Why Biden must cancel his trip to Israel

From July 13 to 16, President Joe Biden will visit the governments of Israel and Saudi Arabia, deepening his complicity in their human rights abuses.

As Black and Palestinian organizers in the U.S. who visited Palestine last week, we see President Biden’s widely criticized trip for what it is: a war crimes tour. Both Israel and Saudi Arabia have used U.S.-funded weapons to brutally murder people, from Israel’s killing of 260 Palestinians in Gaza just last year, to Saudi Arabia’s horrific seven-year war that has killed nearly 400,000 Yemenis. President Biden is cozying up to these apartheid and authoritarian governments, while failing to hold them accountable.

If Biden cares about human rights at all, he should #CancelTheTrip—as thousands of grassroots activists have demanded—and stop funding the weapons behind their war crimes.

The Saudi Arabia leg of his visit has already caused an uproar amongst some U.S. lawmakers, given Saudi Arabia’s egregious human rights record and killing of journalist Jamal Khashoggi. Biden himself previously asserted Saudi Arabia should therefore be rendered a “pariah.” Yet now, Biden is going against his own policy as he brushes Saudi Arabia’s war crimes under the rug.

What is most interesting is what’s missing from Biden’s trip.

Nowhere on his agenda will the president be meeting with Palestinian people who are resisting ethnic cleansing, as Israel attempts to violently force Palestinians in Masafer Yatta, the Naqab, Jerusalem, and more out of their homes—a war crime.

It would be surprising that Biden is shunning the Palestinian people most impacted by Israel’s violence, if not for the U.S.’s decades-long complicity. The U.S. gives Israel a minimum of $3.8 billion in military funding every year.

This is what impunity looks like: funding Israel’s violence against Palestinians with no accountability. What else is the president avoiding?

Could it be the worldwide cries for justice for Israel’s murder of Palestinian journalist (and U.S. citizen) Shireen Abu Akleh? Could it be the two million Palestinians living under Israel’s blockade of the Gaza Strip, cut off from the world and basic human necessities? Or could it be the native Palestinians in Masafer Yatta, who every day resist brutal violence and expulsion from their homes at the hands of the Israeli military and in the name of Israeli settlers?

About 1,300 Palestinians in Masafer Yatta could be violently forced out of their homes at any moment, in Israel’s largest expulsion of Palestinians since 1967. Masafer Yatta activist Sami Huraini, the coordinator of the Youth of Sumud center known for leading protests, demanded Biden cancel his trip on Instagram Live.

“We do not want his visit and he is not welcome at all,” Huraini said. “The United States is the first one responsible that Israel has not been held accountable up until this moment.”

So why has there been no public outcry from the American political establishment? Where U.S. politicians admonish Saudi Arabia, they heap praise on the Israeli government. The hypocrisy knows no bounds. Even with Israel’s decades-long record of human rights abuses, interim Israeli Prime Minister Yair Lapid claimed the ties between Israel and the U.S. are “unbreakable,” based on “shared values and a common vision.”

And what are these shared ideologies?

We, as Black and Palestinian organizers who were just in Palestine, know the answer.

We have witnessed an elderly Palestinian mother brought to tears, recalling how she was brutally beaten by Israeli settlers set on stealing the home that she built. We have witnessed displaced Palestinian families stuffed into refugee camps without basic water and electricity. We have traversed dozens of checkpoints—built between Palestinian towns, families, and even homes, to restrict Palestinians’ movement.

The leadership in both countries back the incarceration, segregation, and brutal violence against those who it deems disposable. In Israel, that is Palestinian people. In the United States, it is Black folks.

Look at the racist police killings of Black Americans here in the U.S., such as the recent killing of Jayland Walker in Akron, Ohio, who police brutally shot more than 60 times. The connections between the policies of the U.S. and the Israeli government are obvious. U.S. police often get trained in Israel, where they learn racist and repressive tactics from Israeli forces.

After our many trips sitting with the Palestinian communities struggling against Israel’s violent colonialism, there arises another reason why Biden’s visit completely ignores Palestinian rights—because freedom and human rights can’t be compromised.

Palestinian people are not defeated. They’re demanding accountability: for murdered Palestinian journalists and for millions of Palestinians displaced within Palestine and in the diaspora. They are rebelling, resisting, and flourishing under the most inhumane conditions.

Just like we and other activists are fighting for Black liberation from the U.S. militarized police state.

So of course Biden dodges Palestinians in Palestine. As he dodges Black Americans in the U.S.

In the end, no matter what becomes of Biden’s trip, one thing is for sure: that the shared values and vision of the People are cooperation and liberation. Anyone who cares about human rights will join the struggle for collective liberation, until we’re all free.