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      ‘I know the dangers of a Trump presidency’: Palestinian solidarity groups pressure Harris as election looms

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      In the days leading up to last month’s Democratic national convention (DNC), some pro-Palestinian groups and individuals expressed cautious excitement about Kamala Harris’s ascent to the candidacy. Representative Pramila Jayapal, chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, said that there was “a sense that there’s an opening” with the vice-president, referring to a possible shift in US policy on Israel’s war on Gaza, while others voiced more measured optimism.However, following the convention, during which party officials refused to allow a Palestinian to speak on the main stage, and where Harris hawkishly affirmed her support for arming Israel, many of those groups’ initial hope has turned into a belief that Harris will remain in line with Joe Biden’s Israel policies. The result has been a splintering of sorts: some organizations are still attempting to push Harris toward a more anti-war stance; others have decided to support Harris through the election regardless, citing the risk of a Donald Trump presidency.Muslim Women for Harris-Walz, a group that formed in early August in support of Harris, disbanded after the DNC, saying that it could not “in good conscience” continue to support the candidate. But a week later, the organization changed its position, writing in a statement: “With less than 70 days until the November election, we have to be honest with ourselves about what is at stake here for Muslim women.”In a statement to the Guardian, Muslim Women for Harris-Walz said that the group had received an outpouring of support from Muslim and Arab Americans who shared its desire for a change in Gaza policy, but who also urged the organization to not give up on the ticket.“As Muslims, it is our duty to advocate for what is right and against what is wrong, and that often requires nuance and pragmatism. We continue to try and do the best that we can with what we have. We believe that Muslim Women for Harris-Walz has, and will continue to, play a positive role in these elections, including in our ability to advocate for the causes that matter to Muslim Americans.”But some Palestinian solidarity groups have disagreed with this approach. Tarek Khalil, a board member for the Chicago chapter of American Muslims for Palestine (AMP), said he didn’t understand Muslim Women for Harris-Walz’s decision to backtrack and support the Democratic nominee.“I don’t know the logic behind that,” Khalil said. “If the logic behind disbanding [initially] is ‘You’re part of this administration that’s enabling this genocide and you’re doing nothing about it,’ that still remains true today.”Khalil added that he and others involved in the Palestine solidarity movement remain critical of Harris and the Democratic party at large, especially as the vice-president has not provided any policy shifts away from the Biden administration.“We are against the policies of this administration,” he said. “With Kamala Harris being the head of the ticket, we believe that because she has not provided any new agenda, any new vision, any new policy prescription, it’s just a different person expressing the same views.”Khalil also condemned the Democratic party’s platform as “utter hypocrisy”, citing the various horrors that are taking place in Gaza with US support.“The Democratic party platform talks about ending poverty and homelessness, healthcare as a human right and [having] more affordable housing,” he said. “Those very values and policies are being destroyed in Gaza right now, with US taxpayer money and US-made weapons.”If Trump is re-elected, Khalil said that AMP had “nothing concrete” planned. “Our grassroots organizing, our advocacy work, our educational work, all of that would just have to stay at its pace and, if need be, intensify,” Khalil said. “We’d stay the course.”The Muslim American and Arab American vote will play a crucial role in swing states during the upcoming election. In 2020, Joe Biden won Michigan, where 278,000 Arab Americans live, by just 154,000 votes. And in Georgia, where the Arab American population is at least 57,000, Biden won by 11,800 votes.During this year’s Democratic primaries, more than 700,000 voters across the nation cast uncommitted ballots or the equivalent to signal to Biden their dissatisfaction with his Middle East policy. Following a Michigan campaign where more than 100,000 voters marked their ballots “uncommitted” in February, the Uncommitted National Movement has since spread to two dozen states. The movement sent 30 uncommitted delegates to the DNC and has demanded that the US adopt an arms embargo and support a permanent ceasefire in Gaza in recent months.Following the convention, a survey of nearly 1,200 Muslim American voters found that respondents were evenly split in their support of Harris and the Green party candidate, Jill Stein, at 29% each.‘A retrenchment of efforts’As a Muslim and Palestinian American organizer, Georgia-based Ghada Elnajjar said that two months away from election day she remains undecided on whether she’ll cast a vote for Harris or Stein. While Elnajjar hoped that Harris would chart a new course on US’s Gaza policy, she expressed disappointment that Harris’s plans mirror Biden’s. “Unless President-elect Harris distinguishes herself from the current administration’s policy on Israel and Gaza,” Elnajjar said, “then nothing really changes in terms of how I’m approaching my selection.”When DNC leaders didn’t allow Ruwa Romman, the first Muslim woman elected to the Georgia house of representatives, to speak during the convention, it was “soul-crushing” for Elnajjar.“It was a huge disappointment and a letdown for many voters,” she said. “This was an opportunity for them to show that they want our votes.”Romman said that following the DNC she has seen “a retrenchment of efforts”. People who had been ambivalent or even optimistic about Harris before the convention are now suggesting that they will not vote at the top of the ticket or that they will vote third party.“These elections are determined by such tight margins in swing states,” Romman said. “There’s definitely a lot of anger [in] the community about what is happening. I’m really worried we’re not going to be able to win Georgia.”On 10 September, the civil liberties organizations Cair-Georgia, Georgia Muslim Action Committee, Georgia Muslims and Allies for Peace, and Indian American Muslim Council launched a campaign called “No Votes for Genocide. No Peace, No Peach,” to signal an ultimatum to the Harris-Walz campaign.The groups say they will withhold support for the ticket in the coming election if the Biden-Harris administration does not adopt an arms embargo on Israel, halt arms shipments to Israel and publicly demand a permanent ceasefire in Gaza and the West Bank by 10 October. “We are Georgia voters who oppose Donald Trump and his bigotry, and have a desire to fight far-right fascism at home and abroad,” the group said in a press release. “At the same time, we will not tolerate the funding and enabling of a genocide.”‘I know the dangers of a Trump presidency’Layla Elabed, an Uncommitted National Movement founder, sees the DNC’s refusal to allow a Palestinian American to speak as a glaring mistake for the Democratic party and the Harris campaign. The US is complicit in its continued support of Israel, she said, which is only able to continue its siege on Gaza with US backing. “[Harris] continues to contradict herself by saying that she supports Israel’s rights to defend themselves,” Elabed said, “but also is working really hard for a ceasefire, but has no plans to stop or condition the fire that our government sends to Israel.”Harris’s campaign told Uncommitted leaders that they met with Palestinian families in February. But Elabed said that another meeting is needed with Palestinian families and Uncommitted leaders now that more than 41,000 Palestinians have been killed since 7 October. The Harris campaign has not yet agreed to the request.“If Vice-President Harris wants to signal to voters, not just Arab Americans or Muslim Americans, but to anti-war voters that she plans to work in good faith [toward] Palestinians deserving freedom and liberty and the right to self-determination,” said Elabed, “then I think that it would be a misstep for her not to meet with Palestinian American families now or Uncommitted leaders.”As the Uncommitted National Movement continues to await a meeting with Harris, Elabed said that the group will continue to pressure the Biden administration and the Harris-Walz campaign to adopt an arms embargo and to support a permanent ceasefire. She said she didn’t want Donald Trump to win the presidential election, but she believed that the Democratic party must also change course on Gaza policy in order to win the election.“I 100% understand and know the dangers of a Donald Trump presidency,” said Elabed. “That is why the uncommitted movement has worked so diligently about showing the Democratic party that they were going to be in trouble because of this disastrous Gaza policy under Biden. They might not have the support from their Democratic base in order to beat Trump in November.” More

