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Long-delayed Pittsburgh synagogue shooting trial to begin Monday, igniting pain, fear and hopes for closure
(JTA) — Every Thursday, Brad Orsini gets on a conference call with dozens of other security specialists who, like him, focus on preventing threats to American Jews. But in a few days, and for the coming months, the conference call won’t just address the dangers of the present and future. It will also deal with events that occurred more than four years ago.
That’s because next week marks the beginning of the trial of the gunman who is accused of killing 11 worshippers in a Pittsburgh synagogue in October 2018.
Orsini, who oversaw the city’s Jewish communal security on the day of the attack in the neighborhood of Squirrel Hill, hopes to find a sense of closure in the alleged shooter’s prosecution. But he also knows that the trial threatens to broadcast the white supremacist ideas that lay behind the attack, and continue to pose risks for Jewish communities. And he worries that, in addition to providing a possible pathway for survivors and victims’ families to move into the future, it could also thrust them back into a painful past.
“It’s long overdue,” Orsini said. “This has been looming large over the Pittsburgh community and, quite honestly, the Jewish community in the nation. We’re all looking toward finishing this trial and prosecuting this actor for what he did.”
At the same time, he added, “This trial is going to reopen wounds that this community has suffered for almost five years now, and it’s going to have the ability to retraumatize many people in the community. And we have to be concerned about that.”
Beginning on Monday, those countervailing emotions and expectations will come to bear as the deadliest antisemitic attack in American Jewish history is litigated in court. The trial, which will begin with jury selection, is expected to last about three months. Few doubt the guilt of the accused shooter, Robert Bowers, whose name is hardly uttered by Jewish residents of Squirrel Hill. But what remains unclear is what the trial will mean for American Jews — and for the families most directly affected by the attack.
Some hope for the defendant to get the death penalty — even though that will mean prolonging the legal ordeal — while others have advocated against it. Some hope for the trial to shed light on the threat of white supremacy, even as renewed attention on the attack could inspire other violent extremists. And some hope the trial will help them move past the tragedy, even as they know it will be difficult to hear the details of the shooting laid out in court.
“The country is going to have to undergo this unprecedented trial of the country’s worst mass killer of Jews,” said Jonathan Greenblatt, CEO of the Anti-Defamation League. “It’s going to be really hard, so I think our community is really going to have to buckle down and brace ourselves.”
The attack on Saturday morning, Oct. 27, 2018, killed 11 people from three congregations, all of which met at the same building, and injured six others, including four police officers. The defendant faces 63 criminal charges, including hate crimes and murder charges. He has pleaded not guilty. The prosecution is seeking the death penalty — a choice some relatives of victims are vocally supporting. Previously, leaders of two of the three congregations that suffered the attack had opposed the death penalty in this case.
“This massacre was not just a mass murder of innocent citizens during a service in a house of worship,” Diane Rosenthal, sister of David and Cecil Rosethal, who died in the attack, told local journalists, according to reporting by the Pittsburgh Union Progress. “The death penalty must apply to vindicate justice and to offer some measure of deterrence from horrific hate crimes happening again and again.”
For the survivors and families of victims, the trial will likely be especially painful. Some told the Pittsburgh Jewish Chronicle that they intend to take time off work, delay a vacation or be away from family for an extended period of time to be present at the proceedings.
“I want to see justice happen, but at the same time, I hate to think about the families having to potentially see images of what happened and things of that sort,” Steve Weiss, who survived the attack, told the weekly Jewish newspaper. “I’m sure they have mental images, but to have to actually see photos of victims and things of that sort I think can really be difficult for them.”
One thing few people question is the shooter’s guilt, despite his plea of not guilty. He offered to plead guilty in 2019 in exchange for taking the death penalty off the table, but prosecutors, determined to pursue capital punishment for the crime, rejected the plea.
