Issa El-Issa (1878 – 1950) was a Palestinian Greek Orthodox Christian from Jaffa and an important journalist who founded and managed the Falastin (Palestine) newspaper. Growing up between Palestine and Lebanon, he graduated from the American University of Beirut, and worked various odd jobs in journalism (and non-journalism) until he founded Falastin, turning it into one of the most widely-read and influential Palestinian newspapers in the first half of the twentieth century (along with Al-Karmil, owned and edited by Najib al-Khuri Nassar). Two themes would dominate Issa El-Issa’s life, and by extension, the pages of Falastin: his advocacy for the Arab Orthodox Movement in their struggle to increase Arab representation and influence within the Greek-dominated Orthodox Patriarchate of Jerusalem, and the Zionist colonization of Palestine.
The first issue of Falastin was dated January 14th 1911, with the newspaper being published twice a week in Jaffa (which, at the time, was part of the Jerusalem Mutasarrifiyah in the Ottoman Empire). El-Issa’s cousin, Yusuf El-Issa, served as Falastin’s editor-in-chief in its early years until 1914 (Issa El-Issa assumed those responsibilities afterwards), with the newspaper espousing an “editorial policy [that] was progressive as it fought against fanaticism, sectarianism, bigotry and ignorance. Its editors espoused Ottomanism and secularism and adopted an inclusive approach considering all inhabitants, irrespective of their ethnic or religious background, equal members of the Ottoman nation1”. Issa El-Issa would go on to publish Falastin until 1938, when he was forced into exile (to Beirut) because of death threats made by the supporters of the Mufti of Jerusalem al-Hajj Amin al-Husayni during the Great Arab Revolt (1936-1939), with his house and belongings set on fire and destroyed. Although he was associated with Raghib Al-Nashashibi – a rival of the Mufti – he had “nothing positive to say about [him] during the part of his memoir devoted to the latter years of his life2”, and withdrew from Al-Nashashibi’s National Defense Party in 1939. After his exile, his son Raja El-Issa would continue publishing Falastin in Jaffa until April 1948, when Zionist forces took over the town. The newspaper was moved to Jerusalem afterwards, and continued to be published until March of 1967.
Falastin was originally established to lend a voice to the struggle of the Arab Orthodox Movement against the Greek clergy of the Orthodox Patriarchate of Jerusalem, who dominated the upper hierarchy of the Orthodox church throughout the Ottoman empire. The goal of the movement was to empower the native Arab Christians “in the higher reaches of the clergy as well as [to secure] a greater share for the laity of the church’s substantial land and economic resources”. The newspaper was suspended twice in those early years for criticizing the Greek Brotherhood of the Holy Sepulcher. It is noteworthy that the two key topics discussed in Falastin and that would go on to dominate Issa El-Issa’s life – the monopoly on the upper echelons of the Orthodox Patriarchate of Jerusalem by the Greek Brotherhood of the Holy Sepulcher, and the Zionist colonization of Palestine – became interrelated when the Patriarchate, which owned significant holdings of land in Palestine, likely sold land to Zionist buyers, as discussed in the 1914 Falastin article “The Zionists and the Religious Endowments of the Greek Orthodox Monastery” (as a side note, the Patriarchate, whose upper echelons are still dominated by the Greek clergy today, found itself mired in controversy in 2005 when the former Patriarch Irenaios I was dismissed from his position after selling land to Israeli investors).
Interestingly, in his book From Ambivalence to Hostility, Emanuel Beska convincingly argues that Falastin was initially ambivalent towards Zionism when it was founded in 1911, providing space for both pro and anti-Zionist voices early on, with Issa El-Issa and his cousin purposely not taking part in the discussion and maintaining neutrality. The first shift in Falastin’s editorial policy towards Zionism occurred in mid-1912 as a result of several incidents that raised awareness in the editors’ minds about the exclusive nature of the Zionist project, in particular, the discrimination in the admission of non-Jewish Palestinian students to Miqve Yisrael, “an agricultural school founded in 1870 by Charles Netter [that] was part of the system of educational institutions run by the Alliance Israélite Universelle3”. As an Ottoman school, Miqve Yisrael had an obligation to accept students of all faiths – an obligation it had failed to fulfil – and several articles in Falastin were devoted to discussing this issue over two months, with the editors taking a firm stance in support of an inclusive admission policy. By mid-1913, the tone of the newspaper had become more hostile towards Zionism as a result of two incidents that made Zionist territorial ambitions clearer to the editors of Falastin – specifically, attempts to purchase the former estates of Sultan Abdulhamid II, which consisted of about three percent of Palestine’s land area, and the Eleventh Zionist Congress, which took place in Vienna in September 1913. Both of these events seemed to have caused a substantial shift in the editorial policy of Falastin, especially the latter, with significant space in the newspaper dedicated to analyzing speeches made at the Congress, ultimately persuading the editors of the existential danger that Zionism posed. After that point, Falastin established itself as one of the fiercest voices against Zionist colonization of Palestine, and the newspaper was suspended in the spring of 1914 and Issa El-Issa was put on trial based on the claim that an article (titled “Advice”) provoked animosity towards Jews. Issa El Issa successfully and valiantly defended himself and the newspaper, arguing that the article criticized not Jews, but Zionists, stating that “we have repeatedly defended it [Judaism] and many times rebutted what was attributed to it […] when we said ‘Zionists’ we referred to the political organization with its headquarters in Europe which aims for the colonization of Palestine, the usurpation of its lands and its transformation into a Jewish homeland4”.
Issa El-Issa was a Palestinian patriot, and a believer in a complementary pan-Arab identity, and his newspaper reflected that. As Rashid Khalidi has remarked in his book The Iron Cage, Falastin was a “journalistic pioneer of an unwavering opposition to Zionism on both the Palestinian and Pan-Arab levels. It deserves the attention it has begun to receive as an important organ of opinion in pre-1948 Palestine, and one of the foremost Palestinian papers to have an impact on the rest of the Arab world, as does its editor, Issa El Issa5”. El Issa also lived that dual identity. After the Ottomans shut down Falastin during World War I and exiled Issa El-Issa and his cousin to a remote area of Anatolia (where he was able to develop good relationships with the locals by virtue of his mastery of the Arabic language, and his ability to cite the Quran and the Hadith), he was sought after by the Hashemite King Faisal to head his diwan in the short-lived Arab Kingdom of Syria (1918 – 1920), which he did until the Kingdom’s defeat in July 1920. Although his relationship with the Hashemites was complicated, his ultimate loyalty was always to Palestine, often at the expense of his professional and personal life. He spared no one in his defense of Palestine, not only methodically exposing Zionist machinations to take over the land, but also ruthlessly criticizing the British for enabling it (Falastin was shut down numerous times by the British authorities during the Mandate period), as well as the Palestinian national leadership for failing to effectively oppose it. After pushing for the interrelation of the Arab and Palestinian arenas for most of his life as a mechanism to thwart Zionist ambitions in Palestine, he was forced to admit that Arab leaders, just like the Palestinian national leadership, were ineffective and could not be counted on. His faith in Arab leadership to save Palestine was lost after the Nakba of 1948, after which he wrote the following verses:
“Oh little kings of the Arabs, by the Grace of God
Enough feebleness and infighting
Once upon a time our hopes were on you
But all our hopes are dashed6”.
Issa El-Issa died on June 29th 1950 in Beirut, having never returned to Palestine after his self-imposed exile in 1938. Last month, we celebrated the recent passing of the 75th anniversary of his death in the shadow of another Nakba, as the genocide being perpetrated by Israel against the Palestinian population in Gaza shows no sign of abating. As we continue to witness in horror the daily annihilation of innocents in Gaza, we can’t help but wonder what trenchant verses Issa El Issa would reserve not only to those Arab governments that have failed the people of Gaza, but also to the broader “international community”, for once upon a time our hopes were on you, but all our hopes are dashed.
Sources:
[1] Beška, Emanuel, From Ambivalence to Hostility: The Arabic Newspaper Filastin and Zionism, 1911-1914, Ústav orientalistiky SAV, 2016 (p.3)
[2] Khalidi, Rashid, The Iron Cage, Beacon Press, 2006 (p.101)
[3] Beška, Emanuel, From Ambivalence to Hostility: The Arabic Newspaper Filastin and Zionism, 1911-1914, Ústav orientalistiky SAV, 2016 (p.47)
[4] Beška, Emanuel, From Ambivalence to Hostility: The Arabic Newspaper Filastin and Zionism, 1911-1914, Ústav orientalistiky SAV, 2016 (p.72)
[5] Khalidi, Rashid, The Iron Cage, Beacon Press, 2006 (p.94)
[6] Khalidi, Rashid, The Iron Cage, Beacon Press, 2006 (p.100)
The genocide being perpetrated by Israel against the Palestinian population in Gaza shows no sign of abating. Nearly twenty-one months have passed since October 7th 2023, and Israel continues to kill and maim with impunity. According to the latest figures released by the Gaza Ministry of Health on July 2nd 2025, Israel has killed at least 57,012 Palestinians and wounded 134,592 (of the identified fatalities, 55% were women, children and elderly, although it is important to note that the number of total fatalities reported by the Gaza Ministry of Health is surely an underestimate). According to the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), more than four fifths (85%) of the Gaza Strip is currently within the Israeli-militarized zone, under displacement orders, or both, and at least 1.9 million people (or about 90% of Gaza’s population) have been displaced during the “war”, per UNRWA. Nearly three quarters (70%) of all structures in Gaza have been damaged or destroyed per UNOSAT’s latest assessment conducted on April 4th 2025, and almost all (92%) housing units have been damaged or destroyed according to the Gaza Ministry of Public Works and Housing.
