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THE MORAL SHAME OF US FOREIGN POLICY  
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Mark Harris
December 17, 2024
Common Dreams
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_ Neither major party candidate represented a challenge to U.S.
complicity in Israel’s horrific war on the people and land of Gaza.
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People mourn victims of Israeli airstrikes at the morgue of Nasser
Hospital in Khan Yunis, Gaza on October 27, 2023., Abed Zagout/Anadolu
via Getty Images

 

_A new study has found that almost half of children in Gaza
[[link removed]] wish to die, as a result of
the trauma they have been forced to endure. Every single supplier of
arms to Israel [[link removed]] has blood on
its hands—and the world will never forgive them.”_

—Jeremy Corbyn, MP (Dec. 12, 2024)
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The election of former President Donald Trump
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U.S. president has been cause for profound despair among millions of
Democratic voters. Certainly anyone who cares about human and
democratic rights can only feel dismay about the return of this
notorious megalomaniac to the White House.

But worse than the election results is another deflating reality.
Neither major party candidate represented a challenge to U.S.
complicity in Israel’s horrific war on the people and land of Gaza.
The presidential election proved to be a choice between two electable
candidates, manifestly different on the surface, yet neither of whom
was capable of taking a principled stand against the worst crime
imaginable—genocide.

Consider that reality for a moment. While the Democratic candidate
Kamala Harris [[link removed]]
campaigned as the defender of democracy, our only hope against the
fascist predations of Republican Trump, the current vice president
refused to consider even the slightest change in course from the Biden
administration’s staunch support for Israel’s genocidal war on
Gaza. In fact, for more than a year the supply of U.S. weapons has
enabled Israel to carry out one of the most concentrated and deadly
military assaults on a population in modern times.

As for Trump and the GOP, this is a party of unabashed cheerleaders
for genocide, who embrace Israel’s depraved war without any moral
reservations.

Is what the Israeli military (IDF) doing in Gaza under the auspices of
the Biden administration somehow less of a fascist horror show than
the threat of Trump’s dystopian vision for the United States? What
kind of democracy was it exactly that the Harris campaign stood for,
if it excluded the most basic right of the Palestinian people not to
be annihilated?

Ultimately, the Harris campaign was nothing more than a glossy
marketing machine, a high-paid commercial for more of the same old war
and Wall Street politics. Months of nationwide campus and street
protests for a permanent Gaza cease-fire, and the growing unpopularity
of the U.S. role as Israel’s chief arms supplier, resonated little
in the end with the Harris campaign’s supposedly savvy advisors.
Better instead to highlight the support of anti-Trump Republicans like
Liz Cheney than allow a Palestinian-American campaign supporter even
five minutes at the Democratic National Convention to speak about the
plight of Gaza. Better to demonstrate loyalty to President Joe Biden,
a leader whose legacy is now forever stained with the blood of the
Palestinian people.

As for Trump and the GOP, this is a party of unabashed cheerleaders
for genocide, who embrace Israel’s depraved war without any moral
reservations. With near unanimity this past July, GOP members
repeatedly stood and cheered Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin
Netanyahu’s bellicose address to a joint session of Congress. It was
an indelible display of shameless idolatry for a mass murderer, as
Netanyahu denounced American cease-fire protestors as “useful
idiots” and otherwise sought to justify his war crimes.

Notably, the decision to welcome Netanyahu to Congress was a
bipartisan one, an invitation whose political optics were so bad
several dozen congressional Democrats chose to boycott the address.
One who did not was Rep. Rashida Tlaib
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quiet dignity sat through Netanyahu’s remarks displaying a sign with
the words “war criminal” and “guilty of genocide” written on
either side. “It is utterly disgraceful that leaders from both
parties have invited him to address Congress,” said
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Tlaib. “He should be arrested and sent to the International Criminal
Court [ICC]."

How Many People Have to Die?

Since Tlaib’s protest the ICC has issued formal arrest warrants for
the Israeli prime minister and former Defense Minister Yoav Gallant,
along with Hamas leader Ibrahim Al-Masri. Doggedly loyal to the
Zionist state, Biden called the ICC decision
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to seek the Israeli leaders arrests “outrageous.”

