I’ll be frank: there’s something almost “redemptive” in witnessing Trump’s ascent to the American presidency. Perhaps it’s the smallest, most perverse form of retribution for those of us in Palestine. From childhood, we’ve heard the sneers, the thinly veiled contempt of the empire’s managers, mocking our leaders as self-serving narcissists, as populists, as outright fools. And now, they find themselves led by a figure who embodies those very traits, and who, in many ways, has turned obscenity into a lived political currency.
It’s a peculiar spectacle—watching those who once judged us with such disdain now dance to the tune of a leader cut from the same cloth as the charlatans they derided. The irony is almost poetic.
There is also a dark satisfaction in watching the Democratic Party—a party that has long kept the bombs falling in Gaza and Lebanon, repeating that same weary refrain about Israel’s ‘right’ to do as it will, offering cover without so much as a pause to reflect. They are, in this, terribly steady.
But beyond this fleeting gratification, many in Palestine are acutely aware of what Trump’s victory means, and there’s little solace in his brand of populism, his transactional politics, the pull that Zionist interests have on him, or his ready complicity with Prime Minister Netanyahu. The knowledge of these alliances brings no comfort—only a deeper sense of foreboding, of what may come.
But this isn’t about how Palestinians feel toward the different faces of fascism—faces that, from here, blur into a single, unchanging visage. Just as the difference between Itamar Ben-Gvir and Israel’s Labor Party fades in the distance, American politics appears no different when viewed from Ramallah or Gaza.
Liberal blame
Many explanations have already been offered to rationalize the historic failure of Harris’s campaign. In defeat, diagnosis proliferates. The intricate anatomy of failure reveals itself, exposing not just strategic miscalculations but also the deeper fissures within the political landscape and the ways analysts and observers interpret it.
The explanations include the idea that Harris was simply unsuited to the role; her campaign was poorly executed, and the momentum that might have saved her slipped away in the final two weeks. Biden’s casual disdain for Trump’s base didn’t help her cause, nor his later drop from the elections, and Harris herself struggled to project an authentic persona, failing to connect with the electorate on any substantial level. She did not effectively introduce herself, her values, or her purpose—and, ultimately, the voters sensed it. She even struggled to articulate what she would have done differently than Biden in an infamous interview on the American TV show “The View”.
Others pointed to the misogynistic and racist undercurrents within American society, suggesting that a significant portion of the electorate was unwilling to accept a Black woman as a national leader.
Meanwhile, many voices on the left turned their focus to the real economic struggles faced by Americans, exacerbated by rising consumer inflation, which has led to increased prices and widespread economic hardship.
The Democrats found themselves in a state of collective denial as soon as Trump was announced as the victor. Blame was scattered in every direction—Biden, the economy, the Arab and Muslim vote, Latino men, protest votes, and even the non-voters themselves. It was a spectacle of mass hysteric deflection, a desperate attempt to divert from the uncomfortable truths lying at the heart of their loss, truths they were unwilling, or perhaps unable, to face directly.
But one slightly uncanny phenomenon was the fact that many liberals flocked to social media, eager to lay blame on the Palestine movement for the Democrats’ historic defeat. There some wrote vile comments accusing minorities and third-party voters of being behind the historic defeat in the presidential elections, and figures like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez have alluded to this growing discourse on social media, where the ongoing genocide has emerged as a dominant factor in the Democratic Party’s recent loss. In her statements, AOC appears to acknowledge the relevance of the genocide to the Democrats’ defeat, yet she insists that a constellation of other factors was equally instrumental.
Ocasio-Cortez’s primary takeaway on the matter of Palestine and Gaza was nuanced; it wasn’t simply about the Arab-Muslim vote in Michigan. Rather, she pointed to a more profound effect: a disengagement within the Democratic Party’s own ranks. Many organizers and activists who traditionally spearheaded ground operations in get-out-the-vote efforts chose not to channel their full energy behind Harris, their usual commitment fractured by the moral and political dilemmas the party’s stance on Palestine posed. This disengagement, subtle yet consequential, spoke volumes about the internal rifts that the party’s stance on Gaza had exposed.
After all, Harris was unable to mobilize approximately ten million of the voters that Biden drew in the 2020 election, along with a critical shortfall of around 700,000 votes in battleground states.
But what remains central, is why have the Democrats, or at least many of the social media outposts chosen to conclude that “Gaza lost them the elections,” with some expressing anger, and hatred towards those who allowed Trump to rise again.
What Palestine reveals
It would not be an exaggeration to assert that, despite the Democratic Party’s unmistakable support for Israel’s violent campaign, most American liberals have chosen to avert their gaze, effectively downplaying or disregarding the enormity of this alignment. Some adopt a straightforwardly pro-Israel stance, asserting loyalty to a narrative of “complexity” that conveniently absolves them of deeper responsibility. Others, however, succumb to the carefully calibrated rhetoric emanating from the White House and its willing partners in the media, finding comfort in sanctioned ignorance.