Who is responsible for this calamity? The obvious answer is the government of Israel, led by Netanyahu and his coalition, backed by the US and other Western powers. However, focusing on Netanyahu and his coalition misses an important dynamic in this ongoing genocide, and one that is rarely discussed in the mainstream Western press: the role of Israeli society, and more specifically, Israeli Jewish society (as opposed to Israeli Arabs or Palestinian citizens of Israel) in support of official Israeli government policy. The truth is that Israel’s “war” on Gaza has been supported by the (vast) majority of the Israeli Jewish public, and policies that are tantamount to ethnic cleansing as well as outright genocidal policies, such as the prevention of humanitarian aid into Gaza, are not merely Israeli government policy, but a reflection of the broader views of a majority of Israeli Jews. When US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken (one of the chief architects of US policy in support of Israel’s genocidal assault on Gaza) gave his interview to the New York Times on January 4th 2025 a few weeks before departing office, he made this exact point when he stated that these types of policies after October 7th weren’t just advocated by “the prime minister or a given leader in Israel. This was an entire society that didn’t want any assistance getting to a single Palestinian in Gaza”. Blinken re-iterated this point in an interview with CNN on January 15th 2025, where he stated that “what’s been misunderstood around the world is ascribing to one individual or maybe a small group of individuals the policies that Israel is pursuing that many people don’t like. I think this is a reflection of 70, 80, 90 percent of Israelis”.
The empirical evidence supports Blinken’s assessment, and the purpose of this article is to examine in a comprehensive manner the views of Israeli Jews vis a vis the ongoing genocide in Gaza. This was done by collecting every available public survey conducted after October 7th 2023 (till the present) and that posed at least one question to Israelis related to the ongoing genocide of Palestinians in Gaza. The surveys were then examined, and only those surveys whose data was available and that were based on a representative sample of Israeli society were included (in some cases, the sample was provided as part of the survey; in other cases, the author had to rely on a statement from the survey assessor that it was representative). A subset of questions within those surveys that met these thresholds were focused-on for this article, specifically around the views of Israeli Jews on the IDF’s “performance” in Gaza, on the suffering of Palestinian civilians in Gaza, and on a variety of Israeli government policies vis a vis Gaza, including the blocking of humanitarian aid into the Strip and the ethnic cleansing of Gaza (note that all survey questions and responses in this article are transcribed in Italic). A comprehensive database created by the author containing all the relevant survey questions and responses for this article can be found here (a total of 71 surveys and 128 questions are included, although the database captures additional questions that are not covered in this article, such as Israeli views on settlements in Gaza, solutions to the Palestinian Israeli “conflict”, the Israeli war on Lebanon, and so on). In addition, the original set of survey questions and responses can be found here.
Note: The author has focused on the views of Israeli Jews as opposed to Israeli Arabs or Palestinian citizens of Israel because their opinions are the ones that really matter within the context of Israeli government policy. As such, the views of Israeli Arabs or Palestinian citizens of Israel were not collected in the database nor discussed in the article, although they are available as part of the original set of questions and responses. Based on these responses, their views on the vast majority of the questions related to these aforementioned topics tended to be opposite to those of Israeli Jews.
On Israel’s Conduct of the “War” in Gaza
Infamously, when Israeli Jews were asked in a Tel-Aviv University survey taken over the period of October 23rd – 28th 2023 how would you characterize the IDF’s use so far of its firepower in Gaza, a near unanimity (94.1%) believed that the IDF was either using too little (57.5%) or an appropriate (36.6%) amount of firepower, while only a vanishingly small minority (1.8%) responded with too much use of firepower. By October 28th 2023, according to the Gaza Ministry of Health, Israel had killed at least 7,703 Palestinians (of whom 66% were women and children) and wounded an additional 19,743 people, making the average Palestinian casualty rate in Gaza nearly 1,250 per day in a span of three weeks since October 7th. Even more shockingly, more than four out of ten (41%) of those killed were children (accounting for 3,195 fatalities), prompting the NGO ‘Save the Children’ to state that “the number of children reported killed in just three weeks in Gaza is more than the number killed in armed conflict globally – across more than 20 countries – over the course of a whole year, for the last three years”.
When participants in that same survey were asked how do you assess the performance of the IDF in [the] Swords of Iron war so far, the vast majority of Israeli Jews (78.3%) rated it as very good or moderately good, with only a small minority (20.5%) rating their “performance” as either not so good or poor (one has to wonder whether the latter group overlaps with the group who thought too little use of firepower was being used). Support for the IDF’s “performance” did however improve by early November. In an Israeli Democracy Institute (IDI) survey taken over the period of November 5th – 6th 2023, participants were asked, on a scale from 1 = very poor to 5 = excellent, what grade would you give the IDF combat forces for their functioning during the war until now. Among Israeli Jews, a near unanimity (92.6%) chose either excellent or very good, with a vanishingly small number (0.9%) choosing very poor or poor.
Tel-Aviv University released another survey conducted over the period of January 8th – 15th 2024, and asked the same question again about the IDF’s use of firepower, with similar results. A nearly identical amount (94.2%) believed that the IDF was using too little (43.4%) or an appropriate amount of firepower (50.8%), with only a small minority (3.2%) responding with too much use of firepower. By January 7th 2024, Israel had damaged or destroyed 69,146 structures in Gaza according to UNOSAT’s satellite imagery analysis, corresponding “to around 30% of the total structures in the Gaza Strip and a total of 93,800 estimated damaged housing units”.
In that same survey, participants were also asked whether the number of casualties on the Palestinian side [had] been justified or unjustified in order to achieve the war aims. Among Israeli Jews, an overwhelming majority (87.4%) answered justified, versus a tiny minority (6.2%) who answered unjustified. According to Gaza’s Ministry of Health, by January 7th 2024, Israel had killed at least 23,084 Palestinians and wounded 58,926 since October 7th, with the “daily death rate in Gaza [an average of over 250 killed per day by January 7th] higher than any other major 21st century conflict”, according to Oxfam.
Despite the overwhelming level of destruction and loss of life in Gaza (or perhaps because of it), in an IDI survey taken over the period of January 14th – 17th 2024, when participants were asked how would you rate the performance of IDF forces during the war until now, an overwhelming majority of Israeli Jews (88.4%) responded either very good or quite good, with only a small minority (9.8%) responding not so good or not at all good.
A few months later, in a Pew Research survey taken over the period of March 3rd – April 4th 2024, still only a tiny minority of Israeli Jews (4%) believed that Israel’s military response against Hamashad gone too far. By March 1st 2024, Israel had killed and wounded over 100,000 Palestinians in Gaza according to Gaza’s Ministry of Health, displaced over 1.7 million people per UNRWA (over 75% of the population), and damaged or destroyed 35% of the total structures in Gaza, per UNOSAT.
Most of that destruction and killing came at the hands of the Israeli air force, which in mid-April 2024, still garnered massive support from the vast majority of the Israeli public. Indeed, in an Institute for National Security Studies (INSS) survey taken over the period of April 11th – 14th 2024, and in response to how would you rate the Israeli Air Force’s performance since the start of the war, an overwhelming majority (86%) of Israeli Jews gave it a high score, with only a tiny minority (3%) giving it a low score. Interestingly, when participants in that same survey were explicitly asked do you agree or disagree that when undertaking military operations, the IDF should ensure that it is not breaking international laws and rules of war, less than a majority of Israeli Jews (46%) responded that the IDF must comply with international law, while a nearly similar amount (42%) responded that the IDF did not need to comply.
By July 2024, the already catastrophic situation in Gaza had only further deteriorated, with record-levels of destruction being wrought by Israel. In a comprehensive assessment conducted by UN-HABITAT and the UN Environment Program (UNEP), based on satellite imagery analysis provided by UNOSAT, it was revealed that as of July 6th 2024, 151,265 structures had been damaged or destroyed (corresponding to 63% of total structures in Gaza), with the “total debris generated by the conflict amount[ing] to approximately 41,946,018 metric tonnes” (or 114 kilograms of debris for each square meter in Gaza); this corresponds to a “volume of debris that is 14 times greater than the combined total from all conflicts over the past 16 years”. Furthermore, according to the Gaza Ministry of Health, as of July 24th 2024, Israel had killed at least 39,145 people in Gaza and wounded another 90,257 (of the identified fatalities, 60% were women, children or elderly). Despite that, in a joint survey conducted over the period of July 18th – 29th 2024 between Tel-Aviv University and the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research, when participants were asked whether they thought what Hamas did on Oct 7 justifies what Israel did in the Gaza Strip since that time, an overwhelming majority of Israeli Jews (84%) answered either definitely yes or probably yes, with only a small minority (13%) answering definitely no or probably no. In that same survey, participants were also asked whether the number of casualties on the Palestinian side [had] been justified or unjustified (presumably in order to achieve Israel’s “war” aims), with more than three quarters (76%) of Israeli Jews saying they were justified, versus a small minority (15%) saying they weren’t.
