Gen Z is marked by Gaza. For Boomers it was Vietnam. Will it shape Super Tuesday and beyond?

The war in Gaza is a defining moment for many young Americans, one that has deepened their discontent with their own government.

For Americans of a certain age, it was a different conflict – the Vietnam War – that fomented distrust of their leaders and inspired street protests and political activism. Theirs was an era of plane hijackings and bombings in Europe, a time when Israel was still a young refugee state constantly forced to fend off attacks from its neighbors.

Americans’ views of the Israel-Hamas war are to some extent a reflection of the era in which they came of age. The generational divide is shaping not only how they see the conflict in the Middle East, but how they will vote in this year’s presidential election.

Biden 'wants to do his best'

In his senior year at Harvard, John Casler listened to his international politics professor Henry Kissinger argue that whoever ran elections in Vietnam would win them.

A year and a half later, Casler was drafted and in uniform listening to Kissinger advise President Richard Nixon to stay in the war to safeguard the country’s free elections.

“He was obviously being a total hypocrite,” Casler said.

Kissinger would become one of most influential Cold War hawks, transforming U.S. diplomacy on a global scale. He was associated with controversial U.S. policies including its bombing of Cambodia and support and funding of dictatorial regimes and military juntas.

Casper, 78, of Marblehead, Mass., hasn’t voted for a Republican for president since. He remembers Americans becoming aware of the war’s “ugliness” as it developed and understands that young people today are similarly upset about U.S. involvement in the conflict in the Middle East.

He worries, however, that like third-party candidates, Democrats refusing to vote for President Joe Biden because of this issue could help sway the 2024 election for Donald Trump.

“One doesn’t always get to have a candidate that lines up with one’s own views,” he said. “I would give any president credit for doing his best unless I knew otherwise, and I think Biden certainly wants to do his best.”

Citing his ability to work with politicians across the aisle and his support for Ukraine, Casler plans to vote for Biden again in 2024.

− Rachel Barber

'A bone-deep sense of betrayal': Arab Americans are angry with Joe Biden over Gaza and want him defeated in 2024

'It is about Palestine'

Dylan Young is on disciplinary probation at Emerson College. Administrators said he violated school rules by using campus resources to email students about the student union, a non-registered student organization.

“I happen to think that it is about Palestine,” Young said.

Young, 21, of Boston, said the union and other organizations that have made pro-Palestine statements have experienced increased censorship from administrators since Oct. 7. It hasn’t stopped Young, a junior visual and media arts major, from attending pro-Palestinian protests and meeting with members of Massachusetts Sen. Ed Markey’s staff to advocate for a cease-fire resolution.

Young voted for Biden in 2020 but said he can no longer support him.

“We cannot see a genocide of 30,000 people using our taxpayer dollars and pretend that it’s not an issue,” he said.

As a Jewish man who grew up going to synagogue in Texas, Young said equating anti-Zionism and antisemitism is dangerous.

“Nothing has done more damage to my community in my lifetime than the equation of Zionism and Judaism,” he said.

Young plans to vote for Independent Cornel West for president in 2024.

− Rachel Barber

'Immense scale of suffering': Kamala Harris calls for 'immediate cease-fire' in Gaza

Refusing to vote for 'lesser of two evils'

Russ Greenleaf knows how his father felt.

An "anti-Zionist Jew,” Greenleaf has had to have tough conversations with folks in Louisville, Ky.’s, Jewish community, who he said are vastly pro-Israel. "They don't listen to what I say," he said.

Greenleaf said it is similar to the difficult discussions within his Republican household during the 1960s when his father, a Marine veteran who served in Iwo Jima, began to see the “futility” of the Vietnam War.

Greenleaf, a 67-year-old project manager for Louisville's bus agency, said he can’t stomach the images he’s watched from international news outlets of entire Palestinian communities being leveled.

“I believe the state of Israel has now reached a point where it's actually committing war crimes and genocide against the Palestinians,” he said.

The generational connection to younger voters and this anti-war movement, he said, is a shared sense of resisting empire.

Greenleaf, now a Democrat, supported Biden four years ago and was ready to do so again. The war in Gaza has changed that, however, and Greenleaf will either be "uncommitted" or write in "Free Palestine" in protest unless something drastically changes.

If the president wants his vote in 2024, Biden must directly tell Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu the U.S. will end military aid to its ally if the hostilities don’t stop, he said.

