Published On 5/22/2026
The report prepared by the National Committee of the US Democratic Party on the loss of the 2024 elections sparked a new storm within the party, after it was completely devoid of any reference to the Gaza war or to Israel and the Palestinians, even though the issue was one of the most divisive files among Democrats during the campaign of former Vice President Kamala Harris against Donald Trump.
According to a report published by the American website The Intercept, writer Noah Horowitz said that the 192-page document, prepared by Democratic strategist Paul Rivera and commissioned by the Democratic National Committee, did not include any mention of words such as “Gaza,” “Israel,” “Palestine,” “Arab Americans,” or “Muslims,” despite the intense controversy that accompanied the administration of former President Joe Biden’s support for the Israeli war on the Strip.
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The report completely ignored the Gaza war
The report detailed the factors that harmed Harris’ electoral campaign, but it completely ignored an issue that many progressives and young Democrats considered a major reason for the decline in popular enthusiasm for the party, especially among Arab, Muslim, and youth voters.
The Intercept quoted one of the decision-makers who participated in the interviews to prepare the report, and who requested to remain anonymous, as saying that his team discussed “at length” the impact of the Gaza policy with the report’s author, Paul Rivera, and that the latter assured them that “a quantitative review of the data clearly showed that Gaza harmed Biden and Harris.”
Accusations of evasion
But these conclusions disappeared from the final version of the report, which opened the door to accusations within the party of trying to evade confronting the repercussions of the American position on the war.
In a separate report published by the American website Politico, journalists Lisa Kaczynski, Andrew Howard, and Samuel Benson wrote that the absence of Gaza from the report “caused confusion and anger” within the party, not only among pro-Palestinian activists, but also among pro-Israel Democrats.
The website quoted David Hogg, former Vice Chairman of the Democratic National Committee, as saying that he told the report’s author that the party “needs to acknowledge the role that Gaza played in losing young voters.” He added that he raised the same issue during a three-hour meeting with party officials.
As for Haley Sofer, executive director of the Jewish Democratic Council of America, she told the newspaper that she immediately searched for the words “Gaza,” “Israel,” and “Jews” upon obtaining the report, but did not find any results, adding: “I was surprised. There seems to be a massive omission.”
Acknowledgment of damage
Politico also reported that the Arab American Institute for Middle East Education Policy Project informed the report’s authors during closed meetings that the Biden administration’s support for Israel had harmed the Democratic electoral ticket. According to the organization, party officials told them at the time that the committee’s own data showed that the administration’s position had a significant negative impact on the elections.
In an attempt to contain the controversy, Democratic National Committee Chairman Ken Martin issued a statement confirming that he had published the report “as he received it in its entirety,” but added that he did not endorse “what was in it or what was left out of it.” He also described the report as “not ready for presentation,” and the committee attached a warning confirming that the document “reflects the views of its author and not the committee,” and that the party did not obtain the original data and interviews on which the report was based.
But the criticism continued, as Abdel Sayed – the progressive Senate candidate for the state of Michigan and one of the most prominent supporters of the “Uncommitted” protest movement against Biden’s policy in Gaza – considered that ignoring the issue means that the party “is still not ready to face the consequences of its mistakes and learn from them.”
The “Non-Committed” movement emerged during the 2024 Democratic primaries, where it garnered hundreds of thousands of protest votes in protest against Washington’s support for the Israeli war. Activists also tried to push for a Palestinian-American speaker to be given a space at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago, but the party refused.
National Interest:
The image of the United States declined sharply due to its position on the Gaza war
Wider transformations in the Arab world
The internal debate in the Democratic Party intersects with broader shifts in the Arab world’s view of the United States, as indicated by a report published by “The National Interest” magazine by writers Dania Araisi and Faisal Itani.
This report was based on Arab Barometer surveys in eight Arab countries during the year 2025, and concluded that the image of the United States has declined sharply due to its position on the Gaza war, while China is now considered to be more respectful of international law.
The authors pointed out that the majority of respondents in several Arab countries believe that Washington is “siding with Israel against the Palestinians,” after they saw the United States “providing Israel with weapons, protecting it in the Security Council, and rejecting the decisions and recommendations of international institutions.”
Russia and China outperformed America
According to the report, this shift is not only due to traditional Arab sympathy for the Palestinians, but rather to what the two writers described as “an accusation of hypocrisy,” meaning Washington’s selective application of the principles of international law. It strongly defended Ukraine’s sovereignty in the face of the Russian invasion, but adopted a completely different position towards Gaza.
The poll also showed that support rates for the United States and President Donald Trump were very low in several Arab countries, while China and even Russia outperformed Washington in popularity and confidence indicators.
These transformations, according to the report, not only threaten the image of the United States in the Middle East, but may also complicate its efforts to build regional alliances or expand Arab-Israeli normalization agreements, because Arab governments will face an increasing internal political cost if they appear to be aligned with Washington at a time when public opinion is increasingly dissatisfied with American policy.
While Democrats are trying to understand the reasons for losing the 2024 elections, it seems that the question related to Gaza is still haunting the party from both inside and outside: Was ignoring popular anger at the war just a passing electoral mistake, or did it reveal a deeper crisis related to the credibility of the American discourse on human rights and international law?
