While Israel’s latest war in Gaza in the wake of the Oct. 7, 2023, attack has triggered the largest pro-Palestinian demonstrations in U.S. history, conflicts between the Middle Eastern nation and Hamas have sparked protests for decades.
The rise of social media and the timing of presidential election cycles have been among the factors driving changes in the influence and reach of the pro-Palestinian movement in the United States in recent years.
Here’s a contrast between Israel’s 2008-2009 Operation Cast Lead and its current war in Gaza, two wars in the region roughly 15 years apart, and the reactions they sparked in the U.S.
2008-2009 Operation Cast Lead
On Dec. 27, 2008, Israel launched Operation Cast Lead in response to nearly 800 Hamas rocket attacks. The conflict was the longest war in the strip from when Israel completed its withdrawal from the Gaza Strip in September 2005 until Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, attacks, with one exception in 2014. Operation Cast Lead lasted only three weeks, was considered a success, and killed nearly 1,400 Palestinians.
Under the leadership of then-President George W. Bush, the U.S. asserted that Israel had the right to defend itself during Operation Cast Lead. Bush expressed support for a sustainable ceasefire, which would have come if Hamas had stopped firing rockets into Israel. He also pressed for a two-state solution, though conceding that “the big challenge” was Hamas’s violence blocking peace efforts.
Before Operation Cast Lead ended with Israel’s unilateral ceasefire, the war sparked protests in at least 100 cities across the U.S. until it ended on Jan. 18, 2009.
Roughly 600 pro-Palestinian and pro-Israel supporters demonstrated in Los Angeles on Dec. 31, 2008. San Francisco experienced daily protests, with more than 10,000 pro-Palestinian demonstrators outside the city’s Israeli Consulate on Dec. 30. Another large San Francisco anti-Israel protest picked up again on Jan. 10, 2009, with roughly 5,000 protesters gathering.
Hundreds of Palestinian supporters gathered in New York’s Times Square on Jan. 3, while an estimated 500 pro-Palestinian protesters demonstrated in Seattle on Jan. 4, picking up with a march on Jan. 17 with a march through Seattle’s downtown. Similar protests occurred at Boston’s Israeli Consulate on Jan. 16, and San Diego’s Balboa Park on Jan. 17. Palestinian supporters also joined the annual Martin Luther King Jr. Day Marches in Detroit and Atlanta on Jan. 19.
The timing of the war meant many college students were away for winter break, resulting in limited campus demonstrations. However, 300 supporters did protest at the University of California, Irvine. Many students from the University of California, Los Angeles also joined a protest of over 1,000 pro-Palestinian demonstrators at the Wilshire Federal Building.
Students from the University of Michigan also organized a pro-Palestinian protest of roughly 200 people during the war. Many students and teachers were also among the 2,500 pro-Palestinian activists who marched in Detroit on Jan. 8, 2009.
The questions of boycott, divestment, and sanctions against Israel were not the primary focus of most pro-Palestinian protests during Operation Cast Lead, with the majority of the rhetoric surrounding calls for an immediate ceasefire. However, the question did gain steam, with some groups, including ones at the Universities of Minnesota, Michigan, and Washington, as well as Seattle Central Community College and Massachusetts’s Hampshire College Students for Justice in Palestine organizing calls to action on the matter.
Shortly after Operation Lead Cast ended, Hampshire College became the first U.S. college to divest from Israel, a measure the college’s Students for Justice in Palestine organization hailed as a victory, though school officials claimed the move had nothing to do with politics.
War in Gaza after Hamas’s Oct. 7 attack
The latest war broke out after Hamas terrorists in Gaza mounted a surprise attack on Israel in October 2023.
The war has lasted more than a year longer than Operation Lead Cast and has brought thousands more fatalities. It is unclear exactly how many people have died in the conflict. Numbers from the Hamas-run Gaza Health Ministry put the Palestinian death toll at over 41,000. The terrorist organization does not differentiate between Hamas deaths and civilian fatalities.
