(WATERBURY, CT) — Conspiracy theorist Alex Jones is testifying in a Connecticut courtroom Thursday in a second defamation trial to determine what the InfoWars host should pay to Sandy Hook families.
The tempestuous testimony was so frequently interrupted by objections and sidebar conferences at the bench, Judge Barbara Bellis at one point told the jury, “You’re going to get your exercise in today, those of you who wear Fitbits.”
Jones, who has suggested the families who successfully sued him for defamation have a political agenda because they’ve done work on gun control, acknowledged the risks involved in his profession as a conspiracy theorist and provocateur.
“The world isn’t an easy place. When people become political figures they get in the arena,” Jones said.
The plaintiffs’ attorney, Chris Mattei, pounced.
“Were you just trying to suggest that my clients, these families, deserve what they got because they stepped into the arena?” Mattei asked.
Jones answered “no” as his lawyer objected to the question.
Jones’ testimony will resume this afternoon following a lunch break.
Bellis last year found Jones and Infowars’ parent company, Free Speech Systems, liable in a defamation lawsuit for calling the 2012 massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary School a hoax.
The jury will decide how much in damages Jones should pay to an FBI agent who responded to the scene and eight families of victims that Jones called actors.
Prior to testifying, Jones has spoken out amid the trial outside the Waterbury courthouse this week, calling the judge a “tyrant” and the trial a “political hit job.” In a press briefing Wednesday, he told reporters did not “premediatively question Sandy Hook,” and that he apologizes if he has caused anyone pain but “didn’t create the story” of Sandy Hook being a hoax.
He repeatedly said he would not perjure himself by saying he’s guilty.
“You can’t have a judge telling you to say that you’re guilty when you’re not. That is insane,” he said.
There is no guilt in civil trials like this one. The plaintiffs successfully sued Jones for defamation in November 2021 over his comments, which included calling them “crisis actors,” saying the massacre was “staged” and “the fakest thing since the three-dollar bill.”
Bellis found Jones liable for damages by default because he and his companies, like Infowars, showed “callous disregard” for the rules of discovery. The jury will now determine much Jones and Free Speech Systems will have to pay the families of children killed in the massacre.
The jury so far has heard from several parents, including Jennifer Hensel, whose 6-year-old daughter, Avielle Richman, was among the 20 children killed in the massacre. She told the jury Wednesday that she still fears for her family’s safety after years of receiving hate mail from people questioning that her daughter had died and checks the backseat of her car before getting in.
After her husband, Jeremy Richman, died by suicide in 2019, she started receiving emails from people calling his death fake as well, she said.
“People were in the cemetery around Avielle’s grave marker looking for evidence that Jeremy had died,” Hensel said.
Other parents have also testified about death threats, rape threats and confrontations outside their homes.
The Connecticut trial comes a month after a Texas jury ordered Jones to pay nearly $50 million in damages to the parents of one of the victims.
In that defamation trial, Jones was successfully sued by the parents of a 6-year-old boy who was killed in the 2012 Sandy Hook Elementary School massacre after he claimed that the shooting — where 20 children and six adults were killed — was a hoax, a claim he said he now thinks is “100% real.”
(NEW YORK) — High levels of chemicals called per-and polyfluoroalky substances (PFAS) were detected in water-proof or stain-resistant school uniforms in the United States and Canada, according to a new study published Wednesday in the Journal of Environmental Science and Technology.
PFAS chemicals, often called “forever chemicals” because of their slow breakdown, are widely used for their non-stick properties. They are ubiquitous and found in a range of everyday products such as non-stick cookware, stain and water repellants on carpets, food packaging and personal care products such as shampoos and cosmetic products.
Researchers studied more than 72 products from nine different brands, finding that school uniforms had high amounts of these potentially harmful chemicals. The highest levels were detected in clothing that was labeled as 100% cotton or cotton/spandex.
Due to widespread use and their slow breakdown, these chemicals can build up in humans and the environment over time. Current scientific research suggests that exposure to high levels of certain PFAS may cause a range of health problems, from delays in development in children to increased risk of some cancers, with the highest risk associated with drinking or eating contaminated food over an extended time. Scientists, however, are continuing to learn about the health effects of exposure to different types and levels of PFAS.
