With polls showing anti-Israel protesters have failed to persuade the American public, they are now switching tactics to focus their fire on one target they think they can influence: the Democrat Party.
Despite their best efforts, the vast majority of Americans do not think any less of Israel. In January, 80 per cent of respondents to a Harvard CAPS-Harris poll supported Israel, down just 1 per cent from the previous month.
The respected survey also found that 67 per cent back Israel’s war aims and say there should only be a ceasefire if all the hostages are released and Hamas is removed from power.
Where once protesters brought parts of cities like New York to a standstill, they now struggle to muster enough to shut off a sidewalk. Perhaps it’s the cold weather or perhaps a dawning realisation of a pointless cause. In London, January saw protests of 200,000.
Instead they are focusing on viral gotcha moments, ambushing senior Democrats in a bid to grab headlines in the way their street-shutting protests used to and to turn the party against its leaders.
Biden was targeted twice last week with protesters disrupting speeches. “This is going to go on for a while,” the president predicted. “They have got this planned.”
Senior Democrat Congresswoman Nancy Pelosi was ambushed on Monday at her home by protesters chanting “genocide” as she climbed into a blacked-out SUV. Sadly for them and their viral clip, Pelosi turned the tables, angrily responding, “Go back to China where your headquarters is.”
Senator Chuck Schumer has his own very small but very dedicated band almost permanently camped outside his New York apartment. They chant, among other things, “We don’t want no Jew state.”
Two weeks ago they decamped to his daughter’s apartment after, as one put it on X, they “received a tip that Chuck Schumer would be having Shabbat dinner with his daughter at her apartment”.
The replies on X to the video of that cruel stunt demonstrated that it had backfired. “Imagine the mind that would tweet this out — expecting to receive adulation for picketing an elderly man’s dinner with his daughter” and “harassing a father having dinner with his daughter because they’re Jewish. Great look.”
Senator John Fetterman last week responded to protesters chanting “genocide” outside his home by going onto his roof to wave an Israeli flag and stealing the viral limelight
The reality is that the protesters’ new tactic only serves to show how dwindling their support is and how juvenile and spiteful they are. So naive, in fact, that they cannot see that it is turning people away from their cause.
