Americans have tuned out Gaza at the worst possible moment

Israel’s war in Gaza, which has long been a moral atrocity, is on the brink of becoming unimaginably worse.

Earlier this month, Israel’s security cabinet approved a plan that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu described as “the concluding moves” of the war in Gaza. Called “Gideon’s Chariots,” the operation’s plan calls for the mass destruction of remaining buildings in Gaza and the “conquest” of much of the Strip by Israel.

The more than 2 million Palestinian civilians would be given a choice: Live indefinitely in a tiny “humanitarian area,” or else leave the Strip for some third country. At least one high-level Israeli official, Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, has openly proclaimed that the purpose of this policy is to inflict so much suffering that Palestinians are effectively forced to make the latter choice — a textbook example of ethnic cleansing.

“Within a few months…Gaza will be totally destroyed,” Smotrich said on May 6. Civilians “will be totally despairing, understanding that there is no hope and nothing to look for in Gaza, and will be looking for relocation to begin a new life in other places.”

The situation in Gaza is already beyond dire: An Israeli blockade on foreign aid has left children starving. Were Israel to do what Smotrich is describing, the consequences would be untold death and suffering.

“[My organization] has not used the term genocide before. We do now,” says Matt Duss, the executive vice president at the Center for International Policy think tank.

Since the start of the war, the US has done too little to change the dynamic on the ground. The Trump administration has demonstrated no interest in helping Palestinians and has (per Axios’ Barak Ravid) “effectively given Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu a green light to do as he sees fit.” Trump himself has suggested removing the Palestinian population from Gaza and sending them to nearby Arab states.

There is still time to change the war’s course. Israel has its own reasons for not going through with this kind of maximalist assault, and Trump has previously demonstrated a willingness to push Israel toward a ceasefire if the politics favor it.

But Israel’s plans are unfolding during a moment when many in the United States have stopped paying attention to the carnage in Gaza — perhaps fatigued by the war’s endless horrors, perhaps distracted by the dire political situation at home.

This, however, is the worst possible time to look away. What Israel is promising is not yet another round of fighting, but a criminal escalation of a morally abhorrent war.

It’s important to be clear on the stakes here: We are at a narrow moment in time in which the fate of the Palestinian people in Gaza could be decided.

The Israeli military has postponed any implementation of Gideon’s Chariots until after Trump’s Middle East trip this week; there is a window (if perhaps a shrinking one) to convince the Israeli government not to follow through. In fact, a senior Israeli security official told CNN explicitly that this postponement is designed to “provide a window of opportunity” for a hostages-for-negotiated-ceasefire deal.

Experts like Ilan Goldenberg, a high-level Middle East official in the Biden administration, think there’s a real chance Israel doesn’t truly want to go through with this plan. “The hope is that it is a threat to apply pressure on Hamas to let out hostages,” he tells me.

This hope is not rooted in a sense of Israeli nobility, but rather a calculation of its self-interest.

“On top of the horrific consequences for civilians in Gaza, it’s unlikely to actually eliminate Hamas and will come at a great cost to Israel,” Goldenberg, who is currently the chief policy officer at the center-left J Street lobby, says. “If they don’t have a ‘hold force’ with some legitimacy amongst Palestinians, it will all be for naught and Hamas will just go underground and fight an insurgency.”

Yehuda Shaul, the co-director of Israel’s Ofek think tank, also believes the Israeli government has not yet itself decided on how far it is willing to go. However, he warns, the “trajectory” is grim — due in part to the political balance of Netanyahu’s coalition.

Netanyahu’s hold on power depends on parliamentary support from extreme right lawmakers, Smotrich chief among them. This faction wants Gaza flattened and annexed, and its leaders are more than willing to threaten Netanyahu to get what they want.

“Launch a campaign to defeat Hamas, occupy Gaza and implement a temporary military government until another solution is found, return the hostages and launch the Trump plan [of depopulating Gaza] — or this government has no right to exist,” Smotrich said in late April.

The influence of this faction means that something like Gideon’s Chariots becomes more likely as time goes on. “If this war doesn’t end soon,” Shaul says, “we are definitely going to make it” to such a policy.

The Israeli government is indeed openly promising to commit horrific crimes against Palestinian civilians — brutality even above what the world has seen for the past year and a half. We have every reason to believe this threat should be taken seriously, given the violence Israel has already inflicted on Gazans. But we also know it is not quite an inevitability yet — that the very worst-case scenarios can still be avoided.

Israel’s dependence on the US, which supplies the weapons and political cover necessary for its extreme violence, creates a significant point of leverage for American presidents. Trump, for his part, has shown no interest in Palestinian civilian life for its own sake (and has demonstrated utter disdain for domestic pro-Palestinian activists).

Yet he is not an ideological pro-Israel hardliner, one who will bear any cost to see Palestinians expelled from Gaza. His role in securing the temporary ceasefire earlier this year suggests that he is sensitive to public perception. If escalating violence would make him look bad, or if he thinks he could look impressive by heading it off, there’s at least a chance of some kind of pushback against Israeli maximalism.

This is why the American mass public’s disapproval might actually matter. Unfortunately, they’re not paying much attention.

A Pew poll released in April found a 10-point decline in Americans who say the Israel-Hamas war “is important to them personally.” Data from Google Trends shows search volume for the word “Gaza” is about as low as it’s been since the October 7 attacks.

This is following a familiar pattern in public attention to foreign wars. When surprising conflicts break out — like Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine, or ISIS’s sweep across northern Iraq in 2014 — there’s a burst in public interest. But that fades, inevitably, as the news starts to feel less shocking to the majority of Americans who aren’t directly affected.

The Israel-Hamas war has been a little bit different, managing to capture enough attention to inspire sustained mass protest on college campuses and elsewhere. This is partly because of the unique role the Israel-Palestine conflict plays in the global political imagination. It’s also partly because many Americans have religious commitments or personal connections that make them personally invested in the outcome.

But even such a high-profile foreign conflict will have trouble sustaining public attention. And Americans have quite a lot going on domestically at the moment.

Yet if there’s a moment for renewed public attention, it’s now. This time really is different: The coming days and weeks could very well decide whether there will be Palestinian life in Gaza after the war in any meaningful sense. Ordinary Americans don’t control Israel’s government or the Trump administration, but they do retain the capacity to express moral outrage. The moment demands it.