Researchers are especially concerned about possible high exposure, especially for children.
“Our findings are concerning as school uniforms are worn directly on the skin for about eight hours per day by children, who are particularly vulnerable to harmful chemicals,” said Dr. Arlene Blum, a study co-author and the executive director of the Green Science Policy Institute.
It’s not clear if PFAS chemicals cause health problems if exposed on the skin, but researchers who led the study said that they may end up in children’s bodies through skin absorption, eating with unwashed hands, hand-to-mouth behaviors and mouthing of fabric by younger children.
“These chemicals are not well studied. We still have a lot to learn and we are not sure what harmful effects, if any, these chemicals have by skin exposure and clothing,” said Dr. Stephanie Widmer, a medical toxicologist and an emergency medicine physician.
According to the study, the PFAS levels in some uniforms exceeded the tolerable daily intake set by European regulators. In the United States, regulators have yet to set similar allowable limits for clothing. But given these concerns, bills in New York and California that require the phasing out of PFAS in textiles, including school uniforms, by Jan. 1, 2025, were passed by state lawmakers.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said exposure to PFAS chemicals may be associated with increased cholesterol levels, changes in liver enzymes, decreases in infant birth weights, decreased vaccine response in kids, increased risk of birth complications in pregnant women and increased risk of some cancers.
“The reality is the health concerns that have been reported in association with PFAS cannot be ignored, and while we are learning more about PFAS and their potential dangers, we should all try to limit our exposures as much as reasonably possible,” said Widmer.
Added Blum: “Concerned parents should check if any of their children’s uniforms are labeled ‘stain-resistant.’ If so, they should ask school administrators to update their uniform policies and when purchasing new uniforms, specify PFAS-free uniform options.”
Singer/songwriter couple Julia Michael and JP Saxe have called it quits after three years, People magazine reports.
The duo began dating in 2019 after co-writing the Grammy-nominated duet “If the World Was Ending.” Their most recent albums — Julia’s Not In Chronological Order and JP’s Dangerous Levels of Introspection — both include songs they co-wrote.
Fans began to suspect something was up earlier this month when both artists posted previews or teasers of breakup songs. JP’s song, “When You Think of Me,” comes out Friday. In it, he sings, “I hate how I lived up to/your worst fears/makes it worse/how it worked/ so well for three years/and it could all be for the best in the end/but for now it feels like losing my best friend.”
Meanwhile, on TikTok, Julia posted a song which featured her singing the lyrics, “The night we broke up/you called everyone saying it was my idea…this could be like our new tradition/Where I play the bad guy and you play/The victim.”
On Instagram, she captioned a performance of a different song — a heartfelt piano ballad — “A**holes live forever.” In that one, she sings, “You’re just another man/And this is just another doorway/Using promises like they’re some kind of twisted foreplay/You keep saying that you’re staying/When we both know that’s not your forte.”
Julia also seems to have deleted her Twitter account.
Ed Sheeran,a big fan of Pokémon, is combining his love of music and pocket monsters in a brand new song.
The Grammy winner has been teasing “Celestial” for some time — but always with his massive collection of Pokémon plush toys in full view. Now, fans know why that is.
The Pokémon team has turned the “Celestial” music video into an animated spectacular. When announcing the partnership, Ed emotionally explained how he fell in love with the franchise at 7 years old, was given a Gameboy color and the game Pokémon Yellow for his 8th birthday and has been “obsessed” with Pokémon ever since.
“Flash forward to me at 31 I still have the same game boy colour and still I play Pokémon silver on long haul flights. I really really love it,” he wrote on Instagram. “It gave me a proper escape as a kid into a fantasy world that seemed to go on and on, and in adult life it’s nostalgia that makes me feel like a kid again.”
Ed has since met the people who created such an important part of his childhood and “joked about me writing a song for them.” That song, “Celestial,” comes out next Thursday.
“The video is insanely amazing, animated by the incredible people at Pokémon. I love it, you’re gonna love it,” Ed declared, signing off with the timeless phrase, “And we all gotta catch ‘em all.”
