Is Israel's blank cheque about to bounce?

The conflict in Israel-Palestine is perhaps unique in how deeply it affects the domestic politics of countries not involved in it directly - and perhaps none more so than the US and the UK. In the current war, the focus has been on polarisation: competing marches, mutual recriminations, campuses, communities and families split asunder, and vile, violent rhetoric latching onto unrelated prejudices and grievances; producing everything from death threats to politicians, to attacks on places of worship, to disproportionate policing of minority protesters.

But there is another effect, more insidious and every bit as dangerous: disillusionment with both elected progressive politicians and with with liberal democracy altogether.

For anyone who values Palestinian lives as much as Israeli ones - or even for any supporter of Israel who values Israeli lives over Benjamin Netanyahu's personal career - it's been increasingly hard not to give in to despair bordering on nihilism. If all Democrats can offer is a complete cart blanche to Israel’s Netanyahu, despite his obvious contempt for Joe Biden and the rest of his administration, how much worse can Trump be, really, and why bother to vote at all? And if Labour seems more concerned with pushing MPs who speak out - or vote - in solidarity with Palestinian civilians, do they even deserve our vote - how much better are they than the Tories, really? And if these are the options offered up by our electoral processes - are they even worth engaging with? The risk this creates is not just an immediate opening for the far right, whether it's Trump, Farage or Faragised Tories. It's an erosion of the very system meant to keep the likes of them at bay.

The last week is starting to answer these questions. In the US, the Democrats’ new candidate, Kamala Harris, has begun speaking explicitly about Palestinian suffering - a theme President Biden was loath to be drawn on, despite going to great lengths to empathise with Israelis; and when criticised for it by Israel’s prime minister and his supporters, Harris affirmed that she “would not be silenced” about Palestinian lives - explicitly borrowing activist language. Most Americans realise the war in Gaza is a dead end even for Israel, and are far less sanguine than one might assume about Palestinian suffering; Kamala’s change of language won’t cost her many votes, but can, at the very least put her in a position to win back key constituencies alienated by Biden. But there is little doubt she’ll need to promise concrete action, too.

To the considerable surprise of his critics, concrete action is already being provided by Keir Starmer - who dropped the UK’s objection to the International Criminal Court issuing arrest warrants for Netanyahu and his defense ministers, despite vocal opposition protests from both Labour Friends of Israel and the Board of Deputies; and some reports suggest that at least partial embargo on some UK made weapons being sold to Israel might be next.

There are two lessons to draw here. One, is that in two-party systems the choice is ultimately binary and despite exasperation, it is always better to actively push for the party that can be held accountable to progressive principles, even if they seem like mere lip service today.

The other in that even in such a system, voter pressure does provide results. Would Harris began to tack away from unconditional support for Israel if it wasn’t so obviously demotivating the Democratic voter based? Would Starmer have made the move if Greens and independents didn’t get such an unprecedented boost from progressives’ disappointment with Labour? Very possible; for Starmer in particular, this move falls into a larger pattern of governing far more progressively - on most issues - than he campaigned, which we in the Lead have been betting on for some time.

But even if their own sensibilities lie that way already, surely, tangible electoral threats help both Starmer and Harris persuade those in their own parties who see everything through electoral prisms. We can only help the push-and-pull doesn’t stop here, on either side of the Atlantic.