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      Trump tells Jewish donors they would be ‘abandoned’ if Harris is elected

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      Donald Trump told Jewish donors on Thursday that they would be “abandoned” if Kamala Harris becomes president.In his speech to the Republican Jewish Coalition in Las Vegas, the Republican presidential candidate also said he would ban refugee resettlement from “terror-infested” areas such as Gaza and arrest “pro-Hamas thugs” who engage in vandalism, an apparent reference to the college student protesters.While Trump sketched out few concrete Middle Eastern policy proposals for a second term, he painted a potential Harris presidency in cataclysmic terms for Israel.“You’re going to be abandoned if she becomes president. And I think you need to explain that to your people … You’re not going to have an Israel if she becomes president,” Trump said without providing evidence for such a claim.Under both Trump and Joe Biden, similar numbers of Palestinians were admitted to the US as refugees. From fiscal year 2017 to 2020, the US accepted 114 Palestinian refugees, according to US state department data, compared with 124 Palestinian refugees from fiscal year 2021 to 31 July of this year.Trump also said US universities would lose accreditation and federal support over what he described as “antisemitic propaganda” if he is elected to the White House.“Colleges will and must end the antisemitic propaganda or they will lose their accreditation and federal support,” Trump said, speaking remotely to a crowd of more than 1,000 donors.Protests roiled college campuses in spring, with students opposing Israel’s military offensive in Gaza and demanding institutions stop doing business with companies backing Israel.Republicans have said the protests show some Democrats are antisemites who support chaos. Protest groups say authorities have unfairly labeled their criticism of Israel’s policies as antisemitic.The Association of American Universities, which says it represents about 70 leading US universities, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.In the United States, the federal government does not directly accredit universities but has a role in overseeing the mostly private organizations that give colleges accreditation.The Harris campaign did not immediately respond to a request for comment about Trump’s speech.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionThe Democratic presidential candidate has hewed closely to the president’s strong support of Israel and rejected calls from some in the Democratic party that Washington should rethink sending weapons to Israel because of the heavy Palestinian death toll in Gaza.She has, however, called for a ceasefire in Gaza, calling the situation there “devastating”.Health authorities in Gaza say more than 40,000 Palestinians have been killed in the Israeli assault on the enclave since the 7 October 2023 attacks led by Hamas.Approximately 1,200 Israelis were killed in the surprise attack and about 250 were taken hostage, according to Israeli tallies.The subsequent assault on Gaza has displaced nearly its entire 2.3 million population, caused a hunger crisis and led to genocide allegations at the world court that Israel denies. More

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      ‘Enough is enough’: the Muslim American officials who resigned over US’s Israel-Gaza policy