It was the same thing that had happened in the case of the man charged with killing nine Black worshippers in a Charleston, South Carolina, church in 2015. But there, despite the rejected guilty plea, the trial took place a year and a half after the attack, and the shooter was sentenced to death. (In an illustration of the length of death penalty cases, his latest court proceeding happened in October, and he has not yet been executed.)
In contrast, the Pittsburgh trial is not starting until four and a half years after the shooting there. Part of the reason for the delay stems from the work of the defense team, which has pushed back the trial through various court filings. The alleged shooter’s lead attorney, Judy Clarke, has defended a series of high-profile attackers: the Unabomber, the attacker in the 1996 Atlanta Summer Olympics bombing and the Boston Marathon bomber, among others. According to Pittsburgh’s local CBS affiliate, her singular goal is to avoid the death penalty for her client.
But in many other ways, the parallels between the Charleston trial and this one are clear. Both concern shootings by alleged white supremacists in houses of worship, tragedies that have become gruesome symbols of a national rise in bigotry. In both, the culpability of the defendant was assumed before the trial began. Like the Pittsburgh defendant, the Charleston shooter has been lionized by white supremacists, including some who cited him as an inspiration for their own violent acts.
And in both cases, there is an understanding that a conviction does not heal the wounds opened by the shooter.
“This trial has produced no winners, only losers,” said the judge in the Charleston shooter’s trial, Richard Gergel, according to the New Yorker. “This proceeding cannot give the families what they truly want, the return of their loved ones.”
Still, some who are watching the Pittsburgh trial closely hope that it will bring new facts and connections to light. Amy Spitalnick, the executive director of Integrity First for America, a nonprofit that spearheaded a multimillion-dollar victory in a civil trial against the organizers of the 2017 far-right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, hopes that the Pittsburgh trial illustrates the links among different white supremacist shootings — such as the attacks in El Paso, Texas; Christchurch, New Zealand; and at a synagogue in Poway, California.
Those attackers spouted similar conspiracy theories and referenced other recent violent attacks in their manifestos. Spitalnick said that the accused Pittsburgh shooter allegedly communicated with the organizers of the Charlottesville rally on the social network Gab, which is known as a haven for right-wing extremists.
“Trials like this can really be illustrative of how deep the poison of white supremacy and antisemitism goes,” she said. In the Charlottesville trial, she said, “The reams and reams of evidence… really helped pull back the curtain on what motivated the defendants, how they operated, the tools and the tactics of the movement, the conspiracy theories at its core.”
There’s also the possibility that, with the attack resurfacing the shooter’s motivations, and putting him back in the spotlight, it will act as an inspiration for other white supremacists. In the years following the synagogue shooting, Pittsburgh became a kind of pilgrimage site for the defendant’s admirers — leading to continued harassment of local Jews.
“We’re giving a platform to an individual who is a Jew hater, who wanted to kill all Jews,” Orsini said. “What does that spark in other like-minded people? We need to be very cognizant throughout this trial on what kind of chatter is going to be out there on the deep dark web, or even in open portals.”
In the face of concerns about retraumatization, Greenblatt said the ADL is preparing resources on how to discuss the trial with students and amid the Jewish community.
“To relive the horrors of, the grief of, the event — this thing being constantly in the news — it’s going to be hard to avoid, it’s going to be difficult and it could be grisly and upsetting,” Greenblatt said. “I would much prefer this trial didn’t happen — I would much prefer this crime never happened, I would much prefer that those people were all still with us today — but this is where we are.”
He added, “If there might be some ability to raise awareness among the non-Jewish population of what we’re facing, [that] would be of value.”
One potential challenge for American Jews as a whole, Spitalnick said, is that federal prosecutors don’t necessarily share the needs of Jews who will be following the proceedings. While the trial will conjure a mix of emotions for Jews locally and beyond, she said, prosecutors will be more focused on the nuts and bolts of what happened that day and the details of the accused attacker’s actions and motives.
