During the Democratic National Convention, we heard a multitude of powerful voices: women who were unable to access abortion, Republicans who are putting country before party, school shooting survivors and parents of hostages held in the Middle East. Yet one voice was still neglected. Despite the cries of thousands of protesters in the streets and the nonstop eruption of bombs in Gaza, no one heard the voice of a single Palestinian American.
Over the course of the Democratic primaries, over 700,000 people voted “Uncommitted,” in order to send a message to the Biden-Harris administration: stop funding genocide. It’s a simple message to merely stop sending billions of dollars in bombs to a government that has plausibly killed 186,000 Palestinian Arabs.
Ten months later, those requests have fallen on deaf ears. The most we’ve gotten from the Biden-Harris administration is the claim that they are “working around the clock for a ceasefire and a hostage exchange.” These words fall empty as we receive daily notifications of Israel using U.S. made bombs to kill scores of Palestinians, wiping out entire families.
Numbness is settling into the skin of the American population.
Moreover, the Biden-Harris administration’s rhetoric continues to be, “Israel has a right to defend itself, but it must be careful in doing so.” Take this hypothetical: if your underage friend is struggling with alcohol addiction and you were the person supplying the alcohol, would you still give the alcohol to your friend and tell them “not to drink it,” or would you stop supplying the alcohol altogether? If you were the Biden-Harris administration, you would opt for the former.
Ten months ago, Israel bombed hospitals under the pretense that they were “undercover Hamas headquarters”, without any credible, independently verified evidence. Israel is violating international law under a false, unverified premise. This begs the question: how can Israel get away with violating international law not just over the past ten months, but over the past half century in its illegal settlements in the West Bank?
This article should not be taken as an invitation to vote Republican; there is no doubt that Donald Trump did a lot of harm to this country, but the Democratic Party is evasively complicit in its condemnation of Trump. Democrats often call out Trump for saying the results of the 2020 Presidential election results were illegitimate, but when President Biden refuses to say that Israel has violated international law, his ignorance and negligence of the facts are no different.
How dare the Democratic party claim moral high ground in this country. How can Kamala Harris state she wants to ban assault weapons without banning the 500-pound bombs being dropped on hospitals in Gaza? Comparatively, how can the Biden-Harris administration claim they are for women’s reproductive rights without acknowledging the reproductive rights of 50,000 pregnant Palestinian women in Gaza who don’t have access to reproductive healthcare due to those bombed hospitals? They claim to support the right to love openly with pride yet forget to protect queer Palestinians from the daily Israeli bombs.
The Democratic Party only cares about supporting human rights when it benefits them politically. They have been exposed.
Jonathan Carnes can be reached at [email protected].