Support for Israel’s military among Israeli Jews as it continued to commit genocide in Gaza also extended to protecting Israeli soldiers from facing justice for the crimes of sexual abuse and torture of Palestinian detainees. In a highly publicized incident of gang-rape of a Palestinian detainee at the Sde Teiman military base (turned detention camp and torture facility where systematic human rights abuses against Palestinian detainees have been widely documented), ten Israeli soldiers belonging to a unit known as Force 100, in charge of guarding the facility, were arrested for the rape on July 29th 2024 (with five soldiers subsequently released). Scenes of Israeli protesters breaking into the facility the following day to try to free the arrested soldiers were widely televised, and a debate in Israeli media ensued about the “virtue” of raping detainees. This is the context, then, for a question posed in an INSS survey taken over the period of August 8th – 11th 2024 about the arrested Israeli soldiers in the Sde Teiman case. The survey states that the military prosecutor recently asked to extend the detention of the five soldiers suspected of severe abuse and clarified that there is further evidence strengthening the suspicions against them. It then asks how these soldiers should be disciplined. Nearly two thirds of Israeli Jews (65%) responded that they should only be disciplined at the command level, while less than a quarter (21%) answered that they should face criminal prosecution (perhaps this should not be too surprising given the answers to another question in the survey, where participants were explicitly asked do you think that Israel should obey international laws and maintain ethical values in war, with a plurality of Israeli Jews (47%) saying it should not obey them, and 42.5% saying it should obey them).
A related question was posed six weeks later in an IDI survey taken over the period of September 15th – 19th 2024, when participants were asked do you support or oppose investigating soldiers when suspicions arise of abuse of Palestinians from Gaza who are being held in detention by the IDF. Nearly two thirds (61.4%) of Israeli Jews were opposed to any investigation, with only slightly more than a third (34.5%) in support. A follow-up question in the same survey asked in your opinion, what punishment should be given to someone found guilty of abusing detainees from Gaza held by the IDF, with a clear majority of Israeli Jews (60.3%) choosing a reduced punishment, as these detainees were suspected of involvement in terrorism, and only slightly more than a quarter (28.9%) choosing the usual punishment defined by law for such cases. It is worth noting that six weeks earlier, the Israeli NGO B’Tselem had released a wide-ranging report on August 5th titled Welcome to Hell – The Israeli Prison System as a Network of Torture Camps, based on the testimonies of 55 Palestinians released from various prison camps (almost all of whom were not charged). The report revealed that the abuses at Sde Teiman are “only the tip of iceberg”, and that “since 7 October, Israel has instated a systemic policy of abusing and torturing thousands of Palestinians in its custody”, including “use of sexual violence, in varying degrees of severity, by soldiers or prison guards against Palestinian detainees as an additional punitive measure”.
In light of the above, it should come as no surprise then, that when participants in that same September IDI survey were asked on a scale from 1 = very poor to 5 = excellent, how would you rate the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) in the following areas: moral conduct in combat, an overwhelming majority of Israeli Jews (82.8%) rated them as excellent or very good, with only a tiny minority (6.3%) rating them as poor or very poor. Never mind that this is a military whose soldiers have relished in documenting their own abuses and war crimes, from the grotesque to the perverse, on social media platforms for everyone to see. In a documentary published by Al Jazeera’s Investigative Unit on October 3rd 2024 about Israeli soldiers’ widespread abuses and war crimes committed in Gaza, “Al Jazeera said it was able to track down the names, ranks and military units of many of the soldiers after compiling a database of over two and a half thousand social media accounts, containing photos and videos placed online by Israeli soldiers”. According to Al-Jazeera, “most of the photos and videos fell into one of three categories: wanton destruction, the mistreatment of detainees and the use of human shields”. A few days later, on October 8th, the Hind Rajab Foundation (HRF) followed with a formal filing supported by over 8,000 pieces of verifiable evidence “with the International Criminal Court (ICC) against 1,000 Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) soldiers for war crimes, crimes against humanity, and genocide in Gaza, Palestine. These individuals, all of whom have been identified by name, are accused of participating in systematic attacks against civilians during the ongoing genocide in Gaza”. As a result of the efforts of the HRF, the Israeli military announced earlier this year the enactment of “new measures to conceal the identities of soldiers of all ranks, amid arrest warrants and investigations of suspected war crimes in Gaza” – measures that clearly befit “the most moral army in the world”.
On the Suffering of Palestinian Civilians
Based on the responses to the questions discussed in the previous section regarding Israel’s conduct of the “war”, it is clearly justified to infer that considerations of harm for Palestinian civilians as Israel bombed and destroyed the Gaza Strip didn’t rank high in the priorities of the Israeli Jewish public. Indeed, this inference is explicitly and fully supported by survey data, as seen in an IDI survey taken over the period of October 18th – 19th 2023, where participants were asked to what extent do you think that Israel should take into consideration the suffering of the civilian Palestinian population in Gaza when planning the next phases of fighting there. An overwhelming majority of Israeli Jews (83.4%) responded not at all or not so much, versus a small minority (12.9%) who responded quite a lot or very much. A nearly identical question was posed by the IDI in a survey taken over the period of December 11th – 13th 2023, with almost the same results (81.1% vs 15.9%).
By mid-December, Israel had “dropped 29,000 weapons on Gaza in a little over two months”, nearly half of which were so-called “dumb bombs” or unguided munitions, according to an assessment by the U.S. Office of the Director of National Intelligence (including 6,000 bombs that had been dropped on Gaza within the first few days, according to the Israeli air force; in comparison, “the U.S. military dropped 3,678 munitions on Iraq from 2004 to 2010, according to the U.S. Central Command”). At that point, supposed “rifts between the United States and Israel spilled into public view”, after President Joe Biden stated that Israel “has most of the world supporting it”, but “they’re starting to lose that support by the indiscriminate bombing that takes place”, and suggested Netanyahu change course (Biden, of course, never let that indiscriminate bombing stop him from continuing to support and arm Israel as they destroyed Gaza). That, then, is the context for a question posed by the IDI in a follow-up survey conducted over the period of December 25th – 28th 2023, which stated that according to reports, the United States is demanding that Israel shifts to a different phase of the war in Gaza, with an emphasis on reducing the heavy bombing of densely populated areas. Participants were then asked should Israel agree to this demand? Despite the record-setting carnage that Israel had already inflicted on Gaza and its civilian population, the vast majority of Israeli Jews (75.1%) thought that Israel should not agree to this demand, as opposed to a small minority (15.9%) who answered that it should.
In fact, the situation is far more sinister than the vast majority of the Israeli Jewish public simply “not caring” about harm inflicted on Palestinian civilians, as in many instances, the (vast) majority of the Israeli Jewish public supports actively harming Palestinian civilians. Indeed, in a survey by the IDI taken over the period of February 12th – 15th 2024, more than two thirds (67.5%) of Israeli Jews opposedthe idea that Israel should allow the transfer of humanitarian aid to Gaza residents at this time, with food and medicines being transferred by international bodies that are not linked to Hamas or to UNRWA; less than a third (29.9%) of Israeli Jews supported the transfer of humanitarian aid into Gaza, even when the “bar was lowered” to eliminate UNRWA or aid organizations “linked” to Hamas (Israel has of course been inciting for years against UNRWA, with their claims having largely been debunked).
The answer to the above survey question is consistent with results from the monthly omnibus survey conducted by Agam Labs (Hebrew University) from November 2023 to June 2024, where they asked Israeli Jews whether they supported or opposedallow[ing] humanitarian aid to Gaza during the war. The answers range, on the high end (in January 2024), from 61% in opposition (24% in support), to on the low end (in April 2024), 50% in opposition (33% in support). Note that in June 2024 (the last surveyed month), those in opposition climbed back up to 59% (with only 27% in support). In light of the above survey results, it is worth mentioning that protests to block humanitarian aid from entering Gaza at the Karem Abu Salem and other border crossings starting on January 18th 2024 (and lasting until June 2024) by extremist groups like the “Tsav 9” movement (which has been sanctioned by the US) can rightly be seen as reflective of the views of the (vast) majority of Israeli Jewish society (note that groups like Tsav 9, although nominally operating outside of the state, have typically enjoyed impunity from Israeli authorities).
In order to appreciate how depraved such views are, it is important to understand how dire the humanitarian situation in Gaza was around the time the survey questions were posed. On March 18th 2024, the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC), a global authority on food security that consists of a partnership of 19 organizations (including various UN organizations such as the FAO and UNICEF), released the first of their assessments on Gaza. This assessment revealed that “about 2.13 million people across the Gaza Strip faced high levels of acute food insecurity classified in IPC Phase 3 or above (crisis or worse) between 15 February and 15 March, including nearly 677,000 experiencing catastrophic food insecurity (IPC Phase 5)”; the situation in the north of Gaza was even worse, as 55% of North Gaza and the Gaza governorates were classified in IPC Phase 5 (the highest and most dire classification). To put this in concrete terms, “virtually all households are skipping meals every day and adults are reducing their meals so that children can eat. In the northern governorates, in nearly two thirds of the households, people went entire days and nights without eating at least 10 times in the last 30 days”.