What is wrong with Biden? How many people have to be bombed, shot,
slaughtered, and starved, their homes, schools, hospitals, and
shelters destroyed, before he says enough? Biden’s outrage at the
ICC decision is driven by his claim
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that there is no equivalence between Israel and Hamas. Actually, in
terms of sheer killing power, he is right. According to _Al
Jazeera’s_live tracker
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of war data, the death toll in the Israel-Gaza war (October 7, 2023 to
December 15, 2024) stands at 44,976 Palestinians and 1,139 Israelis
killed.

Unbearably, the IDF has also killed 17,492 children in Gaza. Another
106,759 people have been injured and more than 11,000 are missing. In
the Occupied West Bank, at least 812 people, including 169 children,
have been killed and another 6,250 injured over the past year by
Israeli police, military, and settlers.

In modern politics, murdering thousands of children and other
innocents in an obliterating campaign of state-sponsored terrorism is
just business as usual, one more geopolitical “controversy” for
our esteemed leaders to do nothing about.

Further, the IDF has killed 3,823 people in Lebanon (October 8, 2023
to November 27, 2024), according to Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor
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Another 15,859 residents of Lebanon are reported injured as a result
of Israeli military action. The IDF has also partially or completely
destroyed over 100,000 housing units across Lebanon.

No matter. For Netanyahu’s supporters in the U.S. political
establishment, no lessons are ever learned nor red lines crossed, even
as Israel’s war rage continues unabated. Instead, the Senate
majority recently voted
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to approve another $61 million in high explosive mortar rounds to
Israel. Only 19 senators (all Democrats except for Vermont independent
Bernie sanders [[link removed]])
voted no.

In late November, the United States also vetoed
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Council resolution calling for an immediate, permanent cease-fire in
Gaza and release of remaining Israeli hostages. This was the fourth
time the U.S. has vetoed a Gaza cease-fire resolution! The U.S.
ambassador claimed the resolution didn’t adequately link a
cease-fire to the necessity of releasing hostages, a concern rejected
by every other member nation of the Security Council. What was it
again Harris said during her campaign about the White House working
tirelessly for a Gaza cease-fire?

Why is the United States still Israel’s key ally? In January 2024,
the International Court of Justice (ICJ), in response to the case
brought by South Africa, issued a preliminary determination
[[link removed]] that the genocide case was
plausibly brought and ordered Israel to “take all measures within
its power” to uphold its obligations under Article II
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of the Genocide Convention. In a newly released report
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Amnesty International
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concluded that Israel has and is continuing to commit genocide against
Palestinians in Gaza. “Israel has unleashed hell and destruction on
Palestinians in Gaza brazenly, continuously, and with total
impunity,” states the Amnesty report.

But nothing has changed since the ICJ warning to Israel. In modern
politics, murdering thousands of children and other innocents in an
obliterating campaign of state-sponsored terrorism is just business as
usual, one more geopolitical “controversy” for our esteemed
leaders to do nothing about.

Gaza and Trump’s Victory

The Biden administration’s complicity in Israel’s war differs from
the incoming Trump administration only in the latter’s unabashed
embrace of Israel’s war crimes. Consider only Trump’s selection
for the next U.S. ambassador to Israel: former Arkansas Governor Mike
Huckabee, a man who believes
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there is no such person as a Palestinian.

Trump himself now says
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there will be “hell to pay” if the Israeli hostages still in Gaza
are not released prior to his January inauguration. You have to wonder
what hell he is referring to that has not already occurred. With his
usual fidelity to reality, Trump further ignores Netanyahu’s
repeated obstruction
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of efforts to negotiate the release of hostages held in Gaza, to the
upset of other Israeli leaders and public.

The guiding lights of the Democratic Party were apparently confident
enough voters wouldn’t care that the Harris campaign remained full
on with the politics of “Genocide Joe.” It was a poor gamble.

All this does not bode well for a peaceful and just future in the
region. When the October 7 Hamas raids into southern Israel occurred,
leading to hundreds of deaths and 254 people taken hostage, President
Biden and others described the assault as “unprovoked.” It was a
revealing response, a reflection of just how little Western leaders
care about the modern history of Israel’s oppression of the
indigenous Palestinian population. News flash to Biden: History did
not begin on October 7.

