Joe Biden’s Gaza Dilemma is a Distorted Mirror Image of My Own

Turns out Dark Brandon’s crack marketing team can’t sell genocide to voters.

Joe Biden, his campaign team, the DNC and a great number of politically engaged United States citizens are having a thorny moment.

To our right, Trump is ramping up his fascist rhetoric on a daily basis and, let’s be honest, he’s doing a bang up job with it. He continues to rile up and grow his rabid base of that specific breed of U.S. citizen who is so lazy, entitled, angry and dependent upon his or her white, primarily christian nationalist identity that he/she/they are willing to throw United States democracy into the dumpster and set it ablaze. Why? So they can maintain the delusion that they, by virtue of their whiteness and christian nationalist-ness, are at the top of the human food chain. It’s what their religious leaders teach them. It’s how these people think.

Also to our right are the conservatives who, while not necessarily christian nationalists, can’t be bothered to speak up or do anything about their preferred party’s tumble down the fascist rabbit hole, because, you know, why do that? They’re comfy, they don’t want to upset the apple cart. These conservatives are in the same human category as the German citizens who looked the other way during the Holocaust in World War II, and didn’t really feel bad about it until the rest of the world figured out just what the heck had been going on and demanded that they explain themselves. Willful ignorance does not absolve anyone of complicity.

To our left we’ve got the progressive wing of U.S. humanity (the wing to which I belong). And we’re in a bit of a shit storm ourselves, aren’t we?

Because it’s recently come to our attention that Israel is up to no good and it’s being funded by our hard earned progressive tax dollars. Israel is indiscriminately bombing Gaza and causing the deaths of thousands of Palestinians, most of whom are women and children. They’ve targeted hospitals, refugee camps and caravans of civilians attempting to leave the war zone, and they’ve attempted to justify their relentless slaughter of civilians with the claim that Hamas is using civilians as human shields.

But there is no justification for what Israel is doing in Gaza. What Israel is doing is not only wrong, it’s reprehensible. As a nation state, Israel can’t have “intent.” The military action of a nation state reflects the intent of its leaders. I can’t get inside Netanyahu’s head to truly know his intent, all I can rely upon are his words and actions.

Upon declaring Israel’s invasion of the Gaza strip, Netanyahu said “You must remember what Amalek has done to you, says our Holy Bible.” The Holy Bible passage he is referring to (1 Samuel 15:3) is this: “Now go and smite Amalek, and utterly destroy all that they have, and spare them not; but slay both man and woman, infant and suckling, ox and sheep, camel and ass.”

Since October 7, 2023 nearly 22,000 Palestinians have been murdered by Israeli forces. That’s within the space of less than 3 months. That’s roughly 262 deaths per day. 70% of civilian Palestinian casualties have been women and children. That’s approximately 15,400 women and children since October 7, 2023. Netanyahu’s words and actions lead me to believe that we are witnessing (and funding) a genocide of the Palestinian people.

Furthermore, Israel’s defense minister, Yoav Gallant, stated that cutting Palestinians off from access to electricity, water, fuel and food was appropriate: “We are fighting human animals and we are acting accordingly.”

Several terms are being thrown around in discussions about this horrific situation and the history that precedes it: apartheid, occupation, open air prison, concentration camp, genocide. And the thing about these terms is that THEY’RE ACCURATE. Some of them describe exactly what is going on in Gaza right now, others describe what has been going on for decades.

On December 12, 2023 the United Nations General Assembly passed a resolution that called for a cease-fire. Out of 193 members, a total of 153 voted in support of the cease-fire resolution. The United States voted AGAINST it. Several allies of the U.S., including Japan, Canada and Australia broke with the U.S. to support an immediate cease-fire.

In December of 2023, the Biden administration bypassed Congress twice to approve the transfer of nearly $150 million in military equipment to Israel, including the transfer of “150mm ancillary items including fuzes, charges and primers that make 155mm shells functional,” according to the State Department. The State Department spokesperson cited “the urgency of Israel’s defensive needs” to determine “an emergency existed necessitating the immediate approval of the transfer” of the weapons.

This is an awful, horrible, JUST PLAIN BAD look for Dark Brandon. The idea that Israel is acting “defensively” at this point is ludicrous. The state of Palestine is demilitarized. Israeli military forces occupy the West Bank, Israel controls Palestinian airspace and dictates which weapons can be purchased by Palestinian security forces. The Biden Administration’s sidestepping of Congress also shows that Biden is prioritizing his service to Israel over his commitment to U.S. government processes that are in place to allow time to review and debate the merits of sending military aid to other countries, and to reach consensus before doing so.

Of 15 recent national polls compiled at fivethirtyeight.com, Trump tied with or out-polled Biden in 10 of them. Think about that. The U.S. media keeps citing concerns over Biden’s age and/or cognitive abilities as the reason for his low polling numbers, but Biden is only about 3.5 years older than Trump, and Biden’s cognitive abilities at the very least match (and most likely exceed) Trump’s. The media seems reluctant to cite Biden’s continued support of Israel, in spite of its ongoing genocidal actions against Palestinian civilians, as a contributing factor. I, for one, find the United States government’s stubborn support of Israel in this situation disgusting.

