October 7 and the Israel Split in American Politics

Sanity Check with Dan Schnur · Oct 7, 2026 · 3m

I know I normally come to you on Thursdays on the podcast and on Sundays with a written newsletter, but today is October 7th, and it is the three-year anniversary of the Hamas attacks on Israel and the beginning of the Gaza War.

And while we can certainly talk in future podcasts and newsletters about the war itself, I wanted to talk for just a couple of minutes today about the extraordinary impact that the Gaza War has had on American politics.

For many years, for most of the twenty-first century and the latter part of the twentieth century, American support for Israel was bipartisan and very…