This is the second installment of a three-part series on the Gaza situation, political fallout, root causes, and real-world ramifications.
The United States and the European Union have rightly designated Hamas a terrorist organization. Yet one would be hard-pressed to know it, given the global political fallout regarding Gaza.
Literally, the day after Hamas invaded Israel—killing, raping, and kidnapping innocent civilians—and weeks before Israel counterattacked, there were pro-Hamas demonstrations throughout the United States and Europe. Some Hamas supporters denied outright that the designated terrorist organization had committed their atrocities, claiming it was all fabricated Israeli propaganda. Still, other Hamas supporters accepted that Hamas had committed the terrorist atrocities but argued they were justified by Israel’s purported “occupation” of Gaza. Both sets of Hamas supporters tendentiously alleged Israel was a genocidal, racist Western colonial power oppressing “people of color,” i.e., the Palestinians.
In the U.S., pro-Hamas activists took over parts of many American college campuses, denouncing Israel and chanting “from the river to the sea, Palestine must be free” and “globalize the intifada.” Both slogans are barely disguised demands that Israel be destroyed and its Jewish citizens be expelled or, more likely, slaughtered. Pro-Hamas supporters also chant them to seek to instill fear and intimidate Israel’s supporters, especially American Jews, into silence. Pro-Hamas supporters assaulted American Jews, notably by physically harassing students. College administrations, many of whom are sympathetic to Hamas and its aims, did nothing to quell these acts. Nor did the Biden administration. Seeing no pushback to end the intimidation and abuse of Israel’s supporters, in particular, and Jews, in general, professional associations took it as a green light to demand a U.S. boycott of Israel (along the lines of their continued Boycott, Divest, and Sanction campaign), and, yes, to continue to make American Jews feel unwelcome.
Such assaults and batteries against Jews are not limited to the United States. Antisemitism in Europe, already rising before Hamas attacked Israel, has sharply increased. Israelis have been assaulted in Europe, including the pogrom against Jews in Amsterdam earlier this year. Jewish restaurants in Europe (and the U.S.) have been damaged, and their patrons have been harassed. Israeli cruise ships have been prevented from landing at European ports by gangs of pro-Hamas demonstrators. Predatory acts against Israelis and Jews seemingly abound worldwide with apparent impunity and abetment.
Providing cover for the support of the terrorist organization Hamas, the American and world media heedlessly purvey the terrorist organization’s propaganda (though there are a handful of notable exceptions). Such pro-Hamas media have deliberately elided the indisputable fact of Hamas’s war crimes against Israelis and instead accuse Israel of perpetrating such crimes. For example, the world media has adopted the Hamas fiction that Israel is deliberately starving the Gaza civilians. Recently, The New York Times (“NYT”) printed a photograph on its front page of a Gazan mother holding an emaciated baby, which the paper cited as evidence that Israel was deliberately causing a famine in Gaza. The photograph was later proven to be staged Hamas propaganda. So, what did the NYT do? As little as possible. While the bogus photograph and accompanying article had been published and further posted to the NYT website, which has approximately 55 million viewers, the “paper of record’s” grudging retraction was posted on a different media outlet that has only 55,000 viewers. Evidently, truth is the first casualty of accountability journalism, for the NYT continues patting itself on the back for promoting Hamas’s false narratives, even as it distorts the facts on the ground in Gaza.
Of course, the global media is not alone in peddling Hamas propaganda. International institutions continue to play a major role in promoting the despicable blood libel that Israel is akin to Nazi Germany. The International Criminal Court, which has a long history of being virulently anti-Israel, has indicted Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and two other Israeli officials for alleged war crimes. Thus, in true Orwellian fashion, by leading a defensive war against a genocidal aggressor, Israeli political and military leaders are themselves deemed to be war criminals. Following their lead, a number of European nations have said they would arrest the prime minister if he sets foot on their territory. Virtually no world nation besides the U.S. has protested this outrage.
