It was, in the context of an already surreal year, a shocking admission from the American president. “Based on television … those children look very hungry,” Donald Trump said on Monday. “Some of those kids are — that’s real starvation stuff.”

Appearing in Scotland with Keir Starmer, the U.K. prime minister, Trump delivered what amounted to, for him at least, a stinging rebuke of Benjamin Netanyahu. The past few days from an American political standpoint have been rather remarkable — a critical mass of politicians, now including Trump, seems to be acknowledging the cataclysm unfolding in the Middle East. Whether his words will lead to any particular action remains to be seen. He has stood by as Netanyahu, Israel’s prime minister, wages unrelenting total war in Gaza, and he has giddily supplied Israel with additional weaponry. Republicans still staunchly support the Israeli government — 71 percent approval of the military action in Gaza compared with only 8 percent among Democrats, according to a new Gallup poll — and stray comments on Palestinian starvation will not move them.

But there are broad shifts underway in the Democratic Party, and 2025 may be remembered as a decisive turning point. After long operating on the distant margins of political life, the pro-Palestinian movement has made tremendous gains in the realms of public opinion and party politics.

Zohran Mamdani, who is favored........

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