They acknowledge, perhaps even grudgingly, with a sterile kind of intellectual assent, that something is indeed happening. Yes, they say, somewhere out there in that remote, dusty expanse of the Middle East, a conflict rages—a “complicated” war, they call it.
Some might even go so far as to name it genocide, though always couched in the careful tones of “complexity” and “nuance,” words that absolve them from the urgent moral reckoning that genocide demands. But in admitting this distant horror, they do not move closer to it; rather, they hold it at arm’s length, rendering it vague, abstract, and ultimately manageable.
For these liberals, Palestine remains something peripheral, positioned at the margins of their consciousness, never a central or pressing issue. It is a reality to be acknowledged just enough to maintain the illusion of awareness—an issue that exists only in the periphery of their well-fortified moral and political imagination.
In keeping Palestine “out there,” comfortably distanced, they refuse to see how this ongoing violence reverberates, how it shatters the moral architecture of the world they believe they inhabit, and how fascism returns to the imperial core with vengeance. This refusal, this studied disregard, is no accident; it is a deliberate insulation against the shattering implications of Palestine’s unyielding reality, a reality that, if truly confronted, would demand not just sympathy, but action.
The visceral response from many Democrats, mourning their election loss at the perceived altar of Gaza, signals something telling. To declare that Gaza cost the Democrats the White House reveals a buried awareness of culpability; at some level, they recognize that the very punishment they seek to deflect is perhaps deserved.
There is a bitter irony in elevating Palestine to this fleeting source of power, suggesting as if, on its own, it has the capacity to dismantle the Democratic machine, thwarting Harris’s path to victory.
In essence, the Democrats understand that their steadfast support for Israel, amid its genocidal actions in Gaza, is morally indefensible. Yet rather than face this disquieting truth or recalibrate their policies, they shift the blame outward, a gesture designed not to confront but to externalize their own failing.
There is another paradoxical gesture woven into this narrative—the tension of elevating Palestine to the level of an electoral liability, while simultaneously evading the profound reckoning that such an acknowledgment demands, in terms of policy. In attributing their defeat to Gaza, these liberals, perhaps unintentionally, concede—even if only for a fleeting moment—that Palestine wields a disruptive force powerful enough to unsettle their carefully structured worldview. It is a tacit admission of Palestine’s significance, though one they are unwilling to fully confront or allow to permeate their ideological framework.
However, the political landscape being what it is, mainstream Democratic strategists are unlikely to openly acknowledge that Palestine played an important role in their defeat. Such an admission would not only expose the hypocrisy in their professed values but also demand a reevaluation of their foreign policy—a policy steeped in imperial ambitions that will now clash with sensible electoral politics. In other words, to recognize this would open a Pandora’s box, forcing the party to reckon with contradictions they’d rather keep under wraps.
What is perilous in this moment is not just the ease with which the Palestinian movement is raised up as the scapegoat for the Democrats’ failings; it is the ominous reality that, rather than reckon with their unrestrained allegiance to Israel, the Democrats will choose to turn inward, punishing their own base for failing to heed the cries of the looming threat of Trump.
They will find ways to silence dissent within their ranks, to broaden legal definitions until they criminalize the very activism that threatens to awaken a moral consciousness, or shift policy on Israel. This, then, will be the Democrats’ answer to Palestine—a tightening of the noose, a reassertion of a distinctly liberal brand of fascism, cloaked in the language of order, civility, and law.
Yes, the Democrats’ open endorsement of genocide opened the eyes of millions, stripping away the illusion of moral high ground they once claimed over the likes of Trump.
But this election’s defeat isn’t just about Palestine; it’s about how Palestine crystallizes a multitude of other failures: the deafening silence from elected officials confronted with the crisis of a large base of supporters, a foreign policy dictated by an insular class of imperial managers, the unchecked power of lobbying, and the entrenchment of war at the core of corporate interests. Palestine, in this sense, is a mirror—revealing the rot at the heart of American liberal politics, a rot so deep that no amount of rhetoric can cover it, including the complicity of mainstream media.
The reality is that Palestine did indeed cost the Democrats the election, though not in the crude, singular way that some might imagine. Palestine is not just a foreign policy issue; it has become emblematic of a deeper structural malaise within the Democratic Party. It speaks to an alliance that has, without remorse, shifted economic burdens onto the working class, reaping profits through the quiet violence of inflation. Palestine represents the point at which the Democrats’ distinctions from their domestic adversaries vanish, revealing a moral indistinction that is increasingly hard to ignore. And in Palestine’s fate, millions have glimpsed their own—a collective understanding that their cries for change, their demands for justice, would remain unanswered. Palestine, in this sense, is more than itself; it is a prism, reflecting a dissonance within American politics, where ideals are wielded yet rarely lived, where a rhetoric of compassion collides with the indifference of imperial pursuits.
Source: mondoweiss
