The First Bell Tolls for Israel
Gallup Poll shows paradigm shift in American attitudes toward the apartheid state
Over a month ago, I wrote a post describing how I thought Aaron Bushnell’s sacrifice was the beginning of the end for Israel.
Two days ago, far faster than I had imagined, the first hard evidence that I might be right surfaced in the form of a Gallup Poll. Last September, if anyone had told me I would be reading these numbers just seven months later I would have laughed in their face.
The only thing that could turn around rock solid American support for Israel would be a
It’s happening.
I was surprised by the last Gallup Poll in November, but it turns out that was nothing. There has been a sea change in American opinion of Israel in just four months. Without further ado, here it is—
Do you approve or disapprove of the military action Israel has taken in Gaza? (All respondents)
November 2023-Approve 50%, Disapprove 45%
March 2024-Approve 36%, Disapprove 55%
Only a little more than a third of Americans approve of Israel’s actions? That’s a titanic shift from the way it’s been all my life.
Politically, it gets even worse for Israel—
Do you approve or disapprove of the military action Israel has taken in Gaza? (Independent voters)
November 2023-Approve 47%, Disapprove 48%
March 2024-Approve 29%, Disapprove 60%
Look how far the approval numbers for Israel have dropped. If these polls were for a political candidate’s support, they’d be saying his support was plummeting, and they would be correct.
Israelis are no longer the good guys in American eyes. If they’re no longer the good guys, then they’re no longer worthy of our support when we have trains derailing and interstate highway bridges getting knocked down and tent cities all over the place and what used to be a $4 breakfast burrito is now $7.75 and lots of other shit going to hell in a handbasket in our own damned country.
Good guys don’t deliberately target journalists.
Good guys don’t target hospitals and paramedics.
Good guys don’t block aid convoys from getting to starving children and brag about it on the internet.
Good guys don’t slaughter tens of thousands of women and children while saying they want to take their land and build luxury seaside resorts on it.
The Israelis have done all of these things and more in the last few months, all the while demanding that we Americans support them or else their friends in our ruling class would call us anti-Semitic and cancel us or fire us. After all, they’re the good guys, right, and their enemies are so terrible, right? They’re just defending themselves, right?
Wrong.
Good guys don’t do this to men. This is not self-defense.
Good guys don’t do this to children. This is not self-defense.
No nation or people has the right to do this. No nation or people has the right to demand that another nation’s people should give them the money and the weapons to do it, either, yet that is what is happening between Israel and America right now.
This cannot last. Those numbers I quoted up there are only going to swing more against Israel the more Americans learn about what happened. Eventually, and probably sooner rather than later the way this is going, the revulsion Americans feel for what the Israelis are doing will end Israel’s free ride on the American dollar.
It is inevitable now. Too late for at least tens of thousands of Palestinians, but inevitable. The kind of revulsion, and of betrayal that can only happen when the good guys turn out to be really horribly bad, that a majority of Americans feel is not going to go away.
It is only going to grow, and more people will want to do something. That something will be Boycott, Divest, and Sanction.
Thank you for reading, and have a good weekend.
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With humility, I will share with you an email I sent to the clergy of the church in Keene,NH where I sing...As context, the town and especially the church prides itself on being the hometown/parish for Jonathan Daniels, a civil rights martyr who was murdered in Hayneville, Alabama in 1965...I predict that Bushnell's courageous martyrdom will be monumental......Similarly in the paradigm shift, we have State Department/and other officials resigning in protest....This is indeed a paradigm shift; the tipping point, per this email, will be when the churches take a stand. Of further note, Daniels' has at a minimum a Wikipedia page online and one can find Munther Isaac interviews/sermons through youtube....Long live Palestine!
Dear xxxx,
Taize chants as beautiful embellishments to the simplified Lenten rituals so common to ‘cradle Episcopalians’ contrasts to the absence of addressing moral crises, and most importantly that facing us after October 7. It’s as if the church, the one that celebrates Jonathan Daniels as its martyr, and emphasizes using the right pronouns is saying pay no attention to the genocide currently ongoing in Palestine. Well, I for one have been paying attention and these are a few of the signs I’ve noticed in the past week:
· Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby’s refusal to meet with Reverand Dr. Munther Isaac, the pastor of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Bethlehem. Though the Guardian reported in early March that Welby had apologized and planned to meet with Isacc this week, there is no record that I can find of such a meeting having taken place.
· On February 25, USAF Airman Aaron Bushnell’s self-immolation in front of the Israeli Embassy, Washington, DC galvanized the anti-imperialism movement in the US and global opposition to Western colonialism and oppression….Islamic Information has just reported that in Bushnell’s will, he left all his money to Palestinian Relief Fund
· International Court of Justice (ICJ) legal proceedings are recognizing Israeli violations of international law as codified in the 1949 Geneva Conventions which the US and Israel have botg signed. Specifically
o On 26 January 2024 the ICJ ruled that there was probable cause that Israel had committed and is committing genocide and ruled that Israel should take immediate action to prevent genocide
o 19 – 28 February ICJ hearings on Israel’s illegal occupation of Palestine land and testimonies to the ICJ by more than 50 countries and international groups providing
§ Evidence of Israel’s denial of Palestinian self-determination and human rights going back 75 years
§ Conclusions that Palestinians have the right to self-defense, to include violence, to resist the occupation
· Israel’s ongoing blockade of Gaza is resulting in the population’s dependence on food aid and bringing about the final stages of malnourishment and starvation
o The ‘flour massacre’ on 29 February when Israeli forces shot more than 800 Palestinian men, women and children (killing more than 100) while they waited in lines and or retrieved food aid
The Israeli occupation of Palestine ongoing since the 1940s and continuing to the present has been marked by displacement, dispossession, and systemic discrimination and denial of self-determination and human rights. This occupation contrasts between the idealized image of Israel and its grim reality. Yet, the actions of this church are turning a blind eye to the repercussions from their blind allegiance to a notion of a 'religious Israel' and their interpretation of Christian faith. This perpetuates the deception that their alliance is honorable or holds spiritual significance. While the forthcoming presentation of Dr. Christine Shepardson is an attempt for St. James to address this crisis, understanding this region’s ancient history distracts from its political realities. The children of Gaza are dieing of malnutrition at levels that surpass those experienced by countries occupied by Germany during World War II. The Israeli belligerence cannot even be considered a war, it is in fact a one-sided slaughter. This stark contradiction can no longer be denied to the extent the church is becoming complicit in a Gaza genocide.
I will leave you with the words of Rev. Munther Isaac spoken in early January 2024. “true peace-making demands that we take sides and this is the time that we act by our moral and ethical standards”……”history will hold you accountable.”
In peace,
The Gallup Poll is mimicked on a small sample, based on the circle of humans I encounter and dialogue with on a daily basis. Whenever the other shoe drops, it will be over the fact that US taxpayers of federal, local, county, school district, and municipal taxes can't make the math work of what the US dollar can buy. It can't buy enough to be maintained locally, as I see the shock and horror of fixed incomes being shredded with little left over... Always more for the "safety" part of the budget, if you break down your local taxes.
But THIS... blood draining horror decision of fighter jets, genocide and using it to go into Syria again, when we occupy 1/3 of it with our basis... THIS is the story I'm waiting to see unfold to the masses. Also, everyone I've asked to guess how much debt the "greatest country" in the world has cannot get their mind around that $37 TRILLION... Can't see it...Right now, it's a mixed salad of cognitive dissonance with stone cold silence dressing.