On March 28th 2024, the International Court of Justice (ICJ) issued a second set of provisional measures as part of the case brought forward by South Africa against Israel under the Genocide Convention. The Court observed “that Palestinians in Gaza are no longer facing only a risk of famine, as noted in the Order of 26 January 2024, but that famine is setting in, with at least 31 people, including 27 children, having already died of malnutrition and dehydration according to the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA)”. The Court furthermore ordered Israel to “take all necessary and effective measures to ensure, without delay, in full co-operation with the United Nations, the unhindered provision at scale by all concerned of urgently needed basic services and humanitarian assistance, including food, water, electricity, fuel, shelter, clothing, hygiene and sanitation requirements, as well as medical supplies and medical care to Palestinians throughout Gaza”.
Despite the catastrophic humanitarian situation highlighted by the IPC, and the provisional measures issued by the ICJ, when the UN Security Council passed resolution 2728 on March 25th 2024 calling for an “immediate ceasefire for the month of Ramadan” (of which only two weeks remained at the time the resolution passed) and the “need to expand the flow of humanitarian assistance” into Gaza, while also demanding the “immediate and unconditional release of all hostages”, a majority of Israeli Jews still opposed it. Indeed, in a survey conducted over the period of March 31st – April 3rd 2024 by the IDI, the survey stated that the UN Security Council recently adopted a resolution that included a demand for an immediate humanitarian ceasefire during Ramadan and the immediate and unconditional release of the Israeli hostages. It then asked participants in your opinion, should Israel implement its part of this resolution? A majority of Israeli Jews (60%) answered it should not, with less than a third (32.1%) answering that it should, even when this temporary two-week humanitarian pause was accompanied by the “immediate and unconditional release of the Israeli hostages”.
To make matters worse, not only does the (vast) majority of the Israeli Jewish public have little to no sympathy for Palestinian civilians in Gaza and actively wishes harm upon them, a significant majority of Israeli Jews want to even censor others from expressing any sympathy for them. This is clear from a survey conducted by Pew Research over the period of March 3rd – April 4th 2024, where nearly three quarters (70%) of (Jewish) Israeli adults who, when thinking about the war between Israel and Hamas, say people should not be allowed to post each of the following on social media sites: posts that express sympathy for civilians in Gaza.
This callous disregard for Palestinian human suffering remained more or less constant as the genocide progressed, with numerous surveys reflecting that. In an IDI survey taken over the period of March 18th – 21st 2024, participants were asked to what extent should Israel take into consideration the suffering of the civilian population in Gaza when planning the continuation of the fighting there. The vast majority of Jewish Israelis (80.3%) responded either not at all or to a fairly small extent, as opposed to a small minority (18.1%) responding either to a fairly large extent or to a very large extent. In a survey conducted by the Mitvim Institute in August 2024, participants were asked do you think Israel should act to prevent a humanitarian crisis in Gaza? Among those expressing an opinion, only a small minority (17%) of Jewish Israelis answered yes, it’s the ethical thing to do, while a majority (54%) answered that Israel should not concern itself with the humanitarian situation in Gaza. The remainder (29%) answered yes, it’s in Israel’s interest in order to defend its international standing and protect its public health, even though there was a strong self-interested motive to choose the latter option given that the poliovirus had been discovered in Gaza, and officially declared an epidemic by the Gaza Ministry of Health on July 29th 2024 (thus this option was offered by the survey within that context, knowing that infectious diseases could be brought back to Israel by Israeli soldiers in Gaza). Similarly, in a survey by the INSS taken over the period of September 12th – 15th 2024, when Jewish Israelis were asked to what extent are you concerned about the humanitarian situation in Gaza, only a small minority (15%) answered very much or quite a lot, while an overwhelming majority (82%) answered very little or a little.
Although some Israelis are keen to point out that Israelis are not their government, and many have indeed participated in demonstrations to end the “war” on Gaza and called for Netanyahu’s resignation, it is instructive to look at polls to better understand how reflective these are of broader Israeli society, as well as the motivations underlying such actions. When the IDI surveyed Israeli Jews over the period of September 15th – 19th 2024 and asked in your opinion, has the time come to end the war in Gaza, a roughly even split answered it has (45%) versus those who answered it has not (42.6%). However, of those who would like the “war” to end, when asked in your opinion, what is the main reason why the war in Gaza should be ended, only a tiny minority (3%) would like it to end because of the high cost in human life and the desire for quiet, peace and security. The majority (55.8%) of that group want the “war” in Gaza to end because continuing the fighting endangers the hostages, and another fifth (20.1%) want an end to the “war” because ending the war in Gaza will enable the decision-makers and the IDF to turn their attention to the northern front in Lebanon (another 15% want it to end because the fighting has already achieved most of what can be achieved). The point here is that supporting an end to the “war” in Gaza because of Palestinian human suffering barely registers at all as a primary consideration among Israeli Jews.
This point is clearly driven home, almost a year after October 7th, in a joint survey conducted by Langer Research Associates and PORI (Public Opinion Research Israel) in September 2024. The survey revealed that a near unanimity of Israeli Jews (90%) believed that Israel’s efforts to avoid civilian casualties in Gaza were either too much (59%) or about right (31%), with only a negligeable minority (7%) believing it was doing too little. This is a country whose military, far from avoiding civilian casualties, displays a reckless disregard for civilian lives, and that “during the first six weeks of the war in Gaza, routinely used [at least 208 times] one of its biggest and most destructive bombs [2,000 pound bombs] in areas it designated safe for civilians”, and that “on several occasions authorized the killing of more than 100 civilians in the assassination of a single [Hamas] commander” (including, on one occasion authorizing “the killing of approximately 300 civilians” to assassinate the commander of Hamas’ Central Gaza Brigade, Ayman Nofal). This is a country whose military furthermore deliberately targets civilians, including the sniping of small children in the head and chest onnumerousoccasions, the shooting of civilians waving white flags on severaloccasions, the crushing of civilians by deliberately running them over with military vehicles, and the deliberate killing of medical personnel as part of a “concerted policy to destroy the health-care system of Gaza”. This is a country whose military has also killed a record-number of journalists (in many cases directly targeting them), with at least 177 Palestinian journalists and media workers confirmed killed by Israel according to the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) between October 7th 2023 and June 16th 2025, “making it the deadliest period for journalists since CPJ began gathering data in 1992”. This is country whose military has furthermore killed a record-number of humanitarians, with at least 408 humanitarian workers confirmed killed by Israel between October 7th 2023 and April 1st 2025 according to UNRWA, making 2023 and 2024 the deadliest years on record for humanitarians according to data from the Aid Worker Security Database. Finally, this is a country that has committed genocide according to numerous respected human rights organizations and scholars, including the International Federation of Human Rights, the UN Special Rapporteur on the OPT, Amnesty International, and Human Rights Watch, and whose Prime Minister and (former) Minister of Defense have outstanding arrest warrants issued by the International Criminal Court (ICC) on the basis that they “found reasonable grounds to believe” that Netanyahu and Gallant “each bear criminal responsibility for the following crimes as co-perpetrators for committing the acts jointly with others: the war crime of starvation as a method of warfare; and the crimes against humanity of murder, persecution, and other inhumane acts”, as well as “the war crime of intentionally directing an attack against the civilian population”. If all of this amounts to “doing too much” to avoid civilian casualties in Gaza, one has to wonder what the majority of Israeli Jews would have found “acceptable”.
It’s important to mention that the views of Israeli Jews regarding Palestinian human suffering in Gaza have not changed even after nearly 21 months of “war”, and despite Israel implementing a full blockade on Gaza for 11 weeks between March 2nd and May 18th 2025, “entailing a ban on the entry of any supplies, including food, medicine and fuel”, according to OCHA. On May 12th 2025, the IPC published its latest assessment, warning that 1.94 million people (93% of the population) were experiencing high levels of acute food insecurity (IPC Phase 3 classification), including nearly 244,000 people facing catastrophic food insecurity (IPC Phase 5 classification). Despite the dire situation in Gaza, an INSS survey taken over the period of May 22nd – 26th 2025 shows that more than three quarters of Israeli Jews (76.5%) were not distressed by the humanitarian situation in the Gaza Strip, whereas less than a quarter (21.5%) answered that they weredistressed. Furthermore, in an IDI survey taken over the period of May 26th – 29th 2025, participants were asked to what extent should Israel take into consideration the suffering of the civilian population in Gaza when planning the continuation of the fighting there. More than three quarters of Israeli Jews (76.6%) responded either not at all or to a fairly small extent, as opposed to a small minority (20.2%) responding either to a fairly large extent or to a very large extent. Finally, in a follow-up question in the same survey, participants were asked in light of the pressure from multiple countries, should Israel increase the flow of humanitarian aid into the Gaza Strip? Nearly two-thirds of Israeli Jews (62.9%) said it should not, with less than a third (30.5%) answering that it should, numbers that have remained roughly consistent over the entire length of the “war”.
