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News of Sen. Lindsey Graham’s death was met with tributes from some of the world’s most powerful political leaders.

In Israel, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu remembered him as a loyal friend. In Ukraine, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy on X called Graham a “true defender of freedom.” In Washington, D.C., Republicans and Democrats alike mourned one of the most influential foreign policy hawks of his generation.

But in Gaza, Graham’s name carries a different legacy.

For many Palestinians, the South Carolina Republican, who died at the age of 71 after a “brief and sudden” illness, was one of the most forceful voices in Washington defending Israel’s genocide and ethnic cleansing of Palestinians in the Gaza Strip.

At the height of the war in Gaza, Graham repeatedly urged the U.S. to provide Israel with the weapons it needed to continue its military campaign. In May 2024, while defending continued U.S. arms supplies to Israel, Graham invoked the American atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

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“We decided to end the war by the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki with nuclear weapons, and that was the right decision,” Graham told NBC’s “Meet the Press.” “Give Israel the bombs they need to end the war they can’t afford to lose.”

Civilians watching from Gaza heard his words as a dehumanizing message, one that portrayed them as monsters and terrorists, rather than human beings living through the horrors of an Israeli military campaign that has killed tens of thousands, destroyed homes, displaced families, and transformed entire cities into fields of rubble.

Iktimal Abo Matar, a 68-year-old Gaza resident who lived through the Naksa in 1967, said Graham’s death brought no sense of political loss to her.

“Now that he has died, he will be........

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