The Oct. 7 terror attack that killed roughly 1,200 Israelis weighs on Greenleaf given his heritage, but he said his moral compass rejects what Netanyahu's government is doing. He said Israel must embrace treating Palestinians as equals and end what he called "apartheid practices."

− Phillip Bailey

Protecting civilian lives: VP Harris presses Israel on civilian deaths in Gaza. What does international law say?

Israel, Hamas conflict not 'equal playing field'

Mimi Daoud feels lost. The presidential candidates from the Republican and Democratic parties don’t appeal to her. Nor does she agree with their support for Israel, especially in light of the Israel-Hamas war.

Daoud said she typically leaned Democratic but just can’t image voting for Biden again. She also can’t see herself joining either party — and might not even cast a ballot in November.

“I disagree with them both heavily,” said Daoud, a 22-year-old nonprofit worker from Cedar Rapids, Iowa.

While Daoud called Hamas’ surprise attack on Israel “horrendous” and “traumatic,” she said she also struggled with the way it was portrayed in the media and discussed among political leaders, including those in her hometown. She saw leaders publicly side with Israel and condemn Hamas but ignore the deaths of thousands of Palestinians in the Gaza Strip. They also neglected to acknowledge Israel’s occupation of Palestinian territories, she said.

Daoud, who is Egyptian American, heard about that occupation growing up. Her childhood best friend, who is Palestinian, often spoke about her family’s experiences. One of her friend’s cousins was killed by the Israel Defense Forces, and many others were wrongfully imprisoned.

Daoud said she finds it difficult to call the conflict between Israel and Hamas a “war” as it fails to recognize the impact on Palestinians. Two states or two governments at war fight on an “equal playing field” and have the same access to resources such as the military, she said, but that is not what is happening here.

“It’s not a fight between Israel and Hamas when the people that are mainly affected are the Palestinians,” Daoud said.

− Amanda Tugade of the Des Moines Register

Decision time: Biden pushing for Gaza ceasefire by Ramadan; White House says waiting on Hamas signoff

'Biden is normal'

Vera Mourad was living in Ukraine in 1986 when she had to cancel her five-year-old son’s birthday party. The Chernobyl disaster had just occurred.

Mourad’s family stayed with her parents in northern Russia for the summer but returned to Ukraine after three months. It took them four years before they were able to secure visas to travel and ultimately move to the U.S.

“It became a habit to boil water when buying meat — if you could get meat,” she said. “I remember questioning if it was contaminated.”

Today Mourad, 69, watches the news to keep up with Russia’s war in Ukraine. She says it is unsafe to communicate with her younger brother in Russia, but that they disagree on the conflict anyway. He supports Russia. She supports Ukraine.

She also sees coverage of the conflict in the Middle East. Like Ukraine, Israel has a right to defend itself, she said.

Mourad, now a registered Democrat in Massachusetts, is pleased with Biden’s support for Israel, Ukraine and democracy. As she did in 2020, Mourad plans to vote for him in 2024.

“Biden is normal,” she said. “We’ve had enough drama in politics. We have to make politics boring again.”

− Rachel Barber

A pivotal player: How tiny Qatar became the middle man in negotiations to free hostages held by Hamas

Detroit's Jews fear expressing Jewish identities

Allan Gale, 71, first visited Israel when he was 23, spending months at Kibbutz Ulpan. He split time between working at the kibbutz, a community settlement that often focuses on agricultural work, and studying Hebrew.

After returning to the U.S., he launched a career advocating for Detroit’s Jewish community, working with the Jewish Community Relations Council until his retirement in 2017. Gale said the tenor of community relations since Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack on Israel has degraded severely, pointing to February vandalism of a predominantly Jewish country club in West Bloomfield Township, a community in metro Detroit.

“There is fear in the Jewish community about outwardly expressing their Jewish identities, and it's something new and of course, it's very troubling to me,” Gale said.

Gale, who has been to Israel multiple times since his first visit, has family living there. He said social media has galvanized people toward anti-Israel sentiment, without giving them a full understanding of the conflict.

He also said a movement in Michigan’s Democratic presidential primary which saw more than 100,000 vote “uncommitted” to increase public pressure for Biden to call for a cease-fire doesn’t address Hamas’ role in the conflict.

− Arpan Lobo of the Detroit Free Press

'A lose-lose situation' for Biden

Matt Williams Jr., a former health care professional from Davis, Calif., was surprised to see his city council pass a resolution supporting a cease-fire in Gaza last December.