“We’re going to probably spend a lot of time hearing from the prosecution about what motivated him, but it’s not through the lens of what we as Jews think about when we think about Jewish safety,” she said. “It’s through the lens of making the case that this guy did what he did motivated by this extremism and hate… It’s going to be very deliberate and tactical and precise, versus where we as American Jews have been thinking about this from a deeply personal, communal safety perspective.”
The deliberate and detailed work of prosecutors, however, may not be at cross purposes with the emotional needs of Jews, Orsini said. When the trial ends, he said, the establishment of Bowers’ guilt may itself prove to be transformative for how Jews relate to the tragedy, in Pittsburgh and beyond.
“The fact that this individual has not been fully brought to justice… and is not convicted yet of this mass shooting — in some way, yes, that closure and finality will be done at the end of this trial,” he said. “The community can kind of regroup and truly become resilient once this phase is over with.”
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Israeli bobsled squad is disqualified from Olympics after trying to swap in Druze teammate
(JTA) — The Israeli bobsled team’s historic journey to the 2026 Winter Olympics ended in anything but storybook fashion on Sunday, as Israel’s own Olympic committee withdrew it from competition after learning that the team had lied about a member’s health.
The withdrawal meant that Israel did not compete in the four-man race on Sunday, the final day of competition in Milan and Cortina.
After finishing the first two heats of the four-man bobsled race as the slowest team, Israel planned to swap out Uri Zisman for team alternate Ward Farwasy, who would have become Israel’s first-ever Druze Olympian had he taken the ice.
But bobsled substitutions are only permitted in the event of an athlete’s injury or illness, so Zisman had agreed to lie and tell officials he was sick. He had reportedly obtained a medical certification for the false story.
In a statement, Israel’s Olympic committee said it had learned of the team’s plan to substitute in Farwasy “in an improper manner that does not meet the standards expected of Olympic athletes and is not in line with Olympic values,” and chose to withdraw the team from the race.
“The Olympic Committee of Israel views any deviation from the Olympic values as unacceptable and cannot accept inappropriate behavior,” the statement said. “It should be emphasized that, up to this point, the participation of the bobsleigh delegation has taken place in the spirit of sport and without any violations by the athletes.”
David Greaves, the president of the Israeli Bobsleigh and Skeleton Federation, told the Times of Israel that he was “deeply disappointed in the actions of the team.”
AJ Edelman, the team’s captain and main driver of its existence, took responsibility for the scheme.
“I apologize profusely for the disappointment,” Edelman posted on X. “But I will always remain proud that the team looked at their Druze brother, who had earned his place on the team, and unanimously said ‘we want this for you.’ I signed off on it and I take responsibility.”
Later, fending off criticism that he had compromised the very Olympic program he had sought to build up, Edelman appeared to blame Zisman’s mother for calling foul on the switch and said he did not regret it.
“I make no apologies for the decision. At all. The switch is not only common in our sport, we did it believing it was good for the country and to honor our teammate. We thought we were putting country first,” he wrote. “The end effect was not intended but I am proud of the team’s consensus in that moment. It was only an issue because the mother of the athlete replaced was upset it was her child, not another athlete. The decision itself was not in question and I remain okay with it.”
The disqualification ignited criticism of the team from both pro-Israel sports fans and those who had protested Israel’s inclusion in the Olympics in the first place. Edelman and Menachem Chen’s last-place finish in the two-man bobsled event last week was overshadowed by a Swiss broadcaster’s criticism of Israel and Edelman during the race. The broadcaster later removed the clip from its website.
On Saturday, Italy’s public broadcaster apologized for a commentator’s off-camera remark calling to “avoid” the Israeli team. The network’s director issued an apology for what he said was an “unacceptable expression that in no way represents the values of public service broadcasting or of RAI Sport.”