President Joe Biden has expressed support for an immediate ceasefire at times during the conflict, yet he has consistently asserted Israel’s right to defend itself. The U.S. has given the Middle Eastern nation roughly $18 billion worth of aid, deployed the Navy aircraft carrier USS Gerald Ford to the region, and lent military assistance to Israel on several occasions to fend off attacks from Iran, Hamas’s financial backer.
Meanwhile, the scale of protests in the U.S. has grown. Demonstrations at New York’s Columbia University, the University of Michigan, and UCLA have grown into large-scale and frequent events. More than 1,360 student demonstrations were held between Oct. 7, 2023, and May 3, 2024, per the Armed Conflict Location and Event Data organization. Over 94% of them were held in support of Palestinians.
Calls for an unconditional ceasefire, divestment, and boycotts of Israel have grown also louder since Operation Cast Lead. When thousands of people descended on Washington on Nov. 4, 2023, for the largest pro-Palestinian march in U.S. history, Nehad Awad, the executive director of the Council on American Islamic Relations and one of the event organizers, took to the stage to say “Mr. President, enough is enough. Call for an immediate and unconditional ceasefire right now.”
Notably, protests at colleges such as the University of Michigan have led to over a year of pro-Palestinian demonstrations urging leadership to boycott and divest from Israel, with student Shreya Chowdhary telling the Michigan Daily, “It is a national movement that we’re participating in to demonstrate that students across the United States are not going to stand for our universities funding genocide.”
Evergreen State College in Washington state has committed to boycotting businesses and academic institutions connected to Israel as well as Columbia University’s Union Theological Seminary. California State University, Sacramento also announced it would not invest in “corporations that profit from genocide, ethnic cleansing and activities that violate fundamental human rights,” though it is unclear how extensive the boycott was. Other colleges, such as Northwestern University in Illinois, have committed to setting up advisory committees on divestment.
Factors that influenced response to war in Gaza after Oct. 7
The timing of the wars as they relate to presidential elections has played a critical role in the protests. With Operation Cast Lead occurring after the 2008 presidential election, pro-Palestinian voters did not have the leverage they have recently wielded over U.S. leadership.
In contrast, the Oct. 7 attack happened as Biden was running for a second term, and demonstrators prominently threatened to withhold their votes from him as a form of political retribution unless he pulled support from Israel.
When Biden proved unwilling to cave to anti-Israel activists, over 100,000 pro-Palestinian voters cast “uncommitted” protest votes against him during Michigan’s Democratic primary in February.
After Vice President Kamala Harris picked up Biden’s mantle at the top of the Democratic ticket, she, too, has been plagued with pro-Palestinian voters upset that she has declined to publicly break with her boss over Israel policy.
As massive protests have broken out across the U.S. in the wake of Hamas’s Oct. 7 attack, support for Palestinians has significantly increased since Operation Cast Lead. Gallup polling shows that 27% of Americans sympathized with Palestinians in February, up from 18% in the same month in 2009.
The growing role of social media has been pivotal in the changing attitudes toward the region and the development of protests. Instagram, Snapchat, and other social media platforms such as TikTok, which now boasts 170 million users across the U.S., did not exist in 2009. Today, young users particularly rely on the platforms for their daily news.
When pressed by Sen. Mitt Romney (R-UT) on why Israel has struggled to communicate its mission in Gaza to the public, Secretary of State Antony Blinken said that “the way this has played out on social media has dominated the narrative.”
“You have a social media ecosystem environment in which context, history, facts get lost. … I think it also has a very, very, very challenging effect on the narrative,” he told Romney earlier this year.
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Elise Labott, an adjunct professor at American University, also noted that “social media is a much more significant part of youth news diets, and platforms like TikTok show users content based on their interests, which can reinforce existing views.”
Following Hamas’s Oct. 7 attack on Israel, there were nearly four times the number of views on pro-Palestinian TikTok posts than on pro-Israel content.