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      When Maryam Hassanein joined the US Department of Interior as a Biden administration appointee in January, she hoped that Israel’s war on Gaza would soon come to an end. But when the US authorized a $1bn arms shipment to Israel in the spring, Hassanein decided to use her voice to affect change. She was inspired by the resilience of students involved in the anti-war movement at nearby George Washington University, where she had attended pro-Palestinian rallies.“Seeing the strength of the students who led that movement across the country really made me think about what I should be doing,” Hassanein said, “and how I can advocate far more for an end to the carnage in Palestine.”So last month, Hassanein joined the ranks of at least a dozen officials who have resigned from the Biden administration due to the US’s support of Israel’s war on Gaza, where more than 40,000 Palestinians have been killed since 7 October, according to the Gaza health ministry. Hassanein said she saw “value in making your voice heard on a public level when it’s not being heard while working there”.View image in fullscreenIn a Zoom call hosted by the civil rights group Council on American-Islamic Relations (Cair) on Tuesday, Hassanein and Hala Rharrit, a former US state department diplomat who resigned in April, shared their experiences of witnessing the Islamophobia and anti-Palestinian animus that they say drives the Biden administration’s Middle East policies.Rharrit resigned after nearly two decades of working with the state department because she said she witnessed US officials continuously dehumanize Palestinians following Hamas’s 7 October attack on Israel. Robust debate was once welcomed at the state department, Rharrit said, but that changed 10 months ago. “I never faced a situation personally where there was fear for retaliation, there was silencing, there was self censorship,” she said. “For me, personally, in the 18 years that I’ve served, this is the very first time.”When engaging with Arab media, Rharrit said she was directed to repeat a narrative that Israel had the right to defend itself. And when giving a presentation to other diplomats, she said that she was lambasted for wanting to include a picture of a Palestinian child dying of starvation. In a group chat where diplomats discussed Egyptian journalists, she said that one colleague expressed disbelief that the Egyptians had built the pyramids.“This is a failed policy,” Rharrit said about the US’s aid to Israel, “and we as Americans and as taxpayers that are sending these bombs and these weapons need to have a collective voice and say: enough is enough.”In her role at the interior department, Hassanein joined other staffers in signing letters, attending rallies and vigils, but soon recognized that her voice wasn’t being heard, she said. “What I realized is that I don’t want to just be a Muslim in a public service position for the sake of being a Muslim in a public service position,” she added. “I want my perspective and my background and the fact that I’m a representation for Muslim communities in the country to truly be considered.” She also disapproved of the Democratic national convention’s denial of a speaking slot for the Georgia state representative Ruwa Romman.Since her public resignation last month, Hassanein said that she has not received a response from her former employer. The interior department and state department did not immediately respond to requests for comment.The Harris-Walz campaign is not doing enough to change course on Gaza policy, Hassanein said. She is undecided on whether she will vote for Harris in November and wants to see a marked shift in US’s Gaza policy before casting a ballot for her. In a call to action, Cair encouraged attenders to demand that the state department and the White House uphold US law by ending the transfer of weapons to Israel.“I hope that as horrific as all of this has been, that we eventually emerge from it with a sense of realization of the things that we need to do – the healing that we all need in order to treat each other with humanity, dignity and respect, regardless of background,” Rharrit said. More

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      The US diplomatic strategy on Israel and Gaza is not working | Daniel Levy