His favorite Pokémon character is Squirtle, so chances are they’ll appear together in the upcoming music video.
Ed previously partnered with Pokémon for an exclusive concert on the Pokémon GOmobile app. The game also played his hit “Overpass Graffiti” during nighttime play.
(LAKELAND, FL) — Leo Schofield has been sitting in a prison cell for over 30 years, convicted in 1989 of killing his first wife Michelle two years earlier, and is still fighting to prove his innocence.
“Innocent is no part in it, no plan in it, didn’t know it was happening, didn’t know it was going to happen, and didn’t want it to happen. That is me,” he told “20/20” in an exclusive interview from prison that airs Friday, Sept. 23 at 9 p.m. ET.
Prosecutors argued that Leo Schofield, then 21, was a man filled with anger and waiting to explode against his wife.
Schofield’s defense attorney argued that there was no physical evidence connecting him to the stabbing homicide, and that the state’s timeline of events did not make sense.
Schofield’s second wife Crissie and the non-profit organization The Innocence Project of Florida are among the supporters who have believed Schofield’s story and have worked to exonerate him.
Evidence discovered in the past decade that Schofield and his supporters say link the murder to another man has become central to Schofield’s case, but even that avenue has hit several legal roadblocks.
Michelle Saum Schofield, then 18, didn’t arrive to pick up Leo from her job at a restaurant in Lakeland, Florida, on Feb. 24, 1987. Leo Schofield said he became concerned and began driving around town with his father and mother and talking to friends and family to find his wife.
Police, friends and family searched throughout the area and eventually found her car abandoned and broken into. Three days after she went missing, Michelle’s body was found in a canal in Bone Valley, a region in central Florida.
She had been stabbed 26 times.
“I was so angry at God at that moment. I ripped my shirt off. I punched a tree, punched the ground, I was pulling grass out of the ground,” Leo Schofield said.
Leo Schofield’s past bouts of anger would become a factor in the investigation as neighbors, friends and family told investigators that he was volatile and argued with Michelle in their home. Multiple witnesses also described incidents of physical abuse by Leo against Michelle, including one account by Michelle’s best friend that Leo threatened to kill his wife.
A critical part of their investigation was an interview with a neighbor, Alice Scott, who told police that she heard the couple fighting from her bathroom the night Michelle Schofield went missing and that claimed she later witnessed Leo Schofield put a large object into the trunk of the car and drive off.
A couple who lived near the Schofield’s told police that on the morning after Michelle Schofield’s disappearance they saw her car and a truck belonging to Leo Scofield’s father near the location where her body was found.
Police arrested Leo Schofield in June 1988.
Schofield’s attorney questioned Scott’s testimony at trial, claiming the timing of the alleged fight in the home conflicted with accounts of where he was seen at the time. Schofield’s attorney said that Scott’s testimony claimed the argument took place shortly before Leo Schofield was with his wife’s father, which was several miles away.
The attorney contended that he couldn’t have traveled from their home to his father in law’s residence that quickly.
“In any case that you’ve looked at, you’re going to find some discrepancies with witness testimony,” former Polk County State Attorney Jerry Hill, who presided over the Schofield criminal investigation, told 20/20, “It’s human. I don’t think any witness was looking at their watch saying, ‘There’s Leo.’ I think they were being as honest as they could be in approximating exactly what they observed.”
Alice Scott could not be reached by ABC News for comment.
During the trial, prosecutors called in 21 character witnesses who testified about accounts where they saw Leo Schofield act aggressively and violently. Some described events where they say Leo Schofield was physically abusive towards his wife including pulling her hair.
On the stand Schofield denied claims made by witnesses but admitted to slapping his wife twice.
Schofield maintained to 20/20 that he never physically hurt his wife during their relationship.
“Physical abuse is one type of abuse and then you have the emotional abuse, which I’m guilty of,” he said. “I did a lotta yelling…and I wasn’t beyond punching a wall and being very theatrical,” he said.
In the end, a jury convicted Schofield of first-degree murder and he was sentenced to life in prison.
