Pro-Palestinian content creators are using their social media platforms to scrutinize Vice President Kamala Harris's stance on the Israel-Hamas war and sway American youth, according to reporting by the Wall Street Journal.
Online activists have played a role in shaping the views of young people who oppose Israel's military offensive and the Biden administration's support for it.
Within hours of President Biden's decision to drop his re-election bid and endorse Harris as his successor, Ahmed Eldin, a former journalist of Palestinian descent with approximately 1.1 million Instagram followers, posted content highlighting Harris's past interactions with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and her address to AIPAC. "Time to step up the pressure on Kamala," Eldin wrote, accusing the vice president of supporting the violence in Gaza.
Rosy Pirani, another pro-Palestinian content creator, has seen her Instagram following grow from about 225,000 to 734,000 since she began posting about the war. "The truth of the matter is Biden has isolated a lot of Democrat voters, especially young voters, along with Arab and Muslim voters," Pirani told the WSJ.
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Secretary of State Antony Blinken has acknowledged the challenge of communicating the administration's position on Israel to young people, citing the emotional impact of images shared on social media. "You have a social-media ecosystem in which context, history, facts get lost, and the emotion of images dominates," Blinken said at a recent forum.
Pro-Palestinian influencers have used clips from White House and State Department briefings to highlight what they perceive as misleading statements or double standards in the treatment of Israelis and Palestinians by top Biden officials.
Harris has been more vocal than Biden in her criticism of Israel's conduct during the war, describing conditions in Gaza as "inhumane" and stating there would be "no excuses" if Israel didn't improve the flow of humanitarian aid. However, she continues to support Israel's right to defend itself and, like Biden, opposes an arms embargo on Israel.
The vice president has faced pro-Palestinian protesters at her campaign events, including a notable incident in Detroit where she suggested the demonstrators were indirectly supporting Former President Donald Trump.
While domestic attention has shifted with Harris at the top of the ticket, pro-Palestinian online activists are determined to keep the Gaza conflict in focus.
