President Joe Biden and his party need to use their power to stop Israel’s war crimes.
By Wajahat Ali, The Progressive
Once upon a time in America, an inconvenient genocide threatened to ruin the joyful vibes of the Democratic Party ahead of the 2024 election.
President Joe Biden’s decision not to seek re-election briefly prompted hope that the Administration might pivot from its disastrous policy in Gaza, which has armed, funded, and otherwise supported Israel’s brutal war.
There were some encouraging signs of this. More than 100 Democratic lawmakers, for example, refused to attend Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s shameless address in July to a fawning and sycophantic Congress. Although Netanyahu stood accused of war crimes and spent the past year crossing every single one of Biden’s alleged “red lines” in Gaza, our elected officials still gave him a rapturous standing ovation—even as he falsely claimed that peaceful anti-war protesters in the United States had been funded by Iran.
Thankfully, Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris both skipped this propaganda speech. When Harris did meet with Bibi, she didn’t embrace him with Biden’s “bear hug,” but instead exchanged a terse, professional handshake. Afterward, Harris told reporters, “What has happened in Gaza over the past nine months is devastating—the images of dead children and desperate, hungry people fleeing for safety, sometimes displaced for the second, third, or fourth time. We cannot look away in the face of these tragedies. We cannot allow ourselves to become numb to the suffering. And I will not be silent.”
This brief display of empathy was considered progress, because the bar was set so low that it was in hell.
Although Harris vowed not to be silent, she conveniently forgot to mention that the Democratic establishment would have no problem silencing the Palestinian people, which was evident at the raucous Democratic National Convention (DNC) in Chicago, in August. There, the lineup of speakers reflected the diverse, big-tent coalition that Democrats vowed to represent in a Harris-Walz Administration. Democrats welcomed everyone—except Palestinians.
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