in surviving the war and sorrow in witnessing what our survival has cost us.
Catch-up
⚕️ Amy Hagopian: My American Public Health Association membership was revoked after over 20 years because I protested for Palestine. As authoritarian norms spread in government, they are metastasizing into civil society institutions that should be resisting them.
🇺🇸 Adrienne Lynett and Mira Nabulsi: Two years into the Gaza genocide, public opinion on Israel, Palestine, and U.S. policy has undergone a profound shift. A close examination of poll data shows Palestine is no longer a niche issue but one with real electoral consequences.
I think this should be added to the ‘must read’ category: this is a recent NYT essay written by Michael Gross, “professor of political science at the University of Haifa….author of “Military Medical Ethics in Contemporary Armed Conflict” and “The Ethics of Insurgency.”
Israel Must Reckon With What It Wrought in Gaza….In talks leading up to the cease-fire deal between Hamas and Israel, President Trump said he told Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, “You’re going to be remembered for this” — ending the war in Gaza — “far more than if you kept this thing going, going, going, kill, kill, kill.”…Kill, kill, kill: With those words, Mr. Trump evoked the large-scale loss of life in two years of fighting. Not since the smiting days of the Old Testament have Jews killed as many people as we have killed in Gaza. The number is staggering and may reach 100,000 civilians and combatants when the rubble is cleared. This is not an accusation. It’s just the plain truth……The first step is grappling with the truth. In discussions with colleagues, friends and students, I often hear three arguments to justify the high casualty account: that killing tens of thousands in Gaza was necessary, the killing was not Israel’s fault and the death toll was the inevitable outcome of a high-tech war. These claims, however they seem to offset the moral costs, are partial truths at best, assumptions we must honestly confront through concerted debate and public education….
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/11/01/opinion/israel-gaza-palestinians-killing-casualties.html