Of course, to defend the basic human rights of the Palestinian people,
including just the right to survive, does not constitute a political
endorsement of Hamas, or any particular leadership or group. If any
individual or group has committed atrocities against innocent
civilians, those responsible should be held legally accountable. But
isn’t it necessary to try to understand the deeper historic roots of
the violence, to see beyond the layers of Western and Zionist
propaganda designed to obscure Israel’s long occupation and
oppression of the Palestinian people and their lands? All this began
long before Hamas even existed.

It’s obvious Israel’s far-right leaders do not view the
Palestinian people as human beings who deserve justice, as a people
with whom they should live in peace. In fact, Israel’s destruction
of Gaza over the past 14 months represents less an _aberration_ than
an _acceleration_ of the Zionist state’s historic relationship since
1948 with the Palestinian people, which is one of oppressor and
oppressed.

The Failure of the Democrats

The guiding lights of the Democratic Party were apparently confident
enough voters wouldn’t care that the Harris campaign remained full
on with the politics of “Genocide Joe.” It was a poor gamble. The
dramatic fall in voter turnout for the Democratic candidate proved
decisive to Trump’s victory, which he won over Harris by only 1.6%
of the popular vote. The unwillingness of Harris to campaign as an
anti-war candidate, to even appear to separate herself from Biden’s
demoralizing fealty to Israel, did nothing to get out the vote. Many
people understandably draw a moral line at supporting genocide.

The White House was not unaware of how unpopular its support for
Israel had become. In June a _CBS News_ poll
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showed 61% of Americans opposed to sending U.S. weapons to Israel.
Among Democrats and people under 30 years of age, 77% were in
opposition to continued arms deliveries to Israel. Prior to the
Democratic Party convention, one poll
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showed approximately one-third of U.S. voters in Arizona, Georgia, and
Pennsylvania more likely to vote for Harris if she agreed to stop
arming Israel, or if an Israel-Hamas cease-fire was achieved before
election day. Yet the Harris-Walz campaign remained opposed to an arms
embargo, which ultimately rendered all their cease-fire rhetoric empty
theatrics.

Trump also won just because he was not in office. A vote for Trump was
likely perceived by many as somehow just shaking up the system.

The latter was no doubt what was involved in the Biden
administration’s 30-day ultimatum to Israel three weeks before the
election to improve Gaza’s access to humanitarian aid or risk
delivery of future arms supplies. Not surprisingly, post-election the
U.S. State Department announced
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much to the disbelief of some members of Congress and several
international aid groups, that Israel had made “limited progress”
toward improving delivery of humanitarian aid, and thus was not in
violation of U.S. law.

There’s a pattern here. In May, the Biden administration had even
acknowledged
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Israel’s use of U.S. arms likely violated international humanitarian
law, but claimed it lacked confirmatory evidence. It was at this time
that the administration paused delivery of a shipment of 500-pound and
2,000-pound bombs, as the Israeli military threatened to assault
densely populated Rafah in southern Gaza. A military offensive there
was supposedly a “red line” for the Biden administration. But it
was one Netanyahu ignored as the IDF soon swept through central Rafah
and air strikes hit people sheltering in tents.

For the White House all this constituted
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only an “uptick” in military action, not the “full-scale”
assault on Rafah their floating red line was intended to oppose.
Tellingly, the United States decided in July to resume
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shipments of 500-pound bombs to Israel. Apparently, U.S. officials
were no longer concerned about the threat to the population from the
65-foot blast radius of 500-pound bombs, compared to the 115-foot
radius of 2,000-pound bombs.

That’s par for the course for the Biden State Department, with the
exception of the several department staff who resigned
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their positions in protest of the administration’s complicity in
Israeli war crimes. Otherwise neither Biden, Harris, nor Trump have
wanted to end, reduce, or put any meaningful conditions whatsoever on
arms deliveries to Israel.

Time for New Mass Movement Politics

Certainly there are multiple factors at play in Trump’s election
victory. The pressures of the inflationary state of the economy,
combined with historic wage stagnation and growing wealth inequality,
are obviously factors. But it’s more than that. Trump also cynically
manipulated base appeals to racism. His demonizing rhetoric about
migrant floods “poisoning the blood of America” was classic
divide-and-conquer politics, a tactic long used by capitalist elites
to redirect working-class discontent away from their rule and power.
These racist appeals were persuasive to many of the Trump faithful.