Schofield continued to maintain that he was not involved in his wife’s murder for years, and things began to change after he met Crissie Carter, a former state probation officer who later became a therapist and taught at Schofield’s prison, in 1991.
After listening to Schofield’s story and reviewing the court records on this case, Carter told “20/20” that she, too, believed he was innocent based on what she said were holes in the prosecution’s case.
“What the state said is not lining up and what he’s saying lines up exactly,” Crissie Carter Schofield told “20/20.”
Their relationship would soon become personal and the pair eventually married and adopted a baby.
During her research, Crissie says she came to a major discovery: fingerprints that investigators had found inside Michelle’s car had never been identified.
“Whoever’s fingerprints are in that car had to know something. We’ve got to figure out who that person is,” she said.
Crissie Schofield hired a new defense attorney, Scott Cupp, who was able to obtain a copy of the fingerprints from the Florida State Police in 2004.
The prints were later run through the Automated Fingerprint Identification System, which was not available to Polk County investigators at the time and matched those of convicted murderer Jeremy Scott, who was serving a life sentence for a 1988 homicide.
Jeremy Scott is not related to Alice Scott, the neighbor who testified against Leo Schofield.
Questions also arose after the then St. Petersburg Times began reporting on the case and published an in-depth investigative article in 2007.
Alice Scott’s testimony came under scrutiny after her ex-husband, Ricky Scott, told the St. Petersburg Times that she had a tendency to twist the truth. “No way Alice could’ve seen and heard from that little bathroom window what she said she heard and saw at the Schofields’ that night,” he alleged to the St. Petersburg Times reporters.
When reporters later questioned Alice Scott about her ex-husband’s statement, she explained, “When I couldn’t see and hear from the bathroom window that good, I walked to the screened porch where I could,” which differed from her testimony in Schofield’s trial.
“She never said that at trial,” Gilbert King, a Pulitzer-prize winning author who is the host of a new podcast about the case, “Bone Valley,” told “20/20.” ” That was all new.”
When asked about Alice Scott’s statement to the St. Petersburg Times, Jerry Hill told “20/20” that he believed Alice Scott was “credible” at the time that she testified and that his investigators verified her account.
“We had no less than three separate individuals go confirm that she could actually see what she said she saw, from where she said she saw it,” he said.
Leo Schofield’s new defense team requested a trial based on the fingerprint evidence. During his 2010 deposition with Leo Schofield’s attorney’s, Jeremy Scott admitted to being a car stereo thief in the area during that time, but denied killing Michelle Schofield.
The request for a new trial was denied, as the court found that Scott’s fingerprints alone would not likely have led to an acquittal on retrial and ruled there were no issues with the trial evidence that would have led to Leo’s exoneration.
The decision devastated the Schofields, their attorney and other supporters.
“This was personal to me. I knew then the same thing I know now: Leo’s an innocent man and it just hit me to my core,” Cupp, now a circuit judge in Florida, told “20/20.”
In 2016, Leo Schofield’s defense attorney Andrew Crawford spoke with Jeremy Scott by phone and claimed that Scott confessed to him that he was responsible for Michelle Schofield’s murder. The conversation, however, was not tape recorded.
“This is a huge deal, what Jeremy is telling me, because never before had he ever admitted any involvement in the homicide,” Crawford told “20/20.”
When questioned by state investigators, Jeremy Scott denied confessing but said he would take the rap for any murder if paid $1,000.
“Jeremy Scott, he’s a red herring,” Jerry Hill said, “but he’s the only herring they’ve got. And so they’re going to stick with it.”
In 2017, Crawford enlisted an investigator to interview Scott again, this time with a tape recorder.
It was during this interview that Scott claimed that Michelle Schofield offered him a ride, and there was a struggle after a knife fell out of his pocket.
“Next thing I know, I lost it. I done stabbed her,” Scott said during the interview. “I’m like panicking now because I don’t know what just happened.”
Crawford teamed up with The Innocence Project of Florida and made another request for a retrial, which led to an evidentiary hearing.
An emotional Jeremy Scott took the stand and testified that he killed Michelle.
During cross-examination, the prosecution pointed out multiple times over the years where Scott denied any role in Michelle Schofield’s murder, as well as certain details that he could not recall or got wrong in his testimony, such as the clothes she wore that night.