“They can’t do anything,” Williams said. “It’s the job of the president to actually take positions.”

Williams, 76, supports a two-state solution and said he would be harder on Israel than Biden has been but thinks the president has done the best he can in a “lose-lose situation.”

“They say ‘fools rush in where angels fear to tread.’ Part of the job description of the president is that they have to be a fool,” he added.

Domestic issues matter more to Williams, who has voted for Democrats in every election since Ronald Reagan in the 1980s, who he supported for his economic policy. He plans to support Biden in 2024 for a similar reason.

He trusts Biden more than Trump on fiscal policy and health care. After a pacemaker insertion, cancer treatment, and a career collecting medical bills, Williams wants the U.S. to transition to a single-payer system.

Williams says Biden will get the country closer to his ideal reality than Trump. “We’re ending up with Biden by default,” he said. “Trump is the fatal flaw.”

− Rachel Barber

'Self-silencing': For Palestinians, talking about Hamas comes with hazards

Concern about genocide 'in my blood'

For Trey Porter Orantes, it’s almost impossible to ignore the violence in Gaza.

Scrolling through graphic images and growing death tolls on social media has only angered the gender-fluid artist more over the United States' role in aiding Israel.

The lifelong Democrat said Biden’s allyship with Israel and refusal to call for a cease-fire will be one of the reasons Biden loses their vote in the general election.

“I’ve already been disillusioned on the election,” said Orantes, 26, of Minneapolis. “Our tax money going to bombs on children.”

Given their family's history, Orantes is familiar with the oppressive nature of colonialism. Their mother is Guatemalan. Their father is Ojibwe, an indigenous people to North America.

“So much of my life has been politicized,” they said. “I see genocide, I come from genocide, it’s in my blood.”

For Orantes, “picking the lesser of two evils” in November isn’t an option if neither candidate supports the Palestinian people. If Orantes votes, they said they will vote third party.

− Sam Woodward

'We are complicit'

Kathleen McQuillen was heartbroken when she first heard the news about Hamas’ attack on Israel last October.

All that anguish turned into anger after she watched politician after politician side with a country she believes committed the crime of apartheid against the Palestinians.

“The media and this administration talk as if everything started on Oct. 7,” said McQuillen, 74, of Des Moines. “We are erasing the Palestinian people,” she said.

McQuillen, who identifies as an independent, recently left the Democratic Party. She feels Democrats are contributing to the suffering of the Palestinians.

“We’re complicit,” she said. “Not only is it the guns and the weapons and the military we’re providing, but it’s the protection when Israel should be sanctioned or when there’s efforts to call for cease-fire, and the United States vetoes such efforts.

“Children are starving. We can’t get enough humanitarian in there. … It’s just unbelievable to me.”

− Amanda Tugade of the Des Moines Register

What's next for Biden after Michigan? 'Uncommitted' vote raises questions for campaign

Pop group introduced voter to 'Free Palestine'

Belle Townsend, 23, didn’t learn much about Middle East conflicts growing up Southern Baptist in rural western Kentucky.

That changed a decade ago when a Zayn Malik, a member of the British-Irish pop boy band, One Direction, tweeted, “Free Palestine.”

“I was very obsessed with One Direction,” Townsend said.

As a teenager, that sparked Townsend’s interest to learn more about the region and its decades of violent clashes.

Ten years later, Townsend, who studied political science and international relations at Boston University, is now helping as a communications organizer with one of several Gaza cease-fire groups in Louisville that have engaged in civil disobedience and lobbied city officials to oppose the ongoing death toll.

Townsend described it as a “struggle” when she voted for Biden the first time in 2020. This time around, she said his administration’s support for Israel has solidified her view that someone else should be the Democratic presidential nominee in 2024.

“As far as I'm concerned, Biden will have blood on his hands as long as he is alive. In any way, thinking of supporting him makes me sick to my stomach," she said.

The “uncommitted” vote in Michigan organized by Arab American activists and other left-leaning groups is not an empty gesture from her perspective. Because the massive body count in Gaza is a defining moment for her generation, she said it is necessary to use the electoral system to force Biden and the country in a different direction.

“It's a message to Biden that if you'll move, we'll consider it, but right now he's taking people's votes for granted,” Townsend said. “And I think that is again what the Democratic Party overall cannot continue doing.”

− Phillip Bailey

Insults and Molotov cocktails: Jews live in fear as antisemitism rages

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Views on Gaza war differ by generation. What does that mean for Biden?