Michigan Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed, who has accused Israel of committing genocide in Gaza and campaigned on cutting off the country’s U.S. military aid, drew criticism in late September for appearing at a campaign event with former Vice President Kamala Harris, given the Biden administration’s support for Israel. Others viewed the appearance as a prudent unity-building move for the Democratic Party.
But while political debates around Palestine continue as the U.S. midterm elections approach, Israel never stopped its genocide. Despite an ongoing ceasefire, Israeli airstrikes killed at least eight people, including a journalist, on Sept. 30. The reported death toll since Oct. 7, 2023 stands at more than 74,000 Palestinians, including at least 1,431 since the ceasefire went into effect last October, according to Al Jazeera.
Three years into the genocide, some Palestinians in Gaza say that pro-Palestine rhetoric from elected officials and candidates only goes so far if realities don’t shift on the ground. For years, U.S. politicians who challenged support for Israel risked losing backing from influential political institutions and some voters. But as Israeli war crimes continue to be live-streamed, public opinion has shifted dramatically. Several U.S. politicians and candidates have risen in popularity with their stance for Palestinian rights and against U.S. military support for Israel. However, the situation in Gaza remains deadly.
“They all show fine morals when they’re out of office, but the moment they have a real chance to make change, they start manufacturing professional excuses,” said Iktimal Abu Mattar, who lives in Gaza.
New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani, who has sharply criticized Israel, has faced similar criticism since getting elected, including recently after his New York Police Department arrested over 100 people protesting Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s appearance at the United Nations. Mamdani pledged during his campaign to arrest Netanyahu if he visited New York, but later said his administration does not have the legal authority to do so, calling on the federal government to enforce an International Criminal Court warrant against him.
Meanwhile, life in Gaza barely resembles what it once was. Satellite images from Google Maps show that about 82% of the Strip’s buildings have been damaged or destroyed, according to the U.N. Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees.
“Neither people nor homes can be replaced,” said Gaza resident Heba Abu Zuneid. “Before, there was reconstruction, or at least you could rent an apartment. Now, losing your home means ending up living in misery through summer and winter. It’s like losing a soul that can never come back.”
Polling shows that the U.S. public is increasingly opposed to Israel’s actions in Gaza. An Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research from July found that one-third of Americans, and about half of Democrats, believed that Israel was committing a genocide in Gaza. Meanwhile, a Pew Research Center poll released in April found that 60% of U.S. adults and 80% of Democrats have an unfavorable view of Israel, up from 53% last year. About 45% of Americans said the relationship with Israel does more to harm American interests than to serve them, according to a May survey by the Institute for Global Affairs. Just 16% of Americans surveyed said they supported unrestricted weapons supplies to Israel; only 8% of Gen Z held that belief.
“I’ve lived for several decades, and I can hardly remember a [U.S.] politician expressing support for Palestine at any point in my life,” Abu Mattar said. But she stressed that this shift must be matched by action.
“If American politicians are supporting Palestine and trying to win young people’s votes through their campaigns, what matters is that there’s real support for the Palestinian people, not just talk and slogans,” Abu Mattar said, “because, honestly, we’ve heard this kind of talk plenty of times before.”
El-Sayed won his Democratic primary race against Rep. Haley Stevens in August despite more than $60 million spent against him, mostly by pro-Israel groups.
When El-Sayed, who supported the “Uncommitted” movement against President Joe Biden’s reelection bid in 2024, was asked by a reporter why he was now campaigning with Biden’s vice president, he responded that Harris is not the same as Biden. El-Sayed had endorsed Harris after Biden stepped down as the Democratic nominee. Harris told The New York Times in November 2025 that she regretted that the administration had not done more to pressure Netanyahu over Gaza “as it related to innocent Palestinians.”
“I disagreed with my party when it came to the genocide,” El-Sayed told reporters in September, as well as, he said, on unconditional foreign military aid and a new $2.8 billion sale of 2,000-pound bombs to Israel. “None of those positions have changed at all. I’m not going to change them,” he added.
Promises from American politicians don’t hold much value or interest for Lina Fahjan, a mother from Gaza. “I see this as something normal for politicians, even Arab and Palestinian ones, so what should we expect from American politicians?” she said.
“Gaza has already been destroyed. In fact, I think the negative consequences will eventually fall on these politicians themselves, because they will lose people’s trust and credibility when they fail to keep their promises,” Fahjan said, adding that she respects average Americans who have spoken out in support of Palestine more than politicians.
Although some Palestinians are watching the shift in U.S. politics, they’re not taking any campaign promises at face value.
“Honestly, I wasn’t shocked that Mamdani didn’t arrest Netanyahu, or that Harris sat at the same table as El-Sayed. That’s exactly what worries me: that the support stays at the level of talk and symbolic gestures, and never turns into real action on the ground,” Abu Mattar said. “The bombing, the killing, the displacement are still going on, and we haven’t seen anything real that stops our suffering.”
Some U.S. lawmakers have attempted to pull back U.S. support for Israel, including nearly half of House Democrats who voted in July to stop aid to Israel, or a recent resolution from Maryland Democratic Sen. Chris Van Hollen demanding a State Department report on settler violence in the West Bank. But those efforts have largely failed to pass in Congress.
In Gaza, Palestinians are finding ways to persevere. Heba Abu Zuneid experienced major milestones over the past three years, including graduating from the Islamic University of Gaza, getting married, and having her first child during the ceasefire. She now works as an online teacher and volunteers at schools inside the Strip.
But daily life has changed how she thinks and interacts with others. “Before, I was always planning for the future,” she said. Now, her thoughts revolve around staying cautious in public to avoid being robbed or carefully calculating what she can afford even for basic living. “Now, I only think about getting through the day safely,” she said.
In this context, Ahmad Ibsais, a first-generation Palestinian American lawyer, argues in a Substack post that the growing share of Democratic primary voters who want a presidential nominee committed to cutting off weapons to Israel, is now at 71%—a sign that supporting policies enabling genocide has become an electoral liability.
“We should not mistake election-season sympathy for a human-rights awakening,” Ibsais writes, “but ask every would-be beacon of justice whether their solidarity extends to sanctioning and isolating the Israeli state itself and affirming that Palestinians possess the same right to defend themselves that America has spent decades reserving for their occupier.”
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