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      The Biden administration remains in an intense phase of Middle East diplomatic activity working to avoid a regional war while optimistically spinning the prospects for a Gaza breakthrough deal.Following the latest round of provocative Israeli extrajudicial killings in Tehran and Beirut and the intensified exchange of fire between Israel and Hezbollah over the weekend, the region appeared to lurch further in the direction of all-out war. Preventing that is a worthy cause in itself.With a US election looming and policy on Gaza, Israel and the Middle East unpopular with the Democrats’ own constituency and a potential ballot box liability in key states, there are also pressing political reasons for a Democratic administration to avoid more war and to pursue a diplomatic breakthrough. Countering domestic political criticism with hope for a deal was a useful device to deploy at the Democratic convention in Chicago and will be needed through to 5 November.Team Biden is attempting a difficult trifecta. First, the Biden administration is trying to deter the Iranian axis from further responses to Israel’s recent targeted killings in Tehran and Beirut. Joe Biden no doubt has wanted to hold out the prospect of a ceasefire, which Iran would prefer not to upend, while he simultaneously bought time for the US to beef up its military presence in the region as leverage and a threat against Iran.The US is also trying to help a key regional ally, Israel, reclaim its deterrence posture and freedom of military operation after the balance of forces shifted against it during the current conflict.Second, the Biden administration is trying to reach election day on a positive note, by bringing an end to a divisive conflict – or, as a fallback, to at least avoid further escalation and a potentially debilitating regional explosion into which Israel could pull the US. Third, and more speculatively, the Biden administration might want to bring an end to the brutal devastation and killing of Palestinian civilians in Gaza, the humanitarian crisis there, and the hellish ordeal of the Israelis held in Gaza and their families. A ceasefire would also have the benefit of avoiding further damage to US interests and reputation as a consequence of Biden running political cover for and arming Israel throughout this war.Ordinarily, delivering on those first two goals – and merely scoring two out of three – might constitute an acceptable achievement. It is made more attainable by the Iranian-led axis of resistance not wanting to fall into the trap of all-out war. However, failure to achieve a ceasefire in Gaza risks everything else unravelling and keeps the region at boiling point. Regional de-escalation and domestic political quiet will be that much more difficult to sustain if the Gaza talks again collapse, especially against the backdrop of raised expectations.Sadly, that is the direction in which things are headed, exacerbated by the current US diplomatic push being exposed as clumsy or fraudulent or both.It should go without saying that putting an end to the unprecedented daily suffering of Palestinians in Gaza, as well as bringing the Israelis who are held there home, is reason enough to throw everything at achieving a ceasefire. But the Biden administration has been singularly incapable of treating Palestinians as equals with the humanity and dignity accorded to Jewish Israelis – one of the reasons this has played so badly with the Democratic voting base.The staggering shortcomings in the Biden administration’s approach, exacerbated in secretary of state Antony Blinken’s latest mission, are highly consequential and worth unpacking. Alarm bells should have been set off when Blinken at his recent press conference in Jerusalem announced that Benjamin Netanyahu had accepted the US “bridging proposal” – when the Israeli prime minister himself declared no such thing. Within hours, it became clear that Israel’s chief negotiator, Nitzan Alon, would not participate in the talks as a way of protesting against Netanyahu’s undermining of the deal.That was followed by senior US and Israeli security officials anonymously briefing the press that Netanyahu was preventing a deal. Similar conclusions were also reached and made public by the main forums representing the Israeli hostage families. On his ninth visit to Israel since the 7 October attack, Blinken again failed – not just at mediating between Israel and Hamas, but even in closing the gaps between the competing camps inside the Israeli system. The US refusal to take seriously that there are Hamas negotiating positions which are legitimate, and which will need to be part of a deal (and with which the US ostensibly agrees to in substance – such as a full Israeli withdrawal and a sustainable ceasefire), has condemned US-led talks to repeated failure.Repackaging Israeli proposals and presenting them as a US position may have a retro feel to it, but that does not make it cool. And it won’t deliver progress (it can’t even sustain Israeli endorsement given Netanyahu’s constant shifting of the goalposts to avoid a deal). That the US has zero credibility as a mediator is a problem. That it has conspired to make its contributions not only ineffective but counterproductive is devastating. Even Itamar Eichner, a diplomatic correspondent for the Israeli Yedioth newspaper, describes Blinken’s visit as having displayed “naivete and amateurishness … effectively sabotaging the deal by aligning with Netanyahu”.This is a US government modus operandi with which Netanyahu is extremely familiar, and which falls very squarely inside his comfort zone. Netanyahu knows that he has won once the US mediator – whatever the actual facts – is willing to blame the Palestinian side (Arafat during Oslo, Hamas now). Despite having the US having changed its own proposal to accommodate Netanyahu, and Netanyahu still distancing himself from the terms and being called on it by his own defence establishment, Biden and senior US officials continue their public disinformation campaign of claiming that only Hamas is the problem and should be pressured.Even if US governments hold personal frustrations with Netanyahu, their policies serve to strengthen Bibi at home.From early in this war, Netanyahu’s bottom line has been that while internal pressures exist to secure a deal (and therefore get the hostages back and cease the military operation), the opposite side of that ledger is more foreboding: a deal would upend Netanyahu’s extremist governing coalition and bring an end to the most important shield Netanyahu has created for himself politically: his claimed mantle as Israel’s indispensable wartime leader.Netanyahu’s ideological preference is for displacing Palestinians and eviscerating their rights, alongside pulling the US more actively into a regional clash with Iran; his short-term political goal is to maintain an open-ended war which can accommodate varying degrees of intensity, but not a deal.So where might change ultimately come from? Given current tensions, something approximating an all-out regional war might yet unfold. Alongside the dangers and losses this would entail, a broader conflagration might belatedly produce a more serious external push for a comprehensive ceasefire.Israeli coalition politics could also throw a spanner in the works for Netanyahu, given tensions among his governing allies, and particularly with the ultra-Orthodox parties over the issue of military enlistment. But the surest way to de-escalate in the region and to bring the horrors of Gaza to an end continues to be via challenging the Israeli incentive structure in meaningful ways – through legal, political and economic pressure and sanctions, and especially by the withholding of weapons.Netanyahu is a loose cannon, which Kamala Harris should have no interest in reloading 10 weeks out from an election.

