At the World Can’t Wait event about Gaza in New York last Thursday night, Josh Ruebner, a Washington lobbyist as policy director of the US Campaign to End the Occupation (and author of the new book Shattered Hopes: Obama’s Failure to Broker Middle East Peace), told about an encounter with Eliot Engel, the ceaseless advocate for Israel as a congressman from Westchester/the Bronx.

The encounter came during an event on Palestinian human rights on Capitol Hill two weeks ago. The hall was jammed, and Ruebner reflected that our leaders are going to be surprised by the shift in the discourse that is taking place at the grass roots.