Israel’s ethnic cleansing of Gaza becomes ever more clear to the world. Tareq Hajjaj is documenting the nightmare day by day. While the BBC is using the horrifying expression aid workers use after an Israeli bombing: WCNSF — “wounded child no surviving family.”
Though the U.S. press tries to turn a blind eye, there is huge political news this week. Biden’s support is now hemorrhaging inside the Democratic base because the left cares about human rights. And the media are starting to notice.
NBC Nightly News did a story this week reporting that Arab-Americans in Michigan feel betrayed by Biden.
“I think he is funding a genocide,” said Sandra Luqman, co-chair of Abandon Biden Michigan.
NBC spotlighted Lori-Kamleh Ajlouny, who said she voted for Biden in 2020, but won’t this time. “I am heartbroken. I am so hurt that it’s a feeling of betrayal,” she says. “There is a widespread underground campaign of Arabs, of Muslims, where we cannot morally support President Biden.”
So who would you vote for, correspondent Gabe Gutierrez asks. “I would write in on the ballot, ‘Ceasefire. Free Palestine.’”
Politico also captured the crisis in a piece asking “how many Biden speeches must be shouted down” before Biden realizes he could lose the presidency due to the loss of 90,000 Michigan voters. Jonathan Martin reports that VP Kamala Harris is doing outreach to counter “Biden’s unwavering public support for Israel,” including to Black voters.
Harris told people she’s making the case privately for the administration to show more empathy for the plight of innocent Gazans.
Fox News covered the crisis — in a report on a rebellion inside US AID over Samantha Power’s support for the genocide.
Biden’s advocates seem to hope that he can make the critics go away by making Netanyahu the bad guy and talking up the supposed “two state solution.” On NPR and in the Washington Post, South Carolina Rep. Jim Clyburn has argued that Netanyahu is bad for Israel and Netanyahu has always been against a Palestinian state.
Biden has privately called Netanyahu a “bad fucking guy,” Politico reports, and is trying to change the subject to the West Bank. This week, he issued an executive order on the West Bank that can be used to sanction violent Israeli settlers for attacks on Palestinians. It has initially been used against four particularly abhorrent extremists. Even the Israel lobby group Jewish Democratic Council of America approved the move.
And the Secretary of State tried to dampen criticism by meeting three days ago with Palestinian-Americans– a meeting widely boycotted in that community as a “box-ticking exercise.”
In another sign of that resistance, yesterday, the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee released a powerful ad opposing the “four more years” chant for Biden and saying, “No more years of genocide.”
It’s good that progressives are at last forcing a mainstream discussion about this country’s blind support for Israel. Though as usual, coverage of this issue leaves out the counter-force operating on Biden: The Israel lobby is the elite in the Democratic Party upon whom Biden depends for funding his campaign. He can’t turn against them. And the Israel lobby is deadset against a cease-fire. The Israel lobby is fine with massacring Palestinian families.
This week, the Lever reported that AIPAC has raised $90 million since the October 7 Hamas attacks on Israel, and it will spend that money to try to defeat the progressive challenge.
The donors who gave all that money include “a cross-section of the U.S. elite,” including supporters of liberal causes. Among them: Maryland congressman David Trone, sports team owner Josh Harris, former Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein, and Julie Platt, chair of the Jewish Federations.
Platt is also the former chair of Penn, who helped force out the Penn president over her supposed failure to condemn antisemitism on campus amid protests over the massacres.
No wonder Democratic Senator Kirsten Gillibrand and Republican Senator John Cornyn met with AIPAC donors last month — and the Lever reports, Gillibrand insisted Israel is minimizing civilian casualties. A complete and utter lie.
This is who progressives are up against. Ardent supporters of Israel inside the Democratic Party with a lot of financial clout. They need to be named. There needs to be an open debate inside the Democratic Party over this murderous influence.
Thanks for reading,
Phil Weiss
Both Democratic and Republican party establishments prioritize Israeli interests over genuine American interests. As such, a Republican victory is not the worst outcome for these Democrats. Imagine a world where the hundreds of billions spent on weapons for Ukraine and Israel, and elsewhere, could have instead been invested in the US on tackling poverty, the fentanyl crises, homelessness, health care and decaying infrastructure.
Biden’s Israel doctrine is so morally bankrupt that he’d rather bomb the Houthis and Iran than deal with the 75 year-old spoilt brat living in our basement and leeching off us.
Hard to imagine any honest to God Americans voting for genocide.
I wonder what the reparations will be costing American taxpayers, if any left to pay, by the time the (could be)International Tribunal finds the American so called leaders guilty of complicity in financially supporting this genocide…to hanging? Didn’t we learn anything at Nuremberg?
I was able to attend the Jan 13th March 4 Gaza in D.C. 300,000-400,000 people. You know they know how to count the people at protest from the air…they like it to be ambivalent. Don’t measure the oncoming tsunami. Ignore the indicators. The main chant “Biden Biden you can’t hide. We charge you with genocide.” So many kids there. Have been going to protest, marches, lobbying efforts in D.C. since mid 60’s Civil Rights marches…then anti Vietnam, Anti apartheid SA, Nicaragua meddling, anti Iraq etc etc. Have never seen so many kids who are going to be voting in a few years. Biden has dug his own re-election grave by blocking the stop the ceasefire votes at UN, unbridled support for Israel, so clearly values Israeli’s lives over Palestinians lives.
So many I talked with will not be voting for Biden. So many young and older peace activist saying they will not vote for him. He is in big, big trouble based on 30,000 Palestinians being massacred by the Israeli military and government. I don’t think Biden stands a chance this time around. .