      Daniel Levy is the president of the US/Middle East Project and a former Israeli peace negotiator More

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      Muslim Women for Harris disbands and withdraws support for candidate

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      On the third night of the Democratic national convention, the group Muslim Women for Harris released a statement announcing that it was disbanding in response to the Harris-Walz campaign’s refusal to allow a Palestinian person to speak on the main stage.The statement was released as members of the Uncommitted National Movement, which won 30 delegates to the convention, and their supporters held a sit-in outside of the convention. Ilhan Omar joined the demonstration for some time, and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez called in to the sit-in via FaceTime. The sit-in came after the anti-war group was told a Palestinian person would not be allowed to speak on the main stage – until then, whether or not such a speech would happen was up in the air.During the sit-in, Muslim Women for Harris pulled their support for the Democratic nominee.“We cannot in good conscience continue Muslim Women for Harris-Walz, in light of this new information from the Uncommitted movement, that VP Harris’ team declined their request to have a Palestinian American speaker take the stage at the DNC,” the group’s statement reads.Kamala Harris’s campaign notably invited the family of Israeli hostage Hersh Goldberg-Polin to speak on Wednesday, which Uncommitted supported. The group called for a similar platform for a Palestinian person.“Uncommitted delegates urge the Democratic party to reject a hierarchy of human value by ensuring Palestinian voices are heard on the main stage. We are learning that Israeli hostages’ families will be speaking from the main stage. We strongly support that decision and also strongly hope that we will also be hearing from Palestinians who’ve endured the largest civilian death toll since 1948,” the Uncommitted statement read.During the family’s speech, Goldberg-Polin’s father, Jon Polin, called for a return of the hostages and an end to “the suffering of the innocent civilians in Gaza”, joining other speakers like Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders, who both made reference to Israel’s ongoing war in Gaza. During the course of the Democratic convention, calls for a ceasefire have been met with raucous applause from audience members. Still, some have said the party’s nods have fallen short.“The family of the Israeli hostage that was on the stage tonight, has shown more empathy towards Palestinian Americans and Palestinians, than our candidate or the DNC has,” Muslim Women for Harris’s statement read. “This is a terrible message to send to Democrats. Palestinians have the right to speak about Palestine.”Alana Zeitchik, who has multiple family members who are hostages, spoke out in support of having a Palestinian American speak on the main stage. “Rachel and Jon deserved every second on that stage. I also believe a Palestinian American voice deserves to be heard on that stage,” Zeitchik wrote on X. “I’d love to hear from @Ruwa4Georgia and I hope the DNC will give her the chance to be heard.”Chicago, where the Democratic convention is being held this year, has one of the largest Palestinian communities in the United States. Muslim Women for Harris did not immediately respond to a request for comment. More

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      Stop using the term ‘centrist’. It doesn’t mean what you think it does | Arwa Mahdawi