The controversies came after the bobsled team’s apartment was broken into while it trained in the Czech Republic. Israel was competing in Olympic bobsled for the first time, in what Edelman and some fans dubbed “Shul Runnings,” a reference to the Jamaican bobsled team’s similarly improbable run in 1988.
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Leaked DNC autopsy found Biden’s Israel backing cost Harris votes for president
Senior Democrats who reviewed the party’s 2024 presidential election autopsy concluded that the Biden administration’s handling of the Israel-Hamas war was a “net negative” for Democrats and cost Vice President Kamala Harris critical support among younger and progressive voters, according to a new report published Sunday. The Democratic National Committee has so far withheld the findings from public release.
Activists affiliated with the Institute for Middle East Understanding Policy Project, a progressive research group, told Axios that in post-election discussions with DNC representatives, party officials acknowledged that the Biden administration’s support for Israel during the war in Gaza was a factor in former Vice President Kamala Harris’ loss to Donald Trump.
The war loomed large in the campaign before Biden withdrew from the race. Anxious Democrats reportedly pressured former President Biden to “take a tougher stance on Israel” as one way to recover from his catastrophic debate performance in June 2024. Some advisers floated the idea of conditioning or halting certain arms transfers to shift the campaign’s direction and appeal to disaffected progressives and voters in Michigan — a swing state with a substantial Arab American community — who had cast “uncommitted” protest ballots in the primary.
Harris, who was more forceful in her call for an immediate ceasefire to address the dire humanitarian situation in Gaza, lost Michigan and Pennsylvania by almost 2 points.
“We should have done more as an administration,” Harris said in November. “We should have spoken publicly about our criticism” of how Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his government “were executing this war.”
The DNC claimed it has shared the internal findings with party leaders and candidates. Progressive activists are pushing for them to be made public ahead of the midterm elections.
Kamala Harris’ conclusions
In her book about the election, titled 107 Days, Harris addressed what she described as the political fallout from Biden’s statements and her own stance on the war, writing that it hurt Democrats with key constituencies.
“The issue was not binary, but the outcome of this election certainly was,” Harris wrote, adding that she wished that those who protested her understood that “sitting out the election or voting for a third candidate would elect Trump and kill any effort for a just peace, any hope for a two-state solution.”
In her own defense, Harris wrote that she “wanted to acknowledge the complexity, nuance and history of the region, but it seemed very few people had the appetite for that or the willingness to hold two tragic narratives in their mind at the same time, to grieve for human suffering both Israeli and Palestinian.”
In her rushed vetting of running mates, Harris pushed Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro to apologize for criticizing pro-Palestinian campus protests, which he refused to do, according to his recent memoir.
Harris wrote that she discussed with Shapiro how his selection might affect the campaign, including the risk of protests tied to Gaza at the Democratic National Convention and “what effect it might have on the enthusiasm we were trying to build.” She wrote that Shapiro responded by saying he had clarified that earlier views he held were misguided and that he was firmly committed to a two-state solution. Harris ultimately selected Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz as her running mate, but protests over Gaza still roiled the Democratic convention. Uncommitted delegates staged a sit-in outside the venue after the DNC declined to allow a Palestinian American to address the main stage.
The path forward
Palestinian rights have increasingly become a litmus test for Democrats.
Recent national polls show Democratic voters have as a group become more sympathetic to Palestinians. The IMEU Policy Project conducted a poll after the Democratic primary for New York City Mayor last year, which showed that Zohran Mamdani’s sharp criticism of Israel attracted new voters and energized parts of the Democratic electorate that contributed to his victory. The post-primary survey showed that 78% agreed with his belief that Israel was committing genocide in Gaza, and 79% support restricting weapons to Israel.
Last August, the Democratic National Committee withdrew a resolution reaffirming the party’s support for Israel and a two-state solution to avoid a clash with younger and progressive activists who were pressing sharper opposition to Israel.
In July, a record 27 Senate Democrats, a majority of the caucus, supported a pair of resolutions calling for the blocking of weapons transfers to Israel.