Regrettably, then, the present political and diplomatic front is a disaster for Israel. The EU and virtually all of the political leadership of the European countries have assailed Israel, accusing its leaders of committing war crimes in Gaza and regularly voting to condemn Israel at the UN. (However, some of these countries still cravenly continue to do business with Israel regarding military hardware and technology.) Most recently, the prime ministers of France, England, and Canada have declared their support for a sovereign Palestinian state, which is a clear and unmistakable reward for Hamas’s invasion of Israel, despite Hamas’s continuing refusal to release the remaining Israeli hostages, whom they are keeping in torturous and inhumane conditions.
As former Israeli Prime Minister Yair Lapid (himself a harsh critic of Prime Minister Netanyahu) said in the wake of the French declaration:
“The problem, of course, is not that France recognizes a Palestinian state. After all, that won’t make it come into existence. The problem is that they don’t ask themselves the fundamental question: within what borders? What is its capital? What leadership does it have? What system of government? Is it a democracy? Does it support the right of return? Does it have the means to deal with an attempt by Hamas to take over right after it is established?”
The French, British, and Canadian declarations are devoid of answers to such elementary concerns. The reason is not hard to glean. French President Macron’s popularity rating stands at an abysmally low 19%. He is desperately appealing to the large swath of Muslim voters for support, as well as the very large segment of the French electorate who dislike (or worse) Israel. It can also be said that British Prime Minister Starmer, also facing a significant erosion of support for him and his Labour Party, is motivated by the same crass political calculations. The Canadian Prime Minister, a confirmed leftist to begin with, has never been sympathetic to Israel and has made similar political calculations. Other European nations are quickly falling in line. Portugal and Malta have endorsed the recognition of a Palestinian state. Apparently, Hamas’s declared willingness to perpetrate a new Holocaust no longer matters to the nations declaring their nebulous support for a Palestinian state. One might be tempted to argue that these “civilized” nations are trying to pay the ransom for the kidnapped civilians still being held by Hamas. But, to date, these nations have not made the immediate return of the hostages a precondition for recognition of a Palestinian state that would likely be controlled by Hamas.
In the U.S., the political Weltanschauung reflects a growing hostility to Israel. Polls of young Americans (late teens to early twenties) currently report that a solid majority of them favor Hamas over Israel. The same is true of voters who identify as Democrats, especially their self-proclaimed “progressive” wing. On July 30, 2025, Democratic senators sponsored two resolutions that called for the termination of arms sales to Israel. While the resolutions each failed by about a 3:1 margin, 22 Democrats voted in favor; all the energy in the Democratic Party is within its progressive wing, which is overwhelmingly anti-Israel. One need not look any further than New York City’s mayoral race, where a self-professed “socialist” who staunchly supports the designated terrorist organization Hamas and the “globalized Intifada” has won the Democratic primary and is poised to win the general election.
On the other side of the aisle, the Republican Party has become the bedrock of American support for Israel, as has President Trump. However, there is a vocal group on the right who, echoing the failed isolationism of the America First Movement, are as viscerally opposed to Israel as are the majority of Democrats. Prior to America’s successful strike on the Iranian nuclear facilities, this neo-isolationist movement inveighed against such action, arguing it was being done to appease Israel and the American Jewish lobby and would drag the U.S. into a world war. When this prognostication proved wrong, these neo-isolationists nevertheless continued to traffic in classic antisemitic tropes reminiscent of the Nazi declaration that “the Jews are our misfortune.” While the neo-isolationists will not capture the Republican Party, the GOP must be vigilant to prevent them from impacting its foreign policy.
In conclusion, be it locally or globally, Andrew Breitbart was correct when he noted that politics is downstream from culture. Thus, the current zeitgeist’s antisemitic poison streaming down into the international body politic will only cause more suffering and instability for all humanity, which we will explore in the third and final installment of this series.
An American Greatness contributor, the Hon. Thaddeus G. McCotter (M.C., Ret.) represented Michigan’s 11th Congressional District from 2003 to 2012. He served as Chair of the Republican House Policy Committee and as a member of the Financial Services, Joint Economic, Budget, Small Business, and International Relations Committees. Not a lobbyist, he is also a contributor to Chronicles, a frequent public speaker and moderator for public policy seminars, and a co-host of “John Batchelor: Eye on the World” on CBS radio, among sundry media appearances.
Andrew Zack is a Detroit-area attorney who is observing these events with great trepidation.