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      I would like to start a petition for journalists – and everyone else – to immediately stop using the C-word. Centrist. It’s an insidious word that has degraded how we think about politics and distorted how we see the world.Perhaps that statement sounds a little over the top. After all, being a “centrist” sounds eminently reasonable, doesn’t it? A centrist is a moderate, right? Someone who is rational and practical and takes the middle ground. Someone who isn’t extreme like those crazy ideologues on the far right or far left. A centrist, logic dictates, is really what everyone should strive to be.But stop for a moment and ask yourself how you would define a centrist in more specific terms. When you start spelling out what the word really means, it becomes clear that it obfuscates more than it illuminates. The word does not describe a set of ideas so much as it reinforces a system of power.This, of course, is a feature not a bug of political language. As George Orwell wrote in his famous essay Politics and the English Language: “In our time, political speech and writing are largely the defence of the indefensible. Things like the continuance of British rule in India, the Russian purges and deportations, the dropping of the atom bombs on Japan, can indeed be defended, but only by arguments which are too brutal for most people to face, and which do not square with the professed aims of political parties. Thus political language has to consist largely of euphemism, question-begging and sheer cloudy vagueness.”Orwell wrote that essay in 1946. Today, 78 years later, it feels just as relevant. Look, for example, at the carnage in Gaza and the West Bank. Look at the statements from Israeli leaders that clearly suggest genocidal intent. Look at the tragedies that barely make a dent in the public consciousness any more. This week, for example, an Israeli airstrike killed four-day-old twins, along with their mother and grandmother, when their father went to collect birth certificates in central Gaza. Look at the levels of brutality that barely seem to register any more: there is video evidence of the sexual abuse of Palestinians at a notorious Israeli military prison (though the more accurate term is “torture camp”) and, even with that evidence, we know there will be no real accountability.Look at the dead. Nearly 40,000 people in Gaza are now dead, including nearly 15,000 children. When you look at the scale of devastation, it seems likely that those figures are an underestimate. Further, counting the dead is excruciatingly difficult: kids are being blown into fragments so small that their surviving relatives have to collect pieces of them in plastic bags. Then there are the tens and thousands more who are now dying from starvation, or facing a looming polio epidemic.Look at the West Bank, meanwhile, where Israel has published plans for new settlements, which violate international law. Since 7 October, the Israeli army and settlers have displaced 1,285 Palestinians and destroyed 641 structures in the West Bank, according to the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs. Ethnic cleansing is taking place before our eyes.Now look at how all of this is being justified. This war isn’t just being waged with bombs, it’s being waged with “euphemism, question-begging and sheer cloudy vagueness”. When you lay out what is happening in clear language, it is indefensible. So political language dresses all those dead and starving children up in euphemism. It obscures ethnic cleansing with vagaries. Don’t believe your eyes, political writing says. What you are seeing is far more complex than your eyes can possibly comprehend.This narrative is so entrenched that people don’t believe their eyes when it comes to Palestinians. Last October, the actor Jamie Lee Curtis posted a photo on Instagram showing terrified-looking children peering up at the sky. She captioned the post “terror from the skies” with an Israel flag emoji. When it was pointed out that the kids were Palestinian, she deleted the post. Her eyes may have told her that those innocent children were terrified; the narrative, however, was more complicated.Around the same time, Justin Bieber posted a photo of bombed houses with the caption “praying for Israel”. When it was pointed out the picture was of Gaza, he deleted it and apparently stopped praying.In 2022, a picture of a small blonde confronting a soldier was widely shared online, with the claim that it was a Ukrainian girl standing up to a Russian soldier. How brave, people though. How inspiring! When it was revealed that it was actually old footage of a then 10-year-old Ahed Tamimi, a Palestinian activist, interest in the image fizzled out.Again: when you lay out what is happening in clear language it is indefensible. When people see what is happening with their own eyes, it is indefensible. I say that as someone who has seen what life is like for Palestinians with my own eyes. As someone who had to run from soldiers shooting teargas when I visited my dad’s village in the West Bank when I had just turned six. Who was interrogated by an IDF soldier when I visited my dad’s village at 15, because I had a school chemistry book in my bag. Who knows what is like to be harassed and humiliated by heavily armed soldiers at checkpoints when you are just trying to go from one village to another. If you experience life under occupation for even a day it becomes starkly apparent that there is no way to defend it.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionIn order to defend the indefensible, politicians and political writers move away from concreteness, from clear language, and hide behind the respectableness of terms like “centrism”. Pro-Palestinian protesters are labelled the far-left or extremists. Continuing to unconditionally send arms to Israel and shield the country’s far-right government from accountability, however, is considered a centrist – and therefore reasonable – position.See, for example, this paragraph from the New York Times, earlier this month, when Pennsylvania’s governor, Josh Shapiro, was still being considered as a possible candidate for Kamala Harris’s running mate.“Mr Shapiro has emerged as the choice of the party’s pro-Israel donors, those with ties to the school-choice movement and business-friendly contributors in Silicon Valley. But his centrist positions that appeal to those groups are the same ones that make him the least favorite of the party’s most liberal funders.”This paragraph is one of the rare instances where there is some explanation as to what centrism actually means. Centrism we are told, is being pro-Israel and pro-business, no matter what. This piece came out while Shapiro was facing criticism from the left for an old essay he wrote in which he called Palestinians too “battle-minded to be able to establish a peaceful homeland of their own”. He has never properly apologized for this, nor will he ever have to, because being racist against Palestinians is a centrist position.As Orwell wrote, atrocities can be defended, “but only by arguments which are too brutal for most people to face, and which do not square with the professed aims of political parties”. If the Democratic party were to be honest about why it is doing very little to stop the carnage in Gaza and the settlements in the West Bank, the bluntest argument would be along the lines of: “Israel is an important tool in maintaining US imperialism and western interests. The ethnic cleansing of Palestinians is expedient to those interests. Human rights law doesn’t apply to the west.” Of course, being pro-ethnic cleansing doesn’t quite square with the do-gooding branding of the Democratic party. Instead, we are bombarded with the idea that massacring children is somehow a centrist and moderate position.“If you simplify your English, you are freed from the worst follies of orthodoxy,” Orwell wrote. There is very little that most of us can do to change what is happening in Gaza, but the one thing we can all do is simplify our English. So let’s begin with “centrism”. If we are to be honest about what we mean, if we are to express it in its simplest terms, we should use the word “status-quoism” instead. The point of words like “centrism” is to prevent thought and prompt acquiescence. It’s up to you whether you want to acquiesce.

      Arwa Mahdawi is a Guardian US columnist More

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      Pro-Palestinian protesters march before Democratic convention: ‘This is about morality’