The hearing took a dramatic turn when Scott was presented with Michelle’s autopsy photographs, at which point Scott stated “I didn’t do that.”
“They took that as a flip flop that he recanted,” Crissie Schofield said.
However, on redirect examination, Scott affirmed to the court that he did in fact kill Michelle.
“I killed her,” he said.
Ultimately, Leo was again denied a new trial. The court ruled that the evidence did not meet the legal threshold for a new trial, and also made a finding that the testimony of Jeremy Scott was not credible.
An appeals court upheld the decision in 2020.
“I wish I could come up with a better word than devastation and disbelief and just madness. There’s no way to understand it,” Crissie Schofield said of her reaction to the court decision.
In 2018, Gilbert King, author of the Pulitzer Prize-winning book, Devil in the Grove, which led to the exonerations of four innocent men, was at a conference of circuit judges in Naples, Florida, when he was approached by Cupp and given information about Leo Schofield’s story and his case.
King was at a conference of circuit judges in Naples, Florida in 2018, when he was approached by Cupp and given information about Leo Schofield’s story and his case.
Since then, King , along with “Bone Valley” researcher Kelsey Decker, has been investigating the case and working on a Lava For Good 9-part true crime podcast on Leo’s story, “Bone Valley,” that launched Sept. 21, 2022. Lava for Good is run by Jason Flom, one of the founding board members of the Innocence Project and a well known advocate for wrongly convicted.
Scott was recently interviewed for the podcast and claimed to Gilbert King that “Leo [is] innocent. That man didn’t do nothing. He’s innocent.”
During her exclusive TV prison interview, “20/20” co-anchor Amy Robach played Jeremy Scott’s recording for Leo Schofield.
“I have a lot of anger about it. He murdered my wife,” he told Robach. “It’s a hard thing to forgive.”
Leo Schofield is eligible for parole next year, and even if he does get out on parole Crissie Schofield said she is insistent on clearing her husband’s name.
“It doesn’t end with Leo getting out. This is Michelle’s story,” she said.
It doesn’t sound like Ozzy Osbourne is a fan of Black Sabbath‘s last record.
In an interview with Stereogum, Ozzy was asked whether he felt “good” about where Sabbath’s final album, 2013’s 13, “left things.” His response? “Not really.”
“To be perfectly honest, I didn’t really get a charge from the album,” Ozzy shares.
“Although [producer] Rick Rubin is a good friend of mine, I wasn’t really…I was just singing,” the Prince of Darkness adds. “It was like stepping back in time, but it wasn’t a glorious period. Though [bassist] Geezer [Butler] did a lot of lyric writing for me, which he’s very, very good at. It wasn’t an earth-shattering experience for me.”
While 13 marked the first Sabbath album to feature Ozzy since 1978’s Never Say Die!, it wasn’t a complete reunion. Original drummer Bill Ward did not take part, which Ozzy says he now “regret[s].”
“It wasn’t really a Black Sabbath album,” Ozzy says. “I’m not saying that one day we might not all go in a room and come up with the perfect Black Sabbath album. But I’ll say, [13] wasn’t recorded the way Black Sabbath recorded records.”
“We’d gone right back past the point where we took charge, back to when someone else had full control of our recording,” he adds. “Which we never did from [1972’s] Vol. 4 onwards.”
Black Sabbath played their final show in 2017, and though he and guitarist Tony Iommi recently reunited for a brief performance over the summer, Ozzy feels that the band remains “completely done.”
“I think it’s time,” he says.
Ozzy, meanwhile, just released his new solo album, Patient Number 9.
Wynonna Judd reflects on the death of her mother and The Judds partner, Naomi Judd,in a new conversation with CBS Sunday Morning, the first television interview she’s given since Naomi died in late April.
“I did not know that she was at the place she was at when she ended it,” Wynonna shares in a preview clip aired ahead of the full segment.
Naomi died by suicide after a lifelong battle with mental illness. But, as Wynonna points out, Naomi had frequently gone through difficult periods in the past, so her death came as a shock, even to those closest to her.
