US Lawmakers Post-Oct 7th: AJP Examines their Stance on Palestinianism

Oy! The disappointment! Let’s see what happened to pro-Palestinians in government since Oct 7th.

A group calling itself AJP Action (Americans for Justice in Palestine) lobbies the USA government on behalf of Palestinian interests. On their website, they put together a pro-Palestinian scorecard to measure senators’ and Congress representatives’ views and actions with regard to support for those who now call themselves Palestinians. They surveyed reps in the Senate and Congress twice: once in 2024, saying this was for the second consecutive election. They do not give a date for the first survey, but it was either 2020 or 2022. Either way, before Oct 7th.

The more recent survey was specifically done to measure post-Oct 7th behaviours of elected officials in the government. The results for the two survey years are extremely different and, depending on your own political views, the 2024 results are either alarmingly different or encouragingly so.

In their introduction we already find an alarming (or encouraging) statement. The 2024 survey reports only on Democrats because of their:

. . . preliminary research that uncovered little to no discernible support for the Palestinian cause among elected Republicans.

And then:

This decision reflects the altered political landscape post-October 7, which has compelled many Democrats to make difficult decisions and demonstrate their positions on Palestine in an extraordinarily unique context.

. . .

For us, the positions Members held before October 7 are now irrelevant due to the political and social paradigm shift.

Can they be more discouraged, disenchanted, distressed, disappointed, etc by those they had faith in before the Oct atrocities and abductions?

In the earlier survey, they had enough Palestinian supporters to have 18 reps on their Hall of Fame (highest loyalty scores). More about this in the two-part follow-up to this article: Part 1: Hall of Fame; Part 2: Hall of Shame. The links will be added after these two articles will be published.

Briefly, they measured where representatives stood regarding the “genocide” in Gaza.

I cannot present their findings any more concisely than they did, so let me just copy-paste from the website:

House of Representatives

Regrettably, only four Congress members earned an “A” grade: Representatives Rashida Tlaib, Cori Bush, Ilhan Omar, and Delia Ramirez. Representative Tlaib scored the highest with 96%, closely followed by Representative Bush at 93%. Five others achieved a “B” grade, including Representatives Jamaal Bowman, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Summer Lee, Pramila Jayapal, and Jesús “Chuy” García. Additionally, five received a “C,” four a “D,” and the majority of Democratic House members, 195 or 91.5%, received an “F.”

U.S. Senate

In the Senate, no Democratic senator scored higher than a “D.” Senators Elizabeth Warren, Jeff Merkley, and Bernie Sanders each received a “D.” All other Democratic Senators, along with Independents who caucus with them, received an “F,” amounting to a 94% failure rate among the 51 Democratic Senators.

What are the American Palestinians to do when those they elected failed so badly on the test of loyalty?

Have faith, dear American Palestinians and supporters! With enough distance from Oct 7th, you may find a drift back to previous positions. But this non-American hopes not.

The last sentence concluding the report:

These results should serve as a wakeup call for lawmakers to reassess where they stand. They are standing against the will of the people and as such are not reflecting them and in doing so, they are aiding and abetting a genocide.

Perhaps, instead, you might consider that these lawmakers are in sync with the will of the people who, post Oct 7th, do not see a genocide in Gaza but, rather, came to see the Palestinian mission to genocide the Jewish people inside Israel and abroad.

Of course, given the nature of some of the comments my articles may generate, and the demonstrations on the streets and on campuses, one might think that most see Israel as committing genocide and starving the Gazan population. But, while they are noisy, they just may not be the majority if this survey gives us anything real to go by.