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      About half a mile east of the Democratic national convention in Chicago, Union Park filled at noon Monday with demonstrators intent on sending a message to Joe Biden, Kamala Harris, delegates and the world: that the war in Gaza should not be an afterthought.Organizers for the Coalition to March on the 2024 Democratic convention drew 172 local and national organizations together for the protest. Thousands of people gathered for the march, one of the main anti-war demonstrations this week.“This is not about some Machiavellian politics,” said social critic and independent presidential candidate Cornel West at the onset. “This is about morality. This is about spirituality.”View image in fullscreenMo Hussief, a Chicago accountant, joined the rally.“My family is in Gaza,” Hussief said. “I’ve had over 100 family members murdered over the last 10 months by the genocide. So, I’m here to protest as an American, to say I don’t want my tax dollars to be used to murder my own family.”Hussief is a Democratic voter. Or, he had been, he said. He supports labor rights and wants public healthcare support, key Democratic policy goals. But none of that brings back dead cousins in Jabalia, he said. The death toll in Gaza hit at least 40,000 last week.Hussief said it is impossible for him to cast a ballot for the vice-president as long as she supports arming Israel.“I want the Democrats to basically do a weapons embargo for Israel,” he said. “If there is a weapons embargo on Israel, I will 100% vote for Harris. I love Tim Walz. The Democratic party does align on domestic issues. But for me, they have to end the genocide.”Another rally-goer, Jonah Karsh, arrived as part of the IfNotNow movement of American Jews from Chicago area, who are opposed to the war.“It’s obviously a really painful issue for the Jewish community. It tears at the fabric of us. It is painful to feel like a community that I care so much about is divided by an issue like this,” he said. “At the same time when I see children being killed supposedly in the name of Jewish safety, it doesn’t make me feel like I’m being kept safe. It just feels wrong. And I wouldn’t be anywhere else”.More commonly at the protest, protesters waving Palestinian flags and carrying signs equating Harris with Donald Trump seemed to have long abandoned either major party and were voting for Green party candidate Jill Stein, a socialist candidate, or abstaining entirely.Matt Stevens, an undergraduate student in Nebraska studying medicine, said this was his first presidential election. He’s voting for Stein, even with the ascension of Harris as the Democratic candidate.View image in fullscreen“She was still the vice-president. She still had a voice in what Biden was doing,” Stevens said. “She still has an ability to make some decisions and voice her opinion. She can say all these things and talk a big talk, but until she shows actual action, I’m not going to vote for it. She has to earn my vote.”Protesters marched from Union Park about a mile, intent on being within “sight and sound” of the convention.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionRhetoric by speakers was strident, but there were no calls for violence. Police ringed Union Park in the hours before the march, and streets have been blocked off across the city to control for traffic and crowds.Disruption, however, was on the mind of some demonstrators.One protester, a former marine who deployed in Iraq in the mid-2000s, wore a pink N95 mask and a black-and-gold keffiyeh. He said his name was Andrew, but asked not to be identified by last name to discuss what he called the need for more “direct action”.“My opinion, I think more is required than just protesting,” he said. “I think that people need to get a little more hands-on. I think politicians need to be scared. I don’t think that we need to hurt them. But I think that politicians sit in their ivory tower … and they are comfortable. People don’t press them. This is the most pressing they get.”“Even if it’s as much as throwing rotting fish into their air conditioning systems. But I really think that we should press our politicians more directly to their face. The whole ‘give them no peace adage’. I really agree with that. And this today is not enough.”That said, other demonstrators were concerned about the effect violence or property damage might have on their political message.“When I thought about it, I knew that that was not the point,” said Teri Watkins, a demonstrator from Chicago supporting the Chicago Alliance Against Racist and Political Repression. “It messes up their messaging. We’re asking for peace, so it wouldn’t make sense to be violent.”If such things were to happen, it would be the work of outside provocateurs, Watkins said. “That would come in the evening. But I’m going to be home by then.” More

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      Biden’s Gaza policy is a liability for Kamala Harris. She must break with Biden now | Mehdi Hasan