On Trump’s Plan, Ethnic Cleansing and Amalek
A recent article in Haaretz published on May 18th 2025 references a much-discussed survey of Israeli Jews commissioned in March 2025 by Pennsylvania State University and conducted by the Israeli polling firm Geocartography Knowledge Group. According to this survey, we learn that “82 percent of respondents supported the expulsion of Gaza’s residents, while 56 percent favored expelling Palestinian citizens of Israel”, that “nearly half (47 percent) of respondents agreed that “when conquering an enemy city, the Israel Defense Forces should act as the Israelites did in Jericho under Joshua’s command – killing all its inhabitants””, and that “sixty-five percent said they believed in the existence of a modern-day incarnation of Amalek, the Israelite biblical enemy whom God commanded to wipe out in Deuteronomy 25:19”.
However, the data from this survey has not been made publicly available (including the phrasing of the questions themselves), and the survey has been criticized on methodological grounds by academics at Tel Aviv University’s School of Political Science, Government and International Affairs (who requested and did obtain the raw data). These academics also claim that “at around the same time this poll was conducted, Tel Aviv University fielded a comprehensive, large-scale survey as part of its ongoing Israel National Election Studies research project. In that study, participants were asked whether they would support a solution for Gaza that includes transferring its population to another country or countries. Among Jewish respondents, agreement stood at 53 percent”. The authors go on to postulate reasons for the (~30%) difference in results between the surveys, but do not make the raw data available for their survey, making an independent judgement between them impossible. It is, of course, worth noting that even if the latter survey better represents the opinions of the Israeli Jewish populace, it still reflects a majority who support the ethnic cleansing of Gaza. Furthermore, there is reason to believe that the higher number better reflects Israeli Jewish opinion, based on results from numerous other (publicly available and representative) surveys that have been conducted over the last few months.
Before delving into the details of those other surveys, it is important to first properly set the scene. On January 25th 2025, a few days after becoming the 47th US President, Donald Trump made comments aboard Air Force One that provided a preview of his proposal to ethnically cleanse Palestinians from Gaza and for the US to take over the Strip. After talking to Jordan’s King Abdullah that day, Trump referenced that call by telling reporters that “I said to him I’d love you to take on more because I’m looking at the whole Gaza Strip right now and it’s a mess, it’s a real mess. I’d like him to take people”. He then added that ““I’d like Egypt to take people”, and said he would speak to Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi on Sunday. “You’re talking about a million and half people, and we just clean out that whole thing””. He re-iterated his comments in some form over the next few days, even as Jordan, Egypt, and Hamas officials categorically rejected his suggestion to forcibly displace Palestinians from the Gaza Strip.
This, then, is the backdrop for a Jewish People Policy Institute (JPPI) survey taken over the period of January 30th – February 3rd 2025, and that states that President Trump suggested the possibility of relocating Arabs from Gaza to another country, before providing participants with several options to choose from, and asking them what is the closest to your position regarding this proposal? An overwhelming majority (82%) of Israeli Jews supported Trump’s proposal, split between I think it’s a practical plan that should be advocated (52%), and I don’t think it’s a practical plan, but wish it were (30%); only a tiny minority (3%) answered that this is an immoral population transfer proposal and should not be accepted (while another 13% believed that this plan is a distraction, we need to talk about realistic solutions).
The same question was posed in a subsequent JPPI survey taken over the period of February 27th – March 5th 2025, with similar results, after Trump announced in a press conference with Netanyahu on February 4th that the US would “take over and own Gaza” to “redevelop it into the Rivera of the Middle East”, while confirming in a Fox News interview on February 10th that Palestinians who would be “re-located” from Gaza to “re-develop it” would have no right to return to Gaza, in a plan tantamount to ethnic cleansing. In that subsequent JPPI survey, the same tiny minority (3%) of Israeli Jews believed that relocating Arabs from Gaza to another country is an immoral population transfer proposal and should not be accepted, while more than three quarters (76%) of Israeli Jews supported Trump’s proposal, although less believed that it was practical relative to the earlier survey (38% answered I think it’s a practical plan that should be advocated, while another 38% answered I don’t think it’s a practical plan, but wish it were; 20% answered this plan is a distraction, we need to talk about realistic solutions).
In a separate Tel-Aviv University survey taken over the period of March 5th – 10th 2025, participants were asked whether they supported or opposedIsrael providing incentives that would lead to voluntary departure of Palestinians from the Gaza Strip to other countries. A large majority of Israeli Jews (71.1%) supported the measure, versus a small minority (20.8%) who opposed it. To be clear, the term “voluntary departure” is of course entirely misleading, as no departure should ever be considered “voluntary” when the alternative is genocide. Having said that, even when the misleading term “voluntary” was absent from a subsequent question in the same survey, and use of “force and military means” was explicitly referenced to “evacuate Palestinians” from Gaza, the numbers remain largely similar. Indeed, when participants were asked whether they supported or opposedIsrael evacuating Palestinians from the Gaza Strip, even by force and military means, to other countries, nearly two thirds (61.8%) of Israeli Jews supported the measure, whereas less than a third (29.1%) opposed it. Furthermore, when participants in the same survey were asked if Palestinians leave the Gaza Strip for other countries, to what extent do you think Israel should or should not allow their return to Gaza after its rehabilitation, only a tiny amount (5.5%) of Israeli Jews answered that Israel should allow full return, while the vast majority (70.0%) answered that Israel should not allow their return (with another 16.6% choosing to support partial return).
Finally, in a survey by the Jerusalem Center for Security and Foreign Affairs (JCSFA) taken in May 2025, an overwhelming majority of Israeli Jews (82%) supported Trump’s plan for the Gaza Strip, while only small minority (8%) opposed it (note that an earlier survey by the JCSFA that was taken over the period of February 11th – 13th states that “75% of Israelis supported the idea of Gazans migrating elsewhere”, although the raw data and the Israeli Jew/Arab split were unavailable).
If there was any doubt that the (vast) majority of the Israeli Jewish public supports the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians from Gaza, the answers to these questions provide clear evidence in support of that position.
After Trump’s victory in the 2024 election, there’s an ongoing debate about whether the “country turned red”, or whether the “Democrats lost it”. These terms are imprecise, and could mean different things to different people. In the analysis that follows, I analyze the expected popular vote, and show several things:
In terms of people who voted for the same party in 2024 and in 2020, Trump and Harris are expected to have brought out the same number (64.7M vs 64.8M, respectively)
In terms of people who voted for different parties in 2024 vs 2020, Trump is expected to have switched more people than Harris (5.7M vs 3.9M, respectively)
In terms of people who didn’t vote, Trump is expected to have brought out more new voters than Harris (7.9M vs 7.3M)
In terms of people who voted in 2020 but chose to stay at home and not vote in 2024, it is expected that only 2.3M Trump 2020 voters did so, as opposed to 7.4M Biden 2020 voters
So in some sense, the country “did turn red” if by that we mean that more people who weren’t Republicans in 2020 became Republicans in 2024 than people who weren’t Democrats in 2020 and who became Democrats in 2024 (i.e. (5.7 + 7.9) – (3.9 + 7.3) = 2.5M in favor of Republicans). On the other hand, and perhaps in a bigger sense, the “Democrats lost it”, as far more 2020 Democrat voters chose to stay home and not vote for Harris than 2020 Republican voters who chose to stay home and not vote for Trump (2.3M vs 7.4M). That margin is significant, in the sense that Harris is expected to lose the popular vote by 2.3M people, and could have easily won it had more 2020 Biden voters showed up. Detailed analysis below.
Nate Cohn (New York Times) estimates that the final popular vote tally will be about 157.5M. Also, based on exit polls, we have a good breakdown of the composition of Trump and Harris’ voters, broken down into 4 categories (see graph below; to understand how to interpret this graph, we can take a look at the first row as an example: 44% of 2024 voters voted for Joe Biden in 2020; of those, 93% voted for Kamala Harris, 6% for Trump, and 1% for 3rd parties). With the overall popular vote (estimate), and this breakdown (in the graph), we can calculate the source of Trump and Harris votes vs 2020.