Even national Jewish Democrats, like Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker and former Chicago mayor Rahm Emanuel — both considered possible presidential candidates in 2028 — have publicly challenged Israeli policy. Shapiro has repeatedly been critical of Netanyahu and, last year, criticized the Israeli government’s rejection of international reports on hunger in Gaza, calling it “abhorrent” and “wrong.”
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Young Americans increasingly likely to view Hamas as ‘resistance,’ not terrorists
American adults under the age of 30 increasingly view Hamas as “militant resistance” operating on behalf of the Palestinian people, rather than a self-interested terrorist organization, according to data gathered by the American Jewish Committee.
In a poll conducted one year after the Oct. 7 Hamas attack against southern Israel, 33% of 18- to 29-year-olds described Hamas as a “resistance group” — nearly double the 17% of Americans over 30 who used that label — and that figure jumped to 43% this past fall.
The findings, shared with the Forward this month, track with another survey last summer that found 60% of 18- to 24-year-olds sided with Hamas over Israel in the Gaza war. It suggests the support that young Americans express for the Palestinians, and the same cohort’s deeply negative views toward Israel, are breaking through what was long a taboo: sympathy for an organization classified as a terrorist organization by the United States, and which has engaged in decades of violence against Israeli civilians.
Tariq Kenney-Shawa, a fellow at the pro-Palestinian think tank Al-Shabaka, attributed this shift to a broader disillusionment with mainstream media and the political establishment that has long presented Israel as a close U.S. ally with shared values.
“Americans have come to not trust these traditional narratives,” he said in an interview. “That spills over into thinking, ‘If we’ve been lied to about Israel’s true nature, maybe that means we’re also being lied to about Oct. 7 and groups like Hamas.’”
Open support for Hamas has been relatively rare among the protesters demonstrating against Israel’s prosecution of the war in Gaza. But constant demands for activists to condemn Hamas after Oct. 7 quickly became a source of derision on the left, while slogans and iconography celebrating Hamas violence became more common as the conflict dragged on and Israel killed tens of thousands of Palestinians, destroyed the vast majority of Gaza’s infrastructure and restricted aid shipments as experts warned of famine and raised the specter of genocide.
But many Jewish leaders and other critics of Hamas say young people are misinformed about the nature of Hamas — including its lukewarm support among Palestinians living in Gaza — and the war.
They also say apparent support for Hamas, especially in a public opinion poll that offers limited response options, may be less about genuine support for the organization and its political platform and more about picking the answer that aligns with their support for Palestinians.
“There’s a tendency in our very polarized society to find a camp and stay in the camp and whatever words the camp is using become your words,” said Julie Fishman Rayman, vice president for policy at the American Jewish Committee.
Complex — and incomplete — views on Hamas
In the immediate aftermath of Oct. 7, a core of activists sympathetic to Hamas made their presence known. Demonstrations in major cities celebrated the attacks, while the coordinating body of Students for Justice in Palestine approvingly referred to Hamas militants as “the resistance.”
But as a broader protest movement calling for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza grew — drawing in Jews and others who simultaneously condemned Hamas violence on Oct. 7 and called for Israeli hostages to be released — some leading Jewish organizations and pundits continued to paint the demonstrators as terror supporters.
What data was available painted a more complex picture.
A study conducted by Eitan Hersh, a Tufts University professor, found that 5% of self-identified leftist college students — those who were generally organizing and participating in the campus protests against Israel — believed that “all Israeli civilians should be considered legitimate targets for Hamas,” compared to 17% of conservative students.
And since the Israel-Hamas war began, the Harvard/Harris poll, a collaboration between the school’s Center for American Political Studies and a private polling firm, has consistently found that between 40% and 50% of the youngest American adults — those aged 18 to 24 years old — side with Hamas over Israel when forced to choose. The monthly poll’s August edition made headlines when that figure briefly jumped to 60% support for Hamas.