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      The sitting Democratic president is not running for re-election. His vice-president has inherited his campaign – and refuses to disown an unpopular foreign war. Robert Kennedy is running for president. The Republican candidate is a corrupt authoritarian. A Planet of the Apes movie is in theaters. And anti-war protesters are threatening to disrupt the Democratic convention in Chicago.Am I discussing 2024 or … 1968?Now, I’m far from the first columnist to make this comparison. Plenty of pieces have been published on the uncanny and, yes, undeniable similarities between these two consequential election years. “History,” as Mark Twain is said to have remarked, “does not repeat itself. But it rhymes.”Joe Biden, after all, is the first president to announce he is not running for re-election since Lyndon Johnson, 56 years ago. And just as Biden’s replacement at the top of the Democratic ticket is his vice-president, Kamala Harris, so too was Johnson’s.Vice-President Hubert Humphrey had been a popular, well-respected senator from Minnesota and one of the architects of postwar American liberalism. He had served as a loyal deputy to Johnson over four years, even publicly defending a bloody quagmire in Vietnam on the president’s behalf that he himself had privately opposed.Yet in August 1968, the “Happy Warrior”, as Humphrey had been nicknamed, arrived in Chicago for the Democratic convention depressed and demoralized, trailing his Republican opponent, Richard Nixon, in the polls by a whopping 16 points. The war had become a millstone around his neck, and yet Johnson had threatened to “destroy” his vice-president if he dared take a different line on Vietnam. When Humphrey in Chicago, as the official Democratic presidential nominee, tried to insert a compromise “peace” plank into the party’s platform that seemed to satisfy both hawks and doves alike, the Democratic president called from his ranch in Texas to block him.In the wake of that disastrous convention, where police brutally assaulted anti-war protesters on the streets of Chicago, the demonstrations against the hapless Humphrey intensified. “Dump the Hump” was on the gentler side; some protesters arrived at the VP’s rallies with placards denouncing him as “Johnson’s War Salesman” and a “Killer of Babies”. One woman spat in his face.“Let’s face it, as of now we’ve lost,” Humphrey’s national campaign director, Larry O’Brien, told him a few weeks after Chicago. “Unless you change direction on this Vietnam thing and become your own man, you’re finished.”On 30 September 1968, Humphrey finally became his “own man”, committing “$100,000 of the campaign’s dwindling funds to buy a half-hour on NBC television”, and delivering a speech from a TV studio in Salt Lake City calling for an end to the war. In his address, Humphrey made clear that Johnson was still in charge of the effort to reach a peace deal in south-east Asia, but by 20 January 1969, there would “be a new president” and “if there is no peace by then” then there must be a “complete reassessment” of the conflict because “the policies of tomorrow need not be limited by the policies of yesterday”.The vice-president laid out a four-point plan to end the conflict. First, “a stopping of the bombing”. Second, “a de-Americanization of the war”. Third, an immediate “internationally supervised ceasefire”. Fourth, “free elections”, which he described as “the ultimate key to an honorable peace”.It was a powerful intervention from Humphrey, aired to tens of millions of Americans, which allowed the Democratic presidential candidate to hit reset with the party’s base and, in particular, with younger voters and people of color. “He was a new man from then on,” O’Brien later declaimed. “It was as if a burden had been lifted from his shoulders. And the impact on the campaign itself was just as great.”Humphrey experienced an immediate surge in the polls, narrowing the gap with Nixon. By election day, the final polls “pointed to a dead heat”.Few now remember that the 1968 presidential election, in terms of the popular vote, was super-close. Nixon defeated Humphrey by less than a percentage point, or about 500,000 votes. The question is: what if the Vietnam war hadn’t dragged him down? What if he had been willing to break with Johnson over Vietnam much earlier than he did? Would the US have avoided Nixon, Watergate and the rest? Had he stood up to Johnson “over Vietnam in 1968”, writes Humphrey’s biographer Arnold Offner, “he might have won the presidential election”.The war, agrees Yale historian Michael Brenes, “alienated Humphrey from liberals, civil rights activists and young Americans – the same people who, for decades, had loved Humphrey for his support of racial justice, full employment and the labor movement – and ultimately cost him the presidency in 1968”.Has the 2024 Harris campaign learned any lessons from the 1968 Humphrey campaign?skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionTo be clear: Gaza isn’t Vietnam. There is no military draft and US troops are not bogged down in rice paddies 8,000 miles from home. And Harris, unlike Humphrey, is leading right now in most of the polls.Complacency, however, would be a huge mistake for the Democrats. Harris, ideally, needs to maintain a sustained two-point lead over Trump to overcome the pro-Republican bias of our broken electoral college. Despite her clear momentum, she continues to struggle in the key swing state of Michigan, where “Uncommitted” voters are demanding a Gaza ceasefire paired with an arms embargo on Israel.Agreeing to such a demand should be a moral, geopolitical, and – for the Democrats – electoral no-brainer. Gaza may not be Vietnam but Harris should, nonetheless, be distancing herself from Biden on Gaza in the same way that Humphrey distanced himself from Johnson on Vietnam. She should be advocating for all four of the steps that he advocated for in Salt Lake City, beginning with a call for an immediate halt to the horrific Israeli bombing of Gaza’s schools, apartment buildings and refugee camps.Crucially, however, she should do it more than a month before he did; she should do it in her acceptance speech to the Democratic national convention in Chicago on Thursday night. (“I fear she will be Humphrey and break too late,” one prominent House Democrat texted me last week.)What does she have to lose? As the Financial Times pointed out last month, the polling suggests there is “less downside” on Gaza than one might expect: “a Democrat who is soft on Israel (as Biden is seen as having been) loses support on the left, but a candidate who takes a more critical line wins those voters back without losing votes among moderates.” A poll last week from YouGov and the Institute for Middle East Understanding (IMEU) showed over a third of voters in three swing states say they are more likely to vote for the Democratic nominee if they pledge to withhold weapons to Israel, while only 5 to 7% said they would be less likely to do so.So what is Harris waiting for? More anti-war hecklers at her rallies? Even more civilian deaths caused by Biden administration-supplied munitions?Some might say that it is impossible for a serving vice-president to go against the sitting president, even a deeply unpopular sitting president, on a major foreign policy issue. They would be wrong. Humphrey did it – he just did it too late in the campaign to reap an electoral advantage.Harris is in a much stronger position than Humphrey. Biden would never dare try to humiliate her the way that Johnson regularly did to Humphrey. (On one memorable occasion, the then president insisted Humphrey continue reciting aloud from a draft speech of his on Vietnam as Johnson walked into a toilet: “Keep talking Hubert, I’m listening.”)Humphrey spent much of 1968 defending both Johnson and the war. He was less a candidate for change and “more like a son who feared a punitive father”, to quote Offner. “I don’t even know who Johnson would prefer as the next president,” the fearful vice-president told the Soviet ambassador, Anatoly Dobrynin, “Nixon or me.”Harris is not Humphrey. Gaza is not Vietnam. 2024 is not 1968. Nevertheless, the similarities that do exist are too glaring to ignore.Biden may want to continue sending more and more weapons to an Israeli government accused of war crimes at the international criminal court and of genocide at the international court of justice, but Harris should take a different stance – a bolder stance, a stance that is more in line with her party’s base, as well as with the American public at large.The current vice-president would do well to recall the words of the then vice-president after his narrow defeat in 1968. “I ought not to have let a man who was going to be a former president dictate my future.”

      Mehdi Hasan is the founder and editor-in-chief of Zeteo More