But perhaps Trump also won just because he was not in office. A vote
for Trump was likely perceived by many as somehow just shaking up the
system. The operative word here is somehow. In Rep. Alexandria
Ocasio-Cortez’s Bronx congressional district, for example, Trump won
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of the vote, an 11-point improvement from 2020. Yet the left
progressive Ocasio-Cortez also won a decisive victory, returning to
Congress for a fourth term with 68.9% of the vote. A minority of
others also cast protest votes for Green Party candidate Jill Stein or
independent Cornel West, both of whom campaigned on anti-war platforms
in solidarity with Palestine
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Tellingly, the CEO of BlackRock, Larry Fink, who oversees the
investment firm’s management of $11.5 trillion in assets, downplayed
the election’s significance for Wall Street investors. “I’m
tired of hearing this is the biggest election in your lifetime,”
Fink remarked
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in October at a securities industry event. “The reality is over time
it doesn’t matter.” In other words, as long as capital
accumulation proceeds unimpeded, as long as the billionaires and
corporate elites continue to profit and prosper, any Democratic or
Republican administration is fine.

The pretense of civilized, democratic Israel has now fallen away to
reveal the ignominy of an oppressor state in all its furious
depravity.

The prospect of another four years with Trump in the White House is
bleak. But Trump and his entourage of power-hungry hustlers, grifters,
far-right ideologues, and other low-flying opportunists are hardly
invincible. They can be defeated.

Of course, those who oppose the warmongers and right-wing
authoritarians will surely face many challenges in the new year. But
perhaps we should despair less and organize more.

From Democratic Socialists of America to Jewish Voice for Peace, the
activism of the United Auto Workers and other labor ranks, to the
organizers for women’s reproductive rights and the human rights of
migrants, the voices who continue to speak up for humanity are many.
We need to continue to mobilize these voices for the cause of peace
with new resonance and power. We need political action not beholden to
the Washington status quo or enfeebled Democratic electoral politics,
but movement politics that embraces the larger anti-capitalist vision
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of what Dr. King once described as the “radical reconstruction of
society itself.”

People are tired of endless wars. However justified Ukrainian
resistance to Russia’s military aggression, the Russia-Ukraine war
also just grinds on, costing tens of billions in U.S. military aid
with no prospects for a fair negotiated settlement. For the Biden
administration, the war appears to be more about strategically
weakening Russia and providing a bonanza for arms manufacturers than
defending democratic Ukrainian sovereignty.

In October 2023, the Deputy Speaker of the Knesset in Israel, Nissim
Vaturi, said [[link removed]]: “Now
we all have one common goal—erasing the Gaza Strip from the face of
the Earth.” Other Israeli leaders have expressed similar genocidal
aspirations. To the shame of the world, this nightmare story has
continued unabated for more than a year.

A new study
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conducted by the Community Training Center for Crisis Management
(CTCCM) with support from the War Child Alliance finds deep
psychological trauma now prevalent among the children of Gaza.
Surrounded by death, destruction, and displacement, their homes,
schools, and communities destroyed by IDF air strikes and military
assaults, 96% of the most vulnerable children in Gaza live with the
feeling of imminent death. With loved ones often dead or wounded,
nearly half of the children also describe just wishing to die.

Why is U.S. foreign policy committed to support a rogue Israeli state
led by unrepentant war criminals? We should recognize the essential
justice of the vision of a democratic, secular Palestine, based on
respect for the human rights of all people, not an exclusionary and
violent Zionist settler-colonial project armed to excess by Western
imperialism. The pretense of civilized, democratic Israel has now
fallen away to reveal the ignominy of an oppressor state in all its
furious depravity. Tragically, this failed state is leading Gaza to
obliteration and ruin.

The whole world needs to rise up against this terrible imperial
violence and the social system that creates it.

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Mark Harris is a Portland, Oregon-based writer. His essays and other
writing appear in Utne magazine, Common Dreams, Counterpunch,
Truthout, The Oregonian, Z, and other publications and news sites.
Harris is a featured contributor to "The Flexible Writer," fourth
edition, by Susanna Rich (Allyn & Bacon/Longman, 2003); and "Guide to
College Reading," sixth edition, by Kathleen McWhorter
(Addison-Wesley, 2003).

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