A member of the Democratic Socialists of America’s New York City chapter pointed to that statistic while pressing Shahana Hanif, a progressive member of city council, during an endorsement meeting on why she had condemned local protesters who had chanted in favor of Hamas.“With 60% of Gen Z supporting Hamas against Israel, many of us are realizing now that we’ve been lied to all our lives,” the person said, according to a recording obtained by Jewish Insider. (A NYC-DSA spokesperson said that members do not reflect the organization’s position.)
But most coverage overlooked the poll’s other findings, including that 61% of that age group believed “Hamas must release all remaining hostages without any conditions or face serious consequences” and that 63% disapproved of Hamas’s conduct in the war.
The Harvard/Harris survey has been criticized for being unreliable and at times producing results about antisemitism and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict that are “bizarre and difficult to account for,” in the words of a Harvard Crimson columnist.
But some observers say that people expressing sympathy for Hamas may have nuanced views.
“I speak to a lot of Palestinians who have supported Hamas not because they support terrorism but because they support action to oppose the occupation,” said Roei Eisenberg, chair of the young adults network at Israel Policy Forum, a dovish Zionist think tank. “They have a Palestinian Authority that’s broken and corrupt and not actually standing up for them — and they see Hamas in Gaza at least putting up a fight.”
Ahmed Moor, a Palestinian-American writer and fellow at the Foundation for Middle East Peace, said that supporters of the Palestinians in the United States are following a similar logic as they see evidence of devastation and Israeli brutality in Gaza. “Why are Zionists so resistant to the idea of Palestinian resistance?” he asked. “Any normal person would look and say, ‘Of course these people have a right to resist.’”
That sentiment has circulated on social media, often among anonymous creators.
After Israel killed Yahwa Sinwar, the military leader of Hamas in Gaza, many users on TikTok created videos praising the bravery of his final moments in which he is recorded throwing a stick at an Israeli drone.
“In a million years, you would never see Joe Biden, you would never see Ben-Gvir, you would never see any of these people die for anyone but themselves,” a Jewish user who goes by Dirty Alex told his 23,000 followers.
He added an ambivalent caveat: “It’s weird because I think — because of Oct. 7, the people who perpetuated it should be held accountable — and I think they would agree, actually — but at the same time I will always support righteous struggle.”
That tendency to equivocate when it comes to Hamas’s most egregious atrocities is common even among those in the U.S. who otherwise express support for the group. Many have sought to downplay the Oct. 7 attack as primarily an assault on Israeli military positions and claiming that atrocities committed against civilians were exaggerated or completely fabricated.
On social media, many users have rushed to highlight any evidence that Israeli hostages were treated well by Hamas during captivity. For example, several large accounts claimed that Israeli Maya “Bengi” had refused to meet with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu because his “hands are stained with the blood of children in Gaza.”
But the real hostage, named Maya Regev, did meet with Netanyahu and said she had been abused by sadistic doctors in Gaza.
The most popular symbol associated with Hamas among Israel’s opponents in the U.S. is also connected with attacks on the Israeli military rather than civilians: The inverted triangle, which comes from grainy propaganda videos that use the red arrow to point out Israeli military units operating in Gaza immediately before Hamas militants fire at them.
Kenney-Shawa, the Al-Shabaka fellow, said the growing support for Hamas among young Americans suggests that “more people are vibing with the idea of Palestinian resistance” rather than aligning with the organization’s specific tactics or policies.
Others acknowledge that while Hamas has engaged in war crimes and violations of international law, Israel stands accused of engaging in similar behavior. “Palestinian resistance has always been armed — and that’s always been in line with international law — and the violation of international law has also occurred both by Zionist groups and Palestinians,” Moor said. “Everyone has committed crimes.”
Hamas officials have also sought to present positions to western audiences that are palatable to progressives, emphasizing measured political positions and portraying Israel as the more radical and intransigent party.
