From his office outside Toledo, Ohio, Thamin Tim Ridi opens his phone to livestream the scene outside the besieged house of his brother, Loui, thousands of miles away in the occupied West Bank. This month, with his property at risk of being destroyed by Israeli settlers, Loui traveled from Ohio to his ancestral home in Qusra, south of Nablus, where his mother and other family members have been living in constant fear of attack. In Qusra, settlers have besieged a number of Palestinian properties and homes, preventing members of the Ridi family from leaving, as their food and water supplies dwindled.
The US ambassador to Israel, Mike Huckabee, took to X on 13 August to describe the settlers’ actions as those of “terrorists”. While the Trump administration has offered broad support to Israel and its illegal settlement building over the years, recent comments from JD Vance, the vice-president, and Donald Trump himself indicate a change of tone. Regardless, for Loui’s extended family in Ohio, it’s created a world of concern.
One of the first things Loui did upon arriving at his home in Qusra, said Ridi, was plant an American flag on his property. For decades, the war in the Middle East had been a distant headline, something that appeared briefly on the evening news, for residents of Toledo in north-west Ohio. But decades of migration to small cities in the American heartland, combined with the war on Gaza and recent rise in settler violence against Palestinians in the occupied West Bank, are bringing the conflict into the streets and homes of places such as Toledo.
Last October, five people were arrested in downtown Toledo for protesting outside the office of Jon Husted, an Ohio Republican senator, who at the time had voted to send aid to Israel. There’s a palpable difference of opinion regarding what Israel is doing and that the US is funding it,” said Mike Ferner, a US navy veteran and one of those arrested in Toledo. Ferner said he began speaking out against America’s support for Israel after the war on Gaza began.
It has prompted Ferner to travel to New York City and organize a 40-day fast in front of the United Nations building last year. Ferner’s position is illustrative of a widening gap between American public opinion and the US government’s support for Israel. While Americans broadly supported Israel in the past, a Pew Research Center poll released in April found that six in 10 participants had an unfavorable view of the country – an increase of 7% in just a year.
The reason is partly explained by mounting anger with the actions of pro-Israel groups such as American Israel Public Affairs Committee (Aipac), which have spent billions of dollars over a period of decades helping to elect American politicians who are supportive of Israel. This year, many of its high-profile candidates have been defeated in primary elections, despite an outlay of tens of millions of dollars. Arab American communities have grown particularly in the midwest, where job opportunities and a comparatively affordable cost of living have attracted many immigrants to start out.
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