Phil Trachtenberg easily remembered where he was on October 7, 2023: in bed. The day before, he had quit his job at a hospital data management company. On that morning, alerts started flashing on his phone about the Hamas attack in Israel. Trachtenberg is "99.1% Ashkenazi Jew" – a genetic test proves it – but he has no particular link with Israel, which he has only visited once. Jewish school on Sundays, major holidays with the family, but no Shabbat or serious religious education. As the details of the massacre unfolded hour after hour, he was appalled. His first instinct was to think of the mass shootings in the US, and the fact that he too attends music festivals, like some of the Israeli victims.

After a week, Trachtenberg, 32, was only interested in Gaza. He watched a lot of the Qatari channel Al-Jazeera, exasperated by the passive forms used by American newspapers, phrases like "a bomb explodes." He devoured social media, unless it was the other way around. He tracked videos of Israeli soldiers exulting in the smoking ruins. He followed so-called conflict experts on TikTok. He was captivated by the fate of babies dying in Al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza City. "Before October 7, I was naive about the conflict. When I learned about the Nakba ("catastrophe," the great forced exodus of Palestinians in 1948), about the context, I thought of what was done here to the Native Americans. It felt like the same story of colonialism. I also thought that Israel was too eager to go to war, like the US after September 11."

Trachtenberg broke off contact with several Jewish friends. In Madison, he camped out in front of the office of Tammy Baldwin, a Democratic senator from Wisconsin. He discovered various anti-war organizations, demonstrated for Palestinian rights, and tried to make sense of his sense of horror. Then, "Listen to Wisconsin" emerged, responding to his need for involvement. This unprecedented local initiative called on participants in the Democratic primaries on Tuesday, April 2, to vote blank in protest against the Biden administration's ardent support for Israel.

There's already nothing left to play for in the primaries: Joe Biden already has enough delegates to be nominated. And yet, after Michigan and Minnesota, Wisconsin is the third state where a progressive grassroots movement has been organizing and putting pressure on local elected officials. And their dissent is enough to worry the party's strategists, aware that the presidential election in November is likely to be particularly close in this swing state. According to a recent poll by the Pew Research Center, American public opinion is very divided on the current war. A third are hostile to US military aid to Israel. Among Democrats and independents, the same number – 34% – feel that Biden leans too far in favor of Israel.

You have 70.93% of this article left to read. The rest is for subscribers only.