“That’s the challenge with mental illness. It’s really, really mysterious,” Wynonna continues, adding that in the wake of her mother’s suicide, she struggles with wondering if there was a way she could have predicted or changed the course of those tragic events.
“Was there anything I should have looked for, or should have known? I didn’t,” she says. “That’s why it’s such a shock.”
The singer says that Naomi’s mental health battles created intense highs and lows. “…It’s this incredibly dark and light experience. She had incredibly great days in the middle of the dark days. That’s why it’s so confusing,” Wynonna explains.
Naomi died just one day before The Judds were scheduled to be inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame. This fall, Wynonna will embark on the tour she and Naomi planned as their final tour.
The shows have been recast as an all-star, all-female lineup featuring appearances from acts like Ashley McBryde, Kelsea Ballerini, Little Big Town and Faith Hill. Original opener Martina McBride will remain on the bill for all shows.
Lil Nas X unleashed his new song “Star Walkin’,” the gaming anthem tailor-made for the League of Legends‘ 2022 Worlds Tournament, on Thursday.
The Grammy winner caught up with Apple Music 1’s Zane Lowe about the new hit and revealed he spent a lot of time toying around with its sound.
“Making this song was a lot of fun,” he explained. “I had the verses forever, and it took, no joke, 30 different, 40 different 50, I don’t know how many different hooks, to get the hook to a place where I’m, ‘Okay, this is something I like. That’s cool.'”
He added, “But overall I had a fun time in the studio. I had a fun time putting these pop elements and drill elements together.”
Lil Nas X said he wanted to make this song not because he’s a gamer, but because “I have a huge gamer fan base, and this is sick for them.”
Elsewhere in the interview, the hitmaker chatted about his run-in with Madonna at one of his shows. “It was a full circle moment because she brought me back to her show in 2019,” he described. “I didn’t actually get a chance to get a good conversation with her because I was about to go out onto the stage.”
Lil Nas X said he told Madonna he was dealing with some pre-show jitters, and she responded saying that “She’s going to be there and rooting for” him.
As for where he’s heading musically, he admitted, “My creative spirit is honestly in the garbage can. I want to be completely honest. But I feel like it’s coming back.”
Lil Nas X is “super confident” that whatever he makes next, it’ll be “the best s*** I’ve ever made thus far.”
Björk has premiered a new song called “Ancestress,” a track from her upcoming album, Fossora.
The seven-minute epic is about the Icelandic artist’s late mother, who died in 2018.
“‘Ancestress’ is a letter to my mother, her story seen from my point of view,” Björk says.
You can listen to “Ancestress” now via digital outlets. Its accompanying video, which finds Björk leading an elaborately costumed ritual through the mountains, is streaming now on YouTube.
Fossora, Björk’s 10th studio effort, will be released September 30. It also includes the previously released songs “Atopos” and “Ovule.”
In other Björk news, the “Human Behavior” artist, who previously lived in New York, shares in an interview with Pitchfork that she’s returned home to Iceland due to the “violence” in the U.S.
“The violence in the USA is on a scale I can’t even fathom,” Björk says. “And having a daughter that’s half-American in school [in New York], 40 minutes away from Sandy Hook…”
“When we are here, I absorb all of Iceland,” she adds. “If one person is killed in the north, we all hurt. It’s an island mentality. In the States, just being a simple islander, all the violence was just too much for me.”
(NEW YORK) — Twenty years ago, Tallie Ben Daniel was a college student wandering the campus of the University of California, Santa Cruz, when she came across a bumper sticker that read “Free Palestine.” Born to an Israeli family in Los Angeles, Ben Daniel had never heard the phrase before. “I had zero context for what that meant. And I didn’t understand,” she recalled. “Free Palestine from what?”
Today, Ben Daniel is an advocate for Palestinian human rights. She’s currently the managing director of Jewish Voice for Peace, an organization that challenges the way the Israeli government treats Palestinians. But her past confusion makes sense against the backdrop of the early 2000s.