Note: there is a “missing 1%” in those 2024 voter breakdowns in the graph due to rounding (i.e. 0.44 + 0.43 + 0.02 + 0.49 = 0.99). We want to be as accurate as possible, but not knowing the breakdown of that 1%, we choose to allocate that 1% evenly across the 4 buckets (i.e. each bucket gets an extra 0.25%). With that (very minor) caveat in mind, let’s start with Trump:
Trump voters in 2024 who were Biden voters in 2020: 157.5 * 0.4425 * 0.06 = 4.18M
Trump voters in 2024 who were Trump voters in 2020: 157.5 * 0.4325 * 0.95 = 64.71M
Trump voters in 2024 who were 3rd party voters in 2020: 157.5 * 0.0225 * 0.43 = 1.52M
Trump voters in 2024 who didn’t vote in 2020: 157.5 * 0.1025 * 0.49 = 7.91M
Total vote for Trump: 4.18 + 64.71 + 1.52 + 7.91 = 78.32M
Let’s now do Harris:
Harris voters in 2024 who were Biden voters in 2020: 157.5 * 0.4425 * 0.93 = 64.82M
Harris voters in 2024 who were Trump voters in 2020: 157.5 * 0.4325 * 0.04 = 2.72M
Harris voters in 2024 who were 3rd party voters in 2020: 157.5 * 0.0225 * 0.33 = 1.17M
Harris voters in 2024 who didn’t vote in 2020: 157.5 * 0.1025 * 0.45 = 7.26M
Total vote for Harris: 64.82 + 2.72 + 1.17 + 7.26 = 75.97
Now let’s do 3rd parties:
3rd party voters in 2024 who were Biden voters in 2020: 157.5 * 0.4425 * 0.01 = 0.7M
3rd party voters in 2024 who were Trump voters in 2020: 157.5 * 0.4325 * 0.01 = 0.68M
3rd party voters in 2024 who were 3rd party voters in 2020: 157.5 * 0.0225 * 0.24 = 0.85M
3rd party voters in 2024 who didn’t vote in 2020: 157.5 * 0.1025 * 0.06 = 0.97M
Total vote for Harris: 0.7 + 0.68 + 0.85 + 0.97 = 3.2
So the delta in popular vote in favor of Trump should be 78.32 – 75.97 = 2.35M in favor of Trump. This also translates to Trump winning 78.32/157.5 = 49.7% of the popular vote, Harris winning 75.97/157.5 = 48.2% of the popular vote (so Trump wins the popular vote by 1.5%), and 3rd parties winning ~2% of the popular vote.
Let’s do some checks: (1) Nate Cohn at the NYT estimates that Trump will win popular vote by 1.6% vs our 1.5%, so we’re off by 0.1% (2) Based on current tallies, 3rd parties have 2.2M votes (time stamp: 11/8/2024 at 4AM EST), with an expected additional ~0.35M votes based on current trends for a total of ~2.55M, so we’re about 0.65M off. So we’re only slightly off based on these two checks, and likely underestimating Trump and Harris by about ~0.3M votes each (likely because the split of that missing 1% isn’t uniform across all 4 buckets, and because exit polls and Cohn’s estimates don’t perfectly line up; we could tweak this to reduce this small error, but it’s not worth it as it won’t change any of the upcoming conclusions in any significant way).
With the above caveat in mind, let’s now look at 2020 voter totals: (1) Biden got 81.28M votes, (2) Trump got 74.22M votes, and (3) 3rd parties got 2.92M votes, for a total of 158.4M votes (a record).
Now let’s look at Trump’s 2024 numbers vs 2020. Trump voters in 2024 who were Trump voters in 2020 are estimated to be 64.71M. So what happened to the remaining 74.22 – 64.71 = 9.51M Trump voters? They fall into 3 buckets: (1) those who switched parties (2) those who died (3) those who stayed home and didn’t vote. Let’s estimate each bucket:
Those who switched parties: Harris voters in 2024 who were Trump voters in 2020 + 3rd party voters in 2024 who were Trump voters in 2020 = 2.72 + 0.68 = 3.4M
Those who died between the 2024 and 2020 election: we’ll use 2022 as our calculation year (reasonable midpoint between 2020 and 2024). Based on the CDC, 3.28M residents died in 2022. We then have to restrict this to adults a) (~99% of deaths were over 18), b) citizens (13.9% of the US population was foreign-born, with 53.1% of those having become naturalized citizens; so 1 – 0.139 * (1 – 0.531) = 93.5%) c) voting citizens (turnout was 66.6% in 2020) d) Trump voters (46.8% based on 2020 election). Doing the math, this gives: 3.28 * 99% * 93.5% * 66.6% * 46.8% = ~0.95M. Over 4 years, that gives 0.95 * 4 = 3.8M
Those who stayed at home (and didn’t vote): 9.51 – 3.4 – 3.8 = 2.31M
Now let’s look at Dems’ 2024 numbers vs 2020. Harris voters in 2024 who were Biden voters in 2020 are estimated to be 64.82M. So what happened to the remaining 81.28 – 64.82 = 16.46M Biden voters from 2020? They also fall into 3 buckets: (1) those who switched parties (2) those who died (3) those who stayed home and didn’t vote. Let’s estimate each bucket:
Those who switched parties: Trump voters in 2024 who were Biden voters in 2020 + 3rd party voters in 2024 who were Biden voters in 2020 = 4.18 + 0.7 = 4.88M
Those who died: we’ll use 2022 as our calculation year (reasonable midpoint between 2020 and 2024). Based on the CDC, 3.28M residents died in 2022. We then have to restrict this to adults a) (~99% of deaths were over 18), b) citizens (13.9% of the US population was foreign-born, with 53.1% of those having become naturalized citizens; so 1 – 0.139 * (1 – 0.531) = 93.5%) c) voting citizens (turnout was 66.6% in 2020) d) Biden voters (51.3% based on 2020 election). Doing the math, this gives: 3.28 * 99% * 93.5% * 66.6% * 51.3% = ~1.04M. Over 4 years, that gives 1.04 * 4 = 4.16M
Those who stayed at home: 16.46 – 4.88 – 4.16 = 7.42M
Let’s take stock. The main reason Harris lost the popular vote is because far more 2020 Biden voters chose to stay home than 2020 Trump voters (7.4M vs 2.3M, for a delta of 5.1M).
A secondary reason was because Trump was able to flip more votes from 2020 Dems and 3rd parties than Harris was with 2020 Republicans and 3rd parties (5.7M vs 3.9M, for a delta of 1.8M).
A third reason was because Trump managed to turn out more new voters (who hadn’t voted in 2020) than Harris (7.9M vs 7.3M, for a delta of 0.6M).
All these reasons clearly point to Democratic voters being less enthused in 2024 with Harris than they were with Biden in 2020. Why that was the case is a separate question.
My latest for Mondoweiss examines Tim Walz’s record on Palestine, both while in Congress and while serving as governor of Minnesota. I was disturbed enough to write this piece after seeing far too many folks (including some who should know better) extol the virtues of Walz while glossing over his (very) pro-Israel record over the entirety of his political career.
Walz can be fairly characterized as a reliable pro-Israel Democrat who has consistently voted for and taken positions in support of Israel. While in Congress between 2007 and 2018, he supported every Israeli war on Gaza, rejected the international consensus on the illegality of settlements in the West Bank, and opposed any unilateral declaration of a Palestinian state, preferring instead to pay lip service to a “negotiated peace” while Israel continued colonizing the West Bank unimpeded. As governor, although Walz has called for a “working ceasefire” regarding Gaza, he has taken no meaningful policy positions that could put an end to the genocide, and has rebuffed attempts by pro-Palestine anti-genocide protesters to divest Minnesota’s pension funds from companies that contribute to Israel’s violations of human rights.
It’s no surprise then, that he is supported by a variety of organizations that are a part of the Israeli lobby. Marc Mellman, President of Democratic Majority for Israel, praised Walz’s selection and said that he was “a proud pro-Israel Democrat with a strong record of supporting the U.S.-Israel relationship”, while J-Street (who had previously endorsed him), said that “we know the Harris-Walz team will stand up for our shared values, protect our community, and pursue smart, pro-Israel, pro-peace leadership abroad. We’re all in.”
In summary, this man is not a friend of Palestine. Be wary of people who try to minimize this inconvenient fact.
Pennsylvania Attorney General Josh Shapiro speaks with the press. MAY 27, 2022 – PHILADELPHIA, PA
Kamala Harris has selected Tim Walz (the governor of Minnesota) as her Vice-Presidential running mate, allaying fears that she would choose Josh Shapiro (the governor of Pennsylvania), whose overt pro-Israel stances were cause for concern with the more progressive wing of the Democratic Party. Indeed, Shapiro came under fire for a variety of pro-Israel positions and statements that he made over the past 30 years, as well as certain questionable ties to Israel.
While in high school, he volunteered on a “service project” at an Israeli army base (in all likelihood during the first Intifada), but allegedly did not serve in a combat role.
In September 1993, soon after the Oslo Accord was signed, he published an op-ed in the Campus Times, the student newspaper at the University of Rochester where he did an undergraduate degree in Political Science, stating that Palestinians “do not have the capabilities to establish their own homeland and make it successful even with the aid of Israel and the United States. They are too battle-minded to be able to establish a peaceful homeland of their own”. He also stated that “I find it impractical to believe that factions of Arabs can miraculously unite in peace as Palestinians, so they can coexist with Israel”.
Between April and September of 1996, he worked at the Israeli embassy in the Public Affairs (Hasbara) division, where his job consisted of “educating” the public about Israel.
More recently in 2021, as Attorney General of Pennsylvania, he threatened to unleash Pennsylvania’s (likely unconstitutional) anti-BDS law against Ben & Jerry’s after they refused to sell their products in illegal West Bank settlements. He also accused the Boycott Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement of being “rooted in antisemitism”, and (erroneously) claimed that “the stated goal of this amorphous movement is the removal of Jewish citizens from the region”.
