There is little doubt that the Overton window on Israel-Palestine is rapidly shifting. To understand why, MintPress spoke to academics, experts, and rights groups familiar with the subject.
By Alan Macleod | 24 May 2021
MINT PRESS NEWS — The Russian revolutionary Vladimir Lenin once said of history that there are decades that go by where nothing happens, and there are weeks where entire decades happen. In the past week, it seems as if the U.S. attitude towards Israel and Palestine has changed more than in the previous 50 years. Everybody seems to be acknowledging it, from progressive media to pillars of the establishment like The New York Times and The Washington Post. “The dam is cracking,” wrote Abier Khatib of the Open Society Foundation.
Objectively, the violence during Operation Protective Edge — the 2014 Israeli assault on Gaza — was far worse. Even as Israeli forces broke the newly adopted ceasefire just hours after they signed it, storming the Al-Aqsa Mosque again on Friday, the casualties are nothing like those of seven years ago, when well over two thousand Palestinians were killed. Yet in 2014, the reaction from the American political elite was one of total support for Israel.
As Ryan Grim from The Intercept noted, at the peak of the 2014 onslaught, Jessica Ramos, a progressive Democratic Party district leader in Queens, New York, took to Facebook simply to post the message “Palestine <3,” a statement that elicited a storm of condemnation and near hysteria from the political and media classes. […]
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