In general, U.S. support for Israel was a common, unquestioned stance on both sides of the aisle, while the aftermath of 9/11 only deepened Americans’ rapport with Israel from the lens of solidarity against terrorism claimed by Islamic extremists. Even among those concerned for the Palestinians, many clung to the fleeting optimism that the Oslo Accords of the 1990s could yield a peaceful two-state solution for Israelis and Palestinians.
In 2001, when Gallup polled Americans on the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, views were clear and consistent: Only 16 percent of Americans sympathized more with the Palestinians, while 51 percent sympathized more with the Israelis. Back then, this wasn’t even a particularly partisan issue — only 18 percent of Democrats sympathized more with Palestinians.
Two decades later, though, the landscape has changed. The share of Americans with more sympathy toward the Palestinians has ticked up to 25 percent. And that support has more than doubled among Democrats: Today, 39 percent report feeling more sympathy for the Palestinians.
A confluence of factors over the past decade seems to be driving this shift. Social media has changed how war is witnessed across the globe — especially among young people — and a growing awareness of social inequities in the U.S. may be reshaping how some Americans perceive conflict internationally, too. But most of all, the Palestinian-Israeli question has become a topic that embodies an intra-party identity issue for Democrats, one that has increasingly pushed liberals to reconsider what constitutes progressive politics.
Summer 2014 marked one of the most deadly episodes of violence in Gaza. In May that year, Israel Defense Forces soldiers killed two Palestinian teenagers. In June, three Israeli teenagers were kidnapped while hitchhiking in the West Bank and ultimately killed, and the IDF launched a full-force defense operation in response. According to the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, 73 Israelis were killed — 67 soldiers and six civilians. Meanwhile, 2,251 Palestinians were killed, 551 of them children. Those casualty numbers affected the way the world saw the conflict, and the narrative of justified self-defense that the IDF presented wasn’t universally accepted outside Israel, said Dov Waxman, director of the Y&S Nazarian Center for Israel Studies at UCLA.
“It’s really the last decade, during which so many events and shifts and factors have changed thoughts in the public domain,” Waxman said.” Indeed, myriad dynamics — for example, how U.S. social-justice movements drew parallels to the escalating violence of the 2010s and how Donald Trump’s allied stance toward Israel raised eyebrows during his presidency — have gradually moved the needle on how the American public views the Palestinians.
Notably, what happened in 2014 was the first large-scale escalation in the age of widespread social media. In the years since, researchers have pointed to the ways in which social media has reframed how the international community observes war in real time, whether over the past decade with the Palestinians or this year with the Ukrainians. Whereas bumper stickers once spread messages locally, hashtags were now sending information buzzing around the globe. Until then, most wide-scale information, particularly about life in Gaza, came through mainstream media outlets. Now, for the first time, people around the world were exposed and had access to firsthand accounts from Palestinians, many of which challenged (or at least contextualized) the details reported by large outlets. Some posts also singled out headlines and language used by such publications, accusing their framing of the violence as unfairly neglecting the Palestinian struggle.
“That summer, it was just so clear, how disproportionate the violence was,” said Ben Daniel. “The Israeli government will often talk about their assaults as ‘it’s a war,’ but it became clear that there was only one side with a military.”
Her change in perspective is indicative of how Americans’ opinions on the Palestinian-Israeli conflict have shifted, too — with change especially pronounced among younger Americans. According to Pew Research Center data from March, 61 percent of American adults under 30 have a favorable view of the Palestinian people, compared with 56 percent who have a favorable view of the Israeli people. Ben Daniel thinks it’s important that these young Americans have also been witnessing growing civil rights movements at home.
“Around the same time, Black Lives Matter was having a resurgence. And alliances between folks at, say, Ferguson [Missouri] and Palestine shifted consciousness in general,” said Ben Daniel. She believes that the violence in Gaza in 2014 and the support of Black Lives Matter happening in tandem and underpinned by social media helped circulate comparisons to the conflict by paralleling police brutality in the U.S. with IDF tactics in Gaza.
Indeed, the Black Lives Matter movement, which formed following the July 2013 acquittal of the neighborhood-watch volunteer who killed Trayvon Martin, has aligned itself with the Palestinian cause. In 2014 and again in 2021, pro-Palestinian activists and Black Lives Matter activists have demonstrated their support for each other on social media.