In April of this year, as students were protesting the Gaza genocide on campuses across the country and pressuring their universities to divest from companies linked to Israel’s human rights abuses, he likened the largely peaceful protests to the Ku Klux Klan, stating that “we have to query whether or not we would tolerate this if this were people dressed up in KKK outfits or KKK regalia making comments about people who are African American in our communities”.
Also in April, the Philadelphia branch of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) released a statement accusing him of failing to call for a ceasefire in Gaza, attacking academic freedom, “intentionally depicting protests in a negative light”, failing “to care for and listen to Palestinian Pennsylvanians whose families are being massacred day in and out by the Israeli government”, and antagonizing community organizations.
It is no surprise then, when Harris selected Walz over Shapiro as her running mate, that many viewed that decision positively. It is likely the case that Shapiro’s publicly inflammatory statements against Palestinians and their supporters, as well as his ties to Israel, factored in him not being chosen. According to an-depth expose by CNN about how the nomination process unfolded, Shapiro “had become something of a lightning rod for Gaza protests that Harris was not eager to revisit”. One Democratic advisor close to the search process said that “nobody wanted to rip that scab back open” (although others supposedly disagreed that Gaza played a role). It is also important to note that other factors likely played a role in Shapiro not being selected, as according to CNN, “Shapiro struck some as overly ambitious, and “Walz was seen as a pick that would come with less drama and palace intrigue” (perhaps referring to the Ellen Greenberg murder/suicide case that Shapiro got embroiled in). Regardless of other factors, the apparent fact that Gaza likely played a role in Shapiro not being selected is a positive development, in the sense of an overt pro-Israeli / anti-Palestinian politician being viewed as a liability by the Democratic establishment because they worry that certain demographics (young voters, Muslims and Arab Americans) will punish them at the polls. Although one should not oversell the point given the symbolic nature of the VP position, it is indeed something to build on. Nassim Nicolas Taleb said it well: “Today’s choice of VP demonstrates that being anti-Palestinian is no longer a political asset”.
Having said all of that, Tim Walz’s record on Palestine, which hasn’t been examined in as much detail, reflects a consistent pro-Israeli position. That, however, will be the topic of a seperate article.
In our recently published paper “A Computationally Useful Algebraic Representation of Nonlinear Disjunctive Convex Sets Using the Perspective Function” (write-up available here), we established a (not very restrictive) condition (in equation 4) that was needed for our algebraic representation to be equivalent to the original disjunctive program.
However, this condition is somewhat obscure. As such, the purpose of this expository note is to provide more insight around it in a visually intuitive way. The note is available below; alternatively, it can be downloaded here.
These last two days have been hard to process. In talking with family, friends and acquaintances in #Lebanon, you realize how many of them are “fine”, but not fine. How many of them count themselves lucky to be alive or with only minor injuries. How many of them have survivors’ guilt. How many of them are still processing the calamity and trying to understand how to pick up the pieces.
You also learn about those who didn’t make it. And your heart breaks a little. The scenes coming out of #Beirut are devastating. The videos, the pictures, the human stories being shared are all so tragic. The Beirut port, through which 80% of Lebanon’s imports passed through, is completely leveled. Large parts of the city are destroyed beyond repair, and every part of the city has some amount of visible damage. The number of casualties keeps rising. The latest count is 200 dead and 5000 injured, with hundreds still missing. There are 300,000 people homeless in a city of 1 million, with a large number of them unable to rebuild. What are these people supposed to do?
The country was already in the midst of its worst economic crisis since the Civil War due to the political and banking class’ complete mismanagement of the economy, which has destroyed enormous amounts of wealth and people’s life savings, and led to hyper-inflation and skyrocketing prices that have eroded whatever was left of people’s purchasing power. More than 30% of the population was already unemployed. Nearly 50% of the population was already living in poverty, defined as less than $4/day. And everyone was struggling to cope in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic. And now this. What are these people supposed to do?
Lebanon and its people are legendary for their resilience. It’s true. In my lifetime only, people in Lebanon have experienced a devastating 15 year Civil War. They’ve experienced multiple Israeli invasions, massacres, an 18-year Occupation and a massively destructive war in 2006. They’ve experienced a 30-year Syrian Occupation and countless political assassinations. They’re currently experiencing a debilitating economic crisis that threatens to unravel the country at its seams. And now, they’ve experienced an explosion with the blast yield of a small atomic bomb detonated in the middle of Beirut because of this ruling class’ criminal negligence for its own people. And yet, I have no doubt that Beirut will rise again, and take its place as the jewel of the Middle East, precisely because Lebanon is resilient.
But in this very moment, people are not thinking about being resilient, or upholding their reputations. They’re thinking about how to deal with the immediate crisis at hand. And as such, Lebanon and its people need help right now. They need your support. For those who have sent messages of solidarity, thank you. For those who have donated, thank you. For those who have stood in support of Lebanon and its people in hard times, thank you. You have no idea how much it all means. Thoughtfulness in times of hardship is worth its weight in gold.
So for those who would like to help, or continue helping, the most effective way to help Lebanon is to donate money to organizations on the ground doing relief work right now. This link provides you with several options. If you have any questions, please let me know. Much love to everyone in these hard times.
So I watched Michael Moore’s “Planet of the Humans” yesterday, a film directed and produced by Jeff Gibbs (Moore was the executive producer). Lots of good and bad noise being made about the documentary, so I wanted to see it for myself to judge. Note that you can see it for free on Youtube.
My overall impression of the movie is a mixed bag, but mostly negative. However, to be fair, I’ll mention some of the good, as well as the bad in my brief (and necessarily non-comprehensive) notes on the movie, with the usual disclaimer that these are my own personal views, and I speak solely in my individual capacity.
(1) Certain parts of the movie were shot way earlier than 2020, and as a result of that, some of the information you hear in the movie is quite dated. For example, some of the casually communicated information on solar panels regarding life span (10 years) and efficiency (8%) seemed quite old. Solar-powered generation has made significant progress over the years.
(2) One of the central messages of the movie (although by no means the only message) can be succinctly summarized by this argument:
(A) Fossil fuels are bad (this is taken as a given) (B) Fossil fuels are used in the life cycle production of solar and wind power generation (to make solar panels, to pour the concrete for wind turbine structures, and so on) (C) Ergo, solar and wind power generation are bad
Both premises can strongly be challenged, and by extension, the conclusion isn’t tenable.
(A) Fossil fuels are not bad (personally, I like fossil fuels, especially oil and gas; I’m sure you’re surprised). Although no energy source is “cost-free”, and fossil fuels are certainly no exception, when balancing costs versus benefits, fossil fuels have been and continue to be one of the greatest boons to humanity, having lifted billions of people out of energy poverty over centuries, significantly improved their standard of living, and underpinned modern civilization as we know it. If you don’t like this fact, come at me bro.
So why does Gibbs think fossil fuels are bad? One primary reason (though not the only reason) clearly implied throughout the film, is because of Green House Gas (GHG) emissions (like CO2) and the link to climate change. I’ve documented my issues with certain parts of climate science for nearly 2 decades now, so I won’t rehash these again in this post. But if that’s your issue, you may want to consider fossil fuels coupled with technological solutions like Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS), which is unsurprisingly not discussed in the film, and which can potentially play an important role in solving the GHG emissions problem; see more on CCS here.
For power generation, renewables can be cheaper on a levelized cost of electricity (LCOE) basis than fossil-fuel generation with CCS (especially coal + CCS), depending on the quality of your solar or wind resource versus the price of fuel (coal or gas). In fact, in many locales with (historically) expensive fossil fuels and very good quality wind or solar, un-subsidized renewables are cheaper than fossil-fuel power generation even without CCS. However, renewables are intermittent, and emerging technologies like Combined Cycle Natural Gas + CCS could possibly serve as a complement to renewables to provide the grid with reliable non-intermittent power (and could be cheaper than other alternatives like batteries, depending on gas price, although battery costs are coming down).
Perhaps more importantly, on the non-power generation side, CCS can potentially play a major role in providing carbon-neutral solutions like blue hydrogen (in its molecular form or via various hydrogen-carrier molecules), which is hydrogen made from fossil fuels like natural gas, and with its carbon emissions captured and sequestered via CCS technology. Blue hydrogen can be used as a carbon-free fuel for process heat (for e.g.) in major industrial processes that would be extremely expensive to electrify, such as processes in refineries, chemical plants, fertilizer plants and so on, and for which other alternatively-made carbon-free fuels are currently not competitive (although it will be interesting to monitor the competitiveness of processes such as electrolysis, which can make hydrogen from electricity and water; when the electricity is generated purely from renewable power, we call this green hydrogen).
(B) It is true that fossil fuels are currently used in the renewable manufacturing life-cycle. But two points need to be made here.
