A convicted felon or a former prosecutor who has put felons behind bars and gone after individuals and institutions for their predatory practices — that is the choice voters face for the next president of the United States. At a jubilant convention, Michelle Obama said that “hope is making a comeback.” And the Democratic candidate and sitting vice president, Kamala Harris, promised “a new way forward.”
Can we count on the “new way” to stop the carnage as Palestinians are repeatedly displaced, bombed and starved? Can we break free of the platitudes about how America has an unshakeable bond with Israel? Or has that bond dulled our senses to the inhumanity of Israel’s so-called “defense” of itself through the killing of at least 40,000 Palestinians, about half of them women and children?
How much has the flow of AIPAC dollars and dark money from Zionist donors into the coffers of both parties led our political leaders to apply a double standard to how the attacks on Ukraine are viewed, versus how the raining of American-funded bombs on Gaza is talked about? Some Ukrainian pro-Palestine protestors have asked: Why are our lives more valuable than the lives of the children of Gaza?
The Democratic National Convention owes voters an answer. Especially in the aftermath of a convention in which the family of an Israeli hostage had time on the stage, but no Palestinian voice was heard.
We should be grateful to six members of Hawaii’s 31-strong delegation to the convention. They joined other Uncommitted delegates who took the principled stand of not voting for Harris to protest the refusal to include a Palestinian speaker on the program.
We heard promises that the Harris/Walz team represents ALL of America. All means ALL. The DNC should have welcomed someone to speak for Americans who have friends and relatives in Gaza and the West Bank. Someone who could speak to the anguish of seeing lives crushed under the rubble; families forced at gunpoint by settlers to abandon their homes while Israeli police watch.
Voters need to hear that the brave woman who wants to be our commander in chief sees Palestinians the way she saw the victims of sexual abuse, predatory marketing and drug cartels. And that she will heed her mother’s advice to “do something.”
Many have said that Harris handled the issue of Gaza in a “masterful” way. Not Palestinian Americans.
Hatem Abudayyeh, national chair of the U.S. Palestinian Community Network said, “Leading with Israel’s right to defend itself in the wake of 40,000 massacred Palestinians is absolutely tone deaf.” Hala Alyan, Palestinian American writer, poet and clinical psychologist wrote in The Guardian: “The actions of the last 10 months show a state that clearly believes in its immunity and right to external protection.”
Why would it not, when U.S. leaders keep insisting that Israel, the Occupier, has a “right to self-defense?”
But as Alyan says, “there is no Palestinian response to Israeli aggression that is acceptable.”
Muslim Women for Harris-Walz announced that it would disband after the convention, noting that the family of the Israeli hostage on the convention stage showed “more empathy towards Palestinian Americans and Palestinians than our candidate or the DNC has.”
Harris cannot afford to lose the Arab-American voting bloc or young voters in swing states.
It isn’t enough to skip Benjamin Netanyahu’s speech to Congress. Or to “be working on a ceasefire.”
Harris needs to let voters know that she WILL change course. American bombs have already flattened apartment blocks, UN schools, hospitals and every university in Gaza. Yet, another $20 billion in arms sales to Israel was approved on Aug. 13. Not ending this unholy patronage, Madame Vice President, makes it impossible for many voters to feel proud to be American. The screams of the children of Gaza haunt our dreams.
Please. Do. Something.
Dawn Morais Webster works with nonprofits on social, economic and environmental justice issues.
