Javed Akbar 
At last, the tide has turned.
The New York Times/Siena College Research Institute poll released on September 30 is not mere data—it is an indictment.
For the first time in nearly 30 years of polling, more Americans sympathize with the Palestinians than with Israelis.
This is no statistical quirk.
It is a rupture—a collapse of the myth that casts Israel as perpetual victim and Palestinians as disposable aggressors.
That myth now lies buried beneath the rubble of Gaza.
The reason is written in blood.
In barely two years of relentless bombardment, Gaza has become a graveyard—an estimated 186,000 Palestinians dead, perhaps more.
Two million starved with calculated intent.
Israeli leaders no longer veil their cruelty: “Human animals,” spat former Israeli war minister Yoav Gallant as he choked Gaza’s lifelines—food, water, and fuel.
President Isaac Herzog went further, declaring all Palestinians complicit—civilians included.
These are not slips of rhetoric; they are the deliberate lexicon of genocide.
In late 2023, only 22 percent of Americans believed Israel was intentionally killing civilians.
Today, that number has nearly doubled.
The bombs that pulverized Gaza also shattered Israel’s carefully contrived moral authority.
The hasbara machine—once unrivaled—now gags on its own contradictions.
Propaganda collapsed under the weight of grotesque reality.
For decades, Washington enabled this impunity. More than $300 billion in aid has flowed to Israel since its founding—a bottomless subsidy of weapons, diplomatic cover, and congressional loyalty.
The American taxpayer funded apartheid, ethnic cleansing, and occupation while being told they were paying for “shared values.”
But the docility is over.
A majority of voters now oppose further aid. Among the young, the rejection is overwhelming: two-thirds of Americans under 30 declare with piercing clarity—Not in our name. Not with our money.
This is more than a shift in opinion. It is a reckoning.
Israel’s apologists in Congress can no longer hide behind the tattered cloak of “pragmatism.”
Supporting mass starvation, siege, and extermination is not pragmatism—it is moral rot.
Hasan Piker, the online streamer and the most subscribed political commentator on Twitch, observed that voters will reward leaders who speak the truth.
Zohran Mamdani’s unapologetic victory in New York stands as proof.
The once-iron grip of AIPAC is loosening, pried open by the sheer force of conscience.
Journalist Glenn Greenwald remarked that such a reversal was “utterly unthinkable” just five years ago.
Indeed.
But Israel’s own arrogance has sown its undoing.
A generation raised on raw, unfiltered images of Gaza’s devastation—streamed directly to their screens—cannot be lectured into silence.
They will not be shamed, frightened, or bought into complicity.
The truth is stark: Israel has lost the American people.
And once public opinion hardens, no lobby, no donor, no propaganda blitz can resurrect the illusion.
What collapsed in this poll was not merely Israel’s approval rating—it was the fantasy that America’s conscience could be purchased, bullied, or blinded forever.
The empire of lies is crumbling.
The United States, long complicit in underwriting Israel’s machinery of death, now stands at a crossroads.
It can persist in financing atrocity—or align with the justice demanded by its own citizens.
This is no ordinary shift.
It is a moral fracture, a historic turning point.
No amount of rhetoric about “shared values” or “the only democracy in the Middle East” can plaster over the truth.
Those words ring hollow against the screams that rise from Gaza’s ruins.
The reckoning has begun.
And this time, the world is watching which side of history America will choose.
Javed Akbar can be reached at mjavedakbar@gmail.com