As a growing share of Americans began confronting uncomfortable and embedded injustices in their own country, the parallel details in Palestinian accounts of systematic oppression contextualized a conflict halfway across the world in a new light.
This comparison has been moving. But it has also been controversial.
“It can be a starting point for people new to the conflict, but I caution against taking the comparison too far. That’s ignoring a lot of more complicated dynamics and history,” said Laura Birnbaum, the national political director of J Street, a prominent pro-Israel advocacy group that supports a two-state solution. Comparing the BLM and pro-Palestine movements isn’t something everyone will see as fair, Birnbaum said. She and other supporters of Israel don’t think it’s reasonable to analogize Jews in Israel as white, slave-owning colonizers when the Jewish state exists because of the historical oppression of its people. And some still see Israel in a precarious position as the only non-Muslim-majority country in the Middle East, Waxman said.
This is another place where age may come into play. Whereas some older generations of Americans lived through the latter half of the 20th century, when Israel’s existence was not necessarily considered a guarantee, millennials and Gen Zers are more likely to view Israel as a strong nation with ample financial and military power, Waxman said.
At the very least, the use of the BLM comparison shows how the framing of this conversation has changed. What was once a debate over the logistics of land division has now, for liberal Democrats, turned to a discussion about Palestinians’ human rights.
And that, Waxman said, helps explain why the pro-Palestine position has become a facet of progressive and Democratic identity. “In the past, supporting Israel was seen as aligned with or consistent with liberal values. And, increasingly, it’s seen as contradicting liberal beliefs and values,” he said. This shift has happened primarily among the most liberal Democrats. Gallup polling from February 2021 indicates that liberal Democrats sympathize more with Palestinians compared with Democrats as a whole, by 48 percent to 39 percent. Moderate and conservative members of the party still tend to sympathize more with Israel.
And that is exactly what we’ve seen with a small but growing set of politicians. Pew research from April 2016 showed a widening gap on this issue between supporters of Hillary Clinton and supporters of Sen. Bernie Sanders. Meanwhile, the most publicly pro-Palestinian members of Congress — Rep. Rashida Tlaib, who herself is Palestinian American, and Rep. Ilhan Omar, whose hijab renders her visibly Muslim — have also aligned themselves with the party’s progressive left arm. This divide between moderate and liberal Democrats on the Palestinian-Israeli conflict is evocative of recurring debates in the direction of the party across a host of issues.
And the schism occurring within the Democratic Party over Israel is only further facilitated by how staunchly Republicans have doubled down on their support. Conservatives are more sympathetic toward Israel than ever, and interestingly, evangelical Christians, who skew overwhelmingly Republican, report even stronger pro-Israeli beliefs than Jewish Americans according to Pew. Meanwhile, Waxman and Ben Daniel also suggested that Trump’s close allyship with Israel’s then-prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, and controversial decision to recognize Jerusalem — a city claimed by both Israel and Palestine — as Israel’s capital only drove the notion of unconditional support for Israel further to the right.
The Palestine-Israel question has become an increasing variable in politics, determining campaign funding for certain candidates. Earlier this year, in the Democratic primary for North Carolina’s 4th Congressional District, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, or AIPAC, helped raise about $2 million for state Sen. Valerie Foushee, who ran against and ultimately defeated pro-Palestinian and hijabi candidate Nida Allam, a Durham County commissioner. As is usually the case, however, the money in Foushee’s campaign didn’t go toward pro-Israel campaign messaging but instead to closer-to-home everyday issues that resonated with constituents on the ground, like Foushee’s pro-choice abortion stance.
That is indicative of the fact that, while the pendulum is shifting for Democrats, it hasn’t really affected policy yet, Waxman said. That’s because no matter their political identity or age, Americans don’t rate Israel as a high priority issue in their daily lives. “Americans aren’t voting on this, really,” Waxman said. “It’s too far removed compared to other, more everyday issues.”
That said, opinions on the Palestinian cause show that issues don’t have to dictate votes to be relevant within a party. This topic will likely continue to matter for Democrats, even if it doesn’t help get them elected.