Here’s a Q&A I’m currently having with myself:

Q: Do I think that Israel’s military actions in Gaza since October 7, 2023 are justified (given the region’s history of the past 8 decades)?

A: No.

Q: Do I believe that Donald Trump represents the moneyed elite’s attempt to dismantle democracy so that they can free themselves of any and all obligations to abide by and honor democratic standards, the rule of law, market regulations (including safety and labor practices) and the civil rights of American citizens?

A: Yes.

Q: Do I consider Donald Trump and those who support him an existential threat to my safety and well-being as a queer U.S. citizen?

A: Yes.

Q: Am I willing to vote for a Democrat who is funding a genocide with my tax dollars?

A: No.

Do you see where this is going? My safety and well-being rely upon a Democrat getting voted into office this year. However, the only Democrat the DNC has deigned to offer me as an option is supporting a genocide that is happening RIGHT NOW, on my watch, and is being funded (in part) by my tax dollars. Whether I want to admit it or not, I have the blood of Palestinian children on my hands.

Do Democrats really expect me to just hold my nose and go ahead and vote for Biden because, well, if I don’t then I might wind up in a concentration camp myself some day? And with the unspoken, sort of vaguely implied indication that once the Democrats are voted into office this time, they’ll work tirelessly on our collective behalf to fix all these problems for us? That they will actually serve the electorate that votes them into office for a change?

What if we force Democrats to take a position? On the record. Publicly. So that we all know what we are dealing with and what we are supporting with our votes. What if we pressure them to make promises about what they will and will not do once elected, so that we can hold them accountable? And don’t come at me with, “Don’t be silly! You know they’ll say anything to get elected and then not follow through!” It’s our job, as the electorate, to hold these people accountable. We’re the ones who vote them in; not their big money donors. They need us for this system to work. And it’s about time we remind them of that.

Democrats have also mastered the art of playing Good Cop to the Republicans’ Bad Cop. The fact that they’re both representing the same corporate and moneyed interests overall is not quite the reality check or mic drop moment it once may have been, given our growing knowledge of how things really work here in these United States. Nevertheless, the Good Cop/Bad Cop routine (reinforced in every fundraising email or text I receive) is wearing mighty thin and I can see right through it.

So what does this all mean? Well…

On a personal level it means I need a Democrat to win in November if I want my safety and well-being to remain intact at its current level (which is by no means perfect, but it’s doable). On a bigger, macro level, I need a Democrat to win if I want to continue working on things that are important to me: helping make representative democracy work; strengthening democratic institutions against the attempts by the moneyed and corporate elites to eradicate them so they can keep getting richer at the expense of the rest of us; creating a country that is safe for citizens of color, queer citizens, female citizens and immigrants who come here to build a better life; and destroying the fascistic forces of christian nationalism, Russian moles and (again) the moneyed elite who are all too happy to set democracy on fire so they can rape and pillage the planet to serve their own selfish desires. Again, at the expense of the rest of us.

But it also means I’m not supporting Democrats who expect me to be complicit in the genocide of Palestinians that is occurring right now. I’m not doing it. If Biden doesn’t come around, and come around real fast, then we’ll need another option. If enough of us refuse to engage with genocidal actors, then the DNC will have a choice to make. And if you fear that the DNC will choose a genocidal actor over those voters who refuse to engage with one, then your beef should be with the DNC, not with me. I suggest you take it up with them.

I’m a queer citizen of the United States and I’ve been alive for nearly 60 years. I’ve ridden out storms, dealt with setbacks, taken hits for the Democratic team and suffered many painful losses. I’ve also enjoyed the thrill of hard won victories and often benefited from their outcomes. I’ve seen this country’s three branches of government become so corrupted by capitalism that they are nearly unrecognizable to me, especially as the truth of their allegiances becomes more and more clear.

This is not one of those instances where I will sit down, shut up and give donations and votes to Democrats who are either actively supporting, or supporting by omission of action, the ongoing genocide of Palestinians.

Having said that, the good news is that we’ve still got time to work these things out. Not a lot of time, mind you, but enough time, I think, to do what needs to be done to save ourselves, or to go down fighting. For better and worse, this is the moment we are living in. No one is going to swoop down from the sky and save us from ourselves. It’s up to us, and it’s time to act. This is our world, and this is what we’re faced with. Whatever the outcome, we’ve got our work cut out for us and the time to get to work is now.

I know I’m in. Are you?

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The US Campaign for Palestinian Rights website provides valuable information, resources and tools.

Americans United for Separation of Church and State are doing a great job of shining a light on the threat that christian nationalism poses to the United States of America.

OpenSecrets.org is the nation’s premier research group tracking money in U.S. politics and its effect on elections and public policy. Non-partisan, non-profit and independent