There is much to admire about U.S. House Speaker Emerita Nancy Pelosi, who recently announced her plan to retire in 2027 after thirty-nine years in office, including her progressive domestic agenda, superb legislative skills, and groundbreaking role as the first female Congressional leader. But we must also remember that her unwavering support for successive, rightwing Israeli governments allied her more closely with her Republican colleagues than her liberal constituents in San Francisco.
When Pelosi was first elected to Congress in 1988, she was an outspoken opponent of Palestine’s right to exist as a sovereign nation, and even helped defeat a ballot proposition in San Francisco supporting a two-state solution for Israel and Palestine.
Eventually, Pelosi expressed openness to a two-state solution, but only under circumstances voluntarily agreed to by Israel—a position she still holds, in spite of Israel’s categorical opposition to a Palestinian state of any kind. She has also condemned civil society efforts such as the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) campaign. And she has supported Trump’s efforts to push Arab nations to unilaterally recognize Israel, while opposing efforts by the Palestinians to seek recognition and full membership in the United Nations.
Even though the current Palestinian government—which is recognized by 157 countries—has recognized Israel’s sovereignty and demanded only 22 percent of historic Palestine for its own state, Pelosi has insisted that the Palestinians are not sufficiently willing to compromise. The crux of the conflict, she claimed at an American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) event in 2005, was about supporting “the fundamental right of Israel to exist”—and that their critics’s concerns about ongoing Israeli occupation and repression in the West Bank were “absolute nonsense.”
Over the past two years, as Israel has waged ongoing genocide against the people of Gaza, Pelosi has sunken to new lows. Shortly after Hamas’s October 7, 2023 attack on Israel, she rejected growing domestic and international calls for a ceasefire, calling an end to the fighting “a gift to Hamas.” She even stooped to engaging in McCarthy-like attacks on antiwar activists, suggesting on CNN in January 2024that some of the pro-ceasefire protesters were “connected to Russia” and “delivering Mr. Putin’s message”—and that she would “ask the FBI to investigate” their actions.
When a constituent confronted Pelosi soon afterwards about her ongoing opposition to a ceasefire, noting that polls showed 80 percent of Democratic voters were in favor, the Congresswoman shouted, “Go back to China where your headquarters are!”
Pelosi has also targeted fellow Democrats along these lines throughout her career. She attacked Vermont Governor Howard Dean, then the front-runner for the 2004 Democratic presidential nomination, for suggesting the United States should be more “even-handed” towards the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. In response to former President Jimmy Carter’s 2006 book Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid, in which he warned that Israel’s continued occupation and colonization of the West Bank was creating a situation similar to apartheid, Pelosi declared: “It is wrong to suggest that the Jewish people would support a government in Israel or anywhere else that institutionalizes ethnically based oppression, and Democrats reject that allegation vigorously.”
But Pelosi inflicted her greatest damage against Israeli-Palestinian peace efforts when she moved into Congressional leadership positions, first as Democratic minority leader, then as Speaker of the House during George W. Bush’s presidency. Rather than challenge the Republicans’s disastrous undermining of the Oslo Accords, and any hope for Israeli-Palestinian peace, she backed Bush, alongside then-Israeli Prime Minister and war criminal Ariel Sharon.
Indeed, Pelosi repeatedly praised the rightwing Israeli prime minister, calling his leadership “remarkable.” She endorsed Sharon’s construction of a separation barrier deep inside the West Bank, in defiance of both the United Nations and the International Court of Justice, as well as his much-derided “disengagement plan,” which would have allowed Israel to annex most of Israel’s illegal settlements in the occupied territory.
A 2008 letter signed by Pelosi and 318 other representatives, as well as eighty-eight senators, argued that the Bush Administration—despite its contempt for the U.N. Charter and its support of Israeli occupation forces—was more reliable than the United Nations or the European Union in monitoring the peace process.
Indeed, throughout the Bush years, she tried to push Congressional Democrats to support the administration’s broader Middle East agenda rather than the wishes of their constituents, who largely opposed Bush’s agenda. “There is no division on policy between us and President Bush,” she declared in 2007, “be it on Israel, Palestine, or Syria.”
The extent of Pelosi’s unfaltering support for Israeli occupation of Palestine was made clear after her visit to an illegal Israeli settlement in 2004. At an AIPAC policy conference that May, she referred to the threat of attacks by local Palestinians as part of “the daily reality of Israel,” and implied that the occupied territories were part of Israel itself, giving Israel the right to resist the U.N. Security Council and International Court of Justice’s attempts to remove its settlements in accordance with the Fourth Geneva Convention.
Pelosi repeatedly defended Israel’s wars on Gaza, the West Bank, and Lebanon, co-sponsoring resolutions supporting the assaults, which primarily targeted civilians. One such resolution from 2006 praised “Israel’s longstanding commitment to minimizing civilian loss and welcoming Israel’s continued efforts to prevent civilian casualties.”
One of Pelosi’s most enduring legacies was a 2009 resolution she authored which redefined “human shields” from its longstanding definition under international law. Where “human shields” has traditionally been defined as “utilizing the presence of a civilian or other protected person to render certain points, areas or military forces immune from military operation,” Pelosi’s resolution redefined the term to include regular civilians in spaces that Hamas was believed to have “embedded,” and in so doing, construed all of Gaza as a free fire zone. The resolution called on the international community “to condemn Hamas for deliberately embedding its fighters, leaders, and weapons in private homes, schools, mosques, hospitals, and otherwise using Palestinian civilians as human shields.”
But Pelosi’s definition of “human shields” was asinine. Private homes, mosques, and hospitals in Gaza are not “embedded” by Hamas simply because Hamas leaders might happen to live, pray, or seek care in them alongside ordinary citizens, as most government leaders do, and their presence in public spaces certainly does not render all nearby civilians “human shields.” After all, given that the armed wing of Hamas is a militia rather than a standing army, virtually all of its fighters live in private homes and go to neighborhood mosques and local hospitals.
In short, Pelosi’s resolution—passed by an overwhelming bipartisan majority—put the United States on record supporting a radical and dangerous reinterpretation of international humanitarian law—one that both the Biden and Trump Administrations used as the basis for defending Israel’s two-year genocidal war on the people of Gaza.
Despite all this, much of the progressive press has been largely silent regarding Pelosi’s rightwing proclivities in relation to Israel and Palestine. While her positive contributions and her legislative skills should indeed be recognized, it is wrong to ignore her legacy in undermining human rights and international law.
