The zeitgeist on Gaza is shifting in the US - here's why

This week, Israel announced that it has received its 500th flight of US military equipment since the war on Gaza began in October.

According to Israel's defence ministry, that's equal to some 50,000 tons of equipment in the form of armoured vehicles, munitions, personal protection gear and medical gear "crucial" to the Israeli military.

This discouraging statistic was revealed just days after the conclusion of the Democratic National Convention (DNC), where Palestinian Americans were refused a spot on the main stage.

Some might be feeling discouraged amid these developments.

Palestinian narrative

But it is undeniably the stubborn truth that the Palestinian narrative has woven itself into the fabric of mainstream American political culture.

More importantly, it has now become clear that from here on out the coolness and finality of our voice is never again likely to be denied a hearing in the public discourse.

Yet, that voice, you say, was indeed denied a hearing at the convention last week, was it not?

True, the Uncommitted Movement (a grassroots political group whose focus is on Gaza, the site of mass Palestinian death and human suffering beyond the ability of the mind to grasp, suffering of the kind that lies outside speech as it lies outside reason) failed to cajole DNC honchos into allowing a Palestinian American delegate to address the convention.

This was a key ask from the group - and they were denied even a speech that would have been carefully scrutinised and vetted beforehand.

In response to the snub, several dozen Uncommitted delegates staged a sit-in demonstration just outside the United Center, where the convention was held.

These folks' argument was: you allow the former CEO of American Express to mount the podium and speak about, well, we presume, how you should not leave home without your credit card.

But prevent an engaged Palestinian delegate from speaking about how American weapons and tax dollars have enabled unimaginable horrors to be inflicted on Palestinians both in Gaza and in the West Bank, the top news story in the world today! What gives here?

Truth be told, the decision by party leaders to deny a Palestinian his say at the convention was not, I believe, inspired by animus toward Palestinians so much as by concern that to have that Palestinian confront conventioneers with an issue that they prefer to ignore for now might shake party unity.

Times are changing

Look, it's true that Palestinians are not quite there yet, but they have most assuredly come a long way.

And that has been made possible by the fact that the zeitgeist has shifted - and done so at an accelerated pace since Israel launched its war against the people of Gaza well over 10 months ago - enabling the Palestinian cause to acquire for itself a place front and centre in the public discourse, as evidenced by the empathy shown it in the art world, the academic world, the literary world and even, albeit mutedly, in the established political world.

The shift in this zeitgeist has been as stark as it has been pervasive - now evident from coast to coast, all the way from Los Angeles to New York.

Consider how, as a case in point, in March this year, countless celebrities including Billie Eilish, Ramy Youssef and Mark Ruffalo wore red pins, with a black heart in the middle, publicly displaying their support for Gaza as they walked the red carpet at the 96th Academy Awards.

A month earlier, celebrities from the music world wore the same pins at the Grammy Awards, in a nod to Artists4Ceasefire, a hyperactive group of artists opposed to Israel's genocidal war in Gaza.

And consider also how the New York-based Artforum, reportedly the world's most prestigious art magazine, decided to publish an open letter demanding "that the institutional silence around the ongoing humanitarian crisis that 2.3 million Palestinians are facing in the occupied and besieged Gaza Strip be broken immediately."

(Artforum's editor-in-chief was fired a week later amid a pressure campaign from pro-Israeli billionaires.)

Meanwhile, several brave officials in government agencies have resigned from their jobs in protest over the past 10 months. They were legislators on the Hill, few in numbers though they were, who told it like it is, in the corridors of power.

And let's please not forget, all those "Swifties for Palestine," whose hashtag #SwiftiesForPalestine started trending on X on May 29, hours before Taylor Swift took to the stage during her Eras tour.

These are mere snippets, but they tell us that, yes, when it comes to American perceptions of the Palestinian cause, the times are indeed a-changin'.

And when change of that kind, stark and pervasive, occurs, it transforms not so much the structure as "the spirit of the times," which is in fact Hegel's and now our own conception of the zeitgeist, a condition driven by invisible agent forces that thrust us beyond our fixed meaning as it thrusts hitherto neglected ideas into ascendance.

The ascendance of what I call the stubborn truth of the Palestinian cause is not taking place because Palestinians have become, as it were, tragic figures ennobled by the spite of their enemies.

That is, not because they are victims of the racist ferocity of the Zionist movement and the extremes to which that movement has degenerated - from which Americans have turned away in nauseated disbelief.

But rather because that cause is driven by a universal ideal, one we have been familiar with, admired and cheered on for quite some time now in modern history: the struggle by an oppressed people to become free.

We see something endearing and lofty, something that at times tugs at our heartstrings, when we watch an oppressed people suffer and endure.

That is because in every liberation struggle, all the way from Ireland to the Indian subcontinent, from Vietnam to Algeria and from South Africa to Palestine, there lies an implication of moral force, one that cannot fail to enlarge the compass of our ethical meaning and of our own place in that meaning.

Liberation struggle

In short, a liberation struggle, like art, like music, like poetry, introduces us to the principal grammar of humane perception in life. To that extent, the ideal of the Palestinian struggle belongs to a nation much larger than geographical Palestine.

It speaks to us, about us and from us, whoever we are and in whatever part of God's green earth we happen, by a trick of fate, to have been born and to have acquired our original leap to a maturing consciousness.

And that, I say, explains, as a case in point, the group ecstasy evinced at the nationwide student protest movement in the US - and elsewhere around the world - that erupted earlier this year.

Palestinians, to whom history becomes personal context in daily life, from childhood right through ripe self-consciousness, fully know, as a people imbued with a teleological sensibility, that the terminus of their struggle for freedom will end on a note of grace.

Moreover, they also fully know, as you equally fully know along with them, that for every oppressor, as it is written in our holy texts, the day will come.