If the issue is GHG emissions, then you would think that Gibbs would be heartened to know that the amount of GHG emissions produced in the manufacturing of renewables (like solar or wind) is much less than the amount of GHGs emitted over the life cycle of unabated fossil fuel generation (although fossil fuel generation + advanced CCS would leave you with similar amounts of GHG emissions as renewables). In fact, the amount of GHG emissions in the renewables manufacturing process is quite low. The notion of relative quantity of emissions, which is crucial in any comparative discussion between technologies, is never even broached in the film.
Furthermore, if Gibbs insists on zero GHG emissions throughout the entire renewables manufacturing process, then CCS can always be used in ways described in section A above.
(C) As such, the conclusion that solar and wind “are bad” isn’t tenable if we’re focused on GHG emissions.
(3) At one point in the movie, sulfur hexafluoride (SF6) comes up briefly on the screen with huge letters reminding you that SF6 has a global warming potential of 23,000 times that of CO2 and that it’s used in renewable power generation equipment like wind turbines. That is true, but again, Gibbs fails to discuss relative quantities of emissions. The amount of SF6 emissions (mostly via leaks from electrical equipment such as switchgear) in the world is small, and the concentration of SF6 in the atmosphere is in the order of parts per trillion. So the overall warming effect of SF6, per consensus climate science, is relatively small compared to CO2 despite its significantly larger global warming potential because of massive differences in relative emissions. See more here on SF6.
(4) In the film, there’s a small segment about electric cars not being as “green” as they’re marketed to be, because the electricity they pull from the grid isn’t completely GHG-free (there’s a discussion of how 95% of electricity in Lansing, MI, comes from coal). That was certainly true back when that clip was recorded (in 2010?), and it’s still true today (although to a lesser extent), but as solar and wind generation costs continue to drop, they will continue to be added to grids around the world, and thus, these grids will slowly but surely “green” up over time. By extension then, electric cars will become “greener” over time.
(5) There were segments interspersed throughout the movie on the sustainability of mining the raw materials needed to make renewable power generation (rare Earth metals, quartz etc), and the disposal of end-of-life solar panels, wind-turbines and so on. I have to admit I don’t know enough about this topic to comment intelligently at this point, but it is something I’ll have to look into.
(6) A part of the movie that I agreed with is the last part of the film focused on biomass. I strongly agree that large-scale biomass power generation, where large parts of forests are cut down to be burned in large power plants, is a disaster and should be avoided. There is a lot more to talk about when it comes to biomass in general (and not just in power generation; hello, corn ethanol), but some of it can be done “sustainably” under certain restricted circumstances. I’ll leave this for another day given the length of this post already. However, I will say that the very last few minutes of the movie stayed with me, where scenes of orangutans are shown in trees being cut down, forcing them down to the ground as they lose their homes in the tree-tops. They are then shown staring into the cameras, as they take their last dying breaths. These scenes were clearly meant to pull on heart-strings, and tie deforestation with biomass use in energy, and they were quite effective.
(7) A part that I truly enjoyed was the grilling of “green” billionaires like Michael Bloomberg, Richard Branson, Jeremy Grantham and multi-hundred millionaires like Al Gore. Always happy to see hypocritical virtue-signaling billionaires who want to “Save The Planet” be knocked down a pedestal or two. Kudos to that (on a tangential but related note, please read this piece by Roger Pielke Jr on the impact of “green” billionaires like Bloomberg and Tom Steyer regarding the state of climate science).
(8) In a similar vein, Gibbs skewers “green” organizations like the Sierra Club and Bill McKibben’s 350.org (with McKibben himself being shown in a less than flattering light) by highlighting some of their hypocrisy. There were a litany of points raised in this segment, and I won’t go over all of them, other than to highlight the following and important point. This film is really directed at a segment of the environmental movement, with a message that can be roughly summarized as follows: renewable energy (via green capitalism) is not going to solve the environmental problems of modern industrial society. The problem is industrial society itself, and our massive consumption, which leads to these environmental problems. The only solution is to control human overpopulation in order to live sustainably.
There is a clear Neo-Malthusian message permeating throughout the film, and I couldn’t help but be somewhat exasperated every time one of the interviewees would communicate it in somber tones. I really don’t have the time or energy to go over why these types of arguments have an almost perfect record of failure, so hopefully you’ll give me a pass.
Finally, I’d like to highlight one last point. The reception of the movie by “mainstream” environmental organizations has been swift and brutal. Michael Moore is taking a shellacking across large parts of the environmental media space. Criticism is of course warranted, but some, like Josh Fox and many others, have tried really hard to censure the movie. People like Josh Fox, who put out one of the most misleading and propaganda-filled energy-focused movies I’ve ever seen (GasLand), have no leg to stand on. More importantly, people like Josh Fox, who are authoritarians at heart and who refuse to entertain speech that runs afoul of their favorite talking points, need to appreciate that the only way to counter bad speech and ideas (like most of Moore’s film), is to come up with better speech and ideas, and not to deny people the right to express themselves. So on that parting note, please don’t be like Josh Fox.
So, the bane of my (academic) existence has been finally resolved. Took 15 years, but the paper has now officially been published at Computational Optimization and Applicationshere, with (read-only) paper available here. You can also download the pre-print here.
One of the lessons of the currency crisis is that if you’re going to peg your currency, you need to structure your economy in such a way to (nearly) guarantee that you have net positive inflows of foreign currency into the country year on year in order to have a long-term sustainable economic system. To be clear, this is true even if Lebanon wasn’t running a “Ponzi-like” scheme, where new $ from overseas are needed to continuously meet old $ liabilities (in order to, for e.g., meet growth in $ deposits because of interest on them; see previous post on Lebanon currency crisis).
Why is this true? It’s true because in the opposite scenario (where you have net positive outflows, because, for example, of a large structural deficit in your balance of trade), you end up drawing down your foreign reserves continuously, which leads to your eventual inability to defend the peg and therefore, a forced devaluation of the currency.
You can try maintaining positive $ inflows by a combination of:
(1) Reducing imports
(2) Increasing exports
(3) Attracting foreign currency via alternative means (e.g. foreign investment, tourism, remittances).
For the longest time, Lebanon relied on (3) to make the “system work”, given that it maintained a large structural trade deficit (i.e. more imports than exports). And for two decades, it worked. Until now. The big problem with relying on (3) is the large exogenous risk (i.e. risk from outside your system) you take since something outside your system can topple your system by significantly reducing these alternative inflows. In the case of Lebanon, the Syria War in 2011 and the Oil Crisis in 2016 significantly reduced alternative foreign currency inflow by reducing tourism, investments and remittances, which precipitated the $ crisis.
So perhaps the right focus then is on (1) and/or (2) if we want to try and minimize some of that exposure. To be clear, that would not completely eliminate exogenous risk since you would still be relying on others to buy your exports, but with enough diversification and trade partners, coupled with a reduction of imports, you would be able to mitigate against a large chunk of that risk. Now can the peg be maintained while nurturing a robust export economy and/or a structural reduction in imports (via for e.g. self-sufficiency) to maintain a trade surplus? Perhaps, but the peg is currently artificially inflating the value of the LL against the $, which hurts the country’s ability to develop an export economy and encourages excess imports. Why? Because suppose, based on fundamentals, that the “true” conversion rate is 1 $ = 3000 LL. Given that we pay for imports in $ and foreigners pay us for our exports in LL, and given that the pegged conversion is 1 $ = 1500 LL, imports are currently costing us half as many LL to buy as they should (based on the “true” conversion rate, thus encouraging excess imports and increasing $ out of country), and exports are currently costing foreigners twice as many $ as they should, making us less competitive (thus decreasing the amount of $ into the country). So maintaining the current peg while trying to develop a robust export economy and/or reducing our imports is like running into a head-wind.
It should be noted that we may be able to develop an export economy and reduce imports while maintaining the current peg if we, for example, ever discover commercially viable quantities of natural gas offshore, which would in theory (1) increase our $ via our government take (from, for e.g. taxes and royalties on the produced gas that the International Oil Companies (IOCs) would have to pay us) (2) replace at least some of our imports like heavy fuel oil for power generation (thus reducing $ exiting country to buy fuel) (3) potentially generate export revenues (thus increasing $ entering country), depending on how our contracts with the IOCs are structured. However, there are significant hurdles to “get there” in the near to medium term for a variety of reasons that I won’t get into right now, which means this will not solve the problem any time soon (I may address this in a separate post).
So maybe we should think about giving up on the peg, and letting the currency float? On the plus side, this would set the value of the LL to its appropriate value based on the country’s fundamentals, which, based on today’s Lebanese economy, would weaken the LL versus the $ compared to today. This, in turn, would stimulate the export economy over time and naturally limit imports, since our products would be cheaper to buy for foreigners, and their products would be more expensive for us to buy. On the downside, this would cause significant short term pain as the purchasing power of the average Lebanese citizen decreases, and measures would need to be put in place to mitigate against that, especially for the most vulnerable among the population. This is, no doubt, a very sensitive subject that would require careful management, but devaluation seems to be happening already in parallel exchange markets at your local money changer (~2000 LL per $ now), except that it’s being done haphazardly while Riad Salameh pretends all is fine and the peg is intact.
These are just some tentative thoughts, but we need to have these types of conversations to be able to participate in shaping the future economy of the country.
Notes From Underground 