“We are politically realistic,” Khaled Meshaal, a senior Hamas leader, told Drop Site News in December. “We are ready to engage with any serious project to establish a Palestinian state along the 1967 borders even though I realize, unfortunately, that this is impossible because of Israeli policy.”
Hamas as symbol of resistance
Hamas coming to represent the strongest resistance to Israel among young people in the U.S. is frustrating for some Palestinians, who say it sanitizes what Hamas actually represents and overlooks the preferences of Palestinians in Gaza.
Khalil Sayegh, a politician analyst and director of the Agora Initiative, which advocates for Palestinian rights in Israel, the West Bank and Gaza, said he appreciated that Americans were turning away from an uncritical pro-Israel narrative but worried about polarization in the opposite direction.
“Resistance has become basically equal to Hamas and Hamas equal to resistance,” Sayegh said. “That’s a very toxic and wrong thing.”
He said that “Israeli apartheid and genocide” was the main problem in Gaza but that Hamas also stood in the way of establishing a “secular, democratic Palestine.”
While around half of Palestinians in Gaza said they were satisfied with Hamas’s performance in the war, according to an October survey, the poll also suggested that the organization would be soundly defeated if open parliamentary or presidential elections were held across the West Bank and Gaza.
Around 33% of voters in Gaza would support a Hamas candidate for president, while most of the remainder would either vote for Marwan Barghouti, a leader of secular rival Fatah who is currently imprisoned by Israel, or not participate, according to Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research. Respondents were roughly split on whether negotiations and peaceful protest or “armed struggle” were the best method to establish a Palestinian state.
Throughout the 1980s and 1990s there were robust debates in the Palestinian diaspora over which political factions to support. But Sayegh said those faded from public view as Israel eliminated most credible alternatives and fears grew that open critique of Hamas would be weaponized by pro-Israel groups to weaken the pro-Palestinian movement.
Additionally, he said, activists in the U.S. who support Hamas have intimidated its critics within the Palestinian community. “There is still a debate but there is no public debate,” Sayegh said. “The masses that are supportive of Hamas have scared the people who oppose Hamas into silence.”
Ahmed Foud Alkhabtib, who moved from Gaza to the U.S. in high school, has become one of the most prominent Palestinian critics of Hamas and now positions himself in opposition to most of the pro-Palestinian movement.
Alkhabtib, the founder of an initiative called Realign for Palestine at the Atlantic Council, attributed the rise in support for Hamas to a combination of ignorance and malice within the “pro-Palestine industrial complex” composed of “far-left meets far-right meets the Islamists meets the Taliban and al-Qaeda meets the idiot Jewish kids who said they were lied to about Israel at summer camp.”
But he said that some Palestinians had told him during the war that they shared his antipathy toward Hamas — especially as some blamed the group for contributing to aid shortages over the summer — but that they would speak out once Israel ended its military operations. “I did pick up on notes of the pro-Hamas euphoria dying down,” Alkhabtib said.
And yet both Palestinian and Jewish observers said that leading pro-Israel organizations have also contributed to polarization around the Israeli-Palestinian conflict that drives some people toward Hamas or makes them reluctnat to criticize the group.
Eisenberg, with the Israel Policy Forum, said that many Jewish groups have refused to acknowledge Israeli atrocities in Gaza and rushed to paint the country’s critics as terror supporters. “It’s coming from a place of being unable to hold complexity,” he said.
Alkhabtib said he has experienced this firsthand. Despite being an unequivocal critic of Hamas and maintaining close ties to many Jewish organizations, he has found little tolerance for also critiquing the Israeli far right.
“The pro-Palestinian people are watching me — the pro-Hamas people are watching me — and saying, ‘Well what incentive do I have if you’re been Mr. Dialogue and Engagement and they turn on you the second you criticize Israel,” Alkhabtib said. “There’s something to be said about the role of Jewish communities to reverse these problematic trends.”
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