Phil Trachtenberg easily remembers where he was on October 7, 2023: in his bed. The day before, he had left his job at a company managing hospital data. And now on his phone, alerts were flashing about the Hamas attack in Israel. Phil is “99.1% Ashkenazi Jew” – genetic test in support – but he has no particular link with the Jewish state, which he has only visited once. Jewish school on Sundays, major family holidays, but no Shabbat or serious religious education. When the details of the massacre are revealed hour after hour, he is frightened. His first instinct is to think of the mass shootings in the United States, and the fact that he too attends music festivals, like some of the Israeli victims.
After a week, Phil Trachtenberg, 32, is only interested in Gaza. He watches the Qatari channel Al-Jazeera a lot, becoming exasperated by the passive forms used by American newspapers, such as “bomb explosion”. He devours social networks, unless it’s the other way around. He tracks videos of Israeli soldiers exulting in the smoking ruins. He follows impromptu conflict experts on TikTok. He is passionate about the plight of babies dying in Al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza City. “Before October 7, I was naive about the conflict. When I learned about the Nakba (“catastrophe”, great forced exodus of Palestinians in 1948), on the context, I thought about what we did here to the Native Americans. I had the impression of the same story of colonialism. I also told myself that Israel was too ready to go to war, like the United States after September 11. »
Phil breaks off contact with several Jewish friends. In Madison, he camped in front of the office of Tammy Baldwin, Democratic senator from Wisconsin. He discovers different anti-war organizations, demonstrates for Palestinian rights, searches for meaning in his dismay. And then “Listen to Wisconsin” appears, which meets his need for engagement. An unprecedented, local initiative calling on participants in the Democratic primaries on April 2 to vote blank in protest against the Biden administration’s ardent support for Israel. Objective: gather 20,000 votes, the margin by which the Democrat won Wisconsin in 2020 against Trump.
Pro-Palestinian protests
The primaries no longer have any stakes: Joe Biden already has enough delegates to be invested. However, after Michigan and Minnesota, Wisconsin is the third state where a progressive grassroots movement is organizing, mobilizing, and putting pressure on local elected officials. And worries party strategists, aware that the presidential election in November should be particularly close in this pivotal state. According to a recent Pew Research Center poll, American public opinion appears very divided on the ongoing war. A third is hostile to US military aid provided to Israel. Among Democrats and independents, there are also many – 34% – who believe that Joe Biden leans too much in favor of the Jewish state.
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