I Finally Broke

The genocide of Gaza is not a single issue. It is the only issue

I am flying to Chicago in a few hours. I am covering the protests against the genocide of Gaza, as well as climate activism, labor rights, abortion rights, and the DNC. I will be on KPFA Flashpoints every day at 5 pm PT / 7pm CT starting Monday, Aug. 19. I will also be reporting for YES! Magazine.

Follow my work on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.

I would also appreciate your support. I have been covering social movements for more than 30 years, and political conventions for 20 years. I feel it is important to report on them because of the dearth of informed commentary. I rarely get paid to cover protests and am paying for this trip out of my own pocket. Please consider making a donation. Any amount helps. You can donate here on Substack. Or contact me and I can send you my Venmo information. arun.indypendent@gmail.com

For background on chicago, check out my article on the student protests for Gaza and the importance of hope.

Soldarity and peace

Arun

I finally broke

Maybe it was the clear plastic bags filled with flesh. Israel had bombed a school in Gaza City, killing more than 100 refugees. There were no corpses, just body parts with shreds of clothing. Families were given plastic bags. They held either 70 kilograms, the average weight of adult, or 30 kilograms, the average weight of a child. 

Maybe it was the precision strike on 4-day-old twins, their mother, and grandmother. Their apartment was the only unit demolished in the building. The mother, Dr. Joumana Arafa, was apparently murdered for documenting the genocide on social media. The father Mohammed was getting birth certificates from a nearby hospital. That’s where he found his family. He was asked to name the dead twins. He called them Ayssel and Asser.

Mohamed Abu Al-Qomasan cries as he holds his twins' birth certificates in Deir Al-Balah. Abdullah Al-Attar / Reuters

It could be another doctor. He was in a hospital when Israel bombarded it. He told the soldiers he needed to stay with his patients. The soldiers ordered him to strip naked. They held him at gunpoint for two days, told him to shit and piss where he stood in a pool of his own excrement. After he two days he was allowed to see his patients. He was forced to remain naked as Israeli soldiers laughed at him. His patients were children. 

I have been thinking of the many stories and images of Gaza burned into my brain. You probably have your own. But then I thought what about the White House? 

Their daily intelligence briefings would include atrocities. This is the first livestreamed genocide, and the White House needs details of atrocities for its propaganda war in support of Israel. 

In other words, Joe Biden, Antony Blinken, Lloyd Austin, Jake Sullivan, John Kirby, and Matthew Miller know far more than us about the barbaric acts Israel is carrying out and their responsibility and ours. This includes Kamala Harris.

They don’t care. Horrors worse than we could have ever imagined are merely a political problem for Biden and Harris to be managed.

I am absolutely gutted by Gaza. I have always believed “Never Again” meant that. I didn’t notice the asterisk reading “Some exceptions apply” referring to Palestinians. 

I am enraged against Washington, Israel, and Western savagery. But I am also enraged we are not doing everything we can to end the genocide. 

Right now we have real power: the power to withhold our votes. The more of us who publicly say, “I refuse to vote for Kamala Harris unless she commits to ending the genocide,” the greater the pressure on her to capitulate.

That is how power works. It concedes nothing without a demand. We have to force those in power, whether red or blue, to realize their least painful option is giving in to our demands. We have to stop choosing the lesser evil. We need to be the lesser evil for the ruling class.

Liberals are afraid of their own power. To them genocide is a single issue or transactional — “Well, Gaza is bad, but Project 2025 or an abortion ban is worse.” Genocide is the only issue. 

Liberals have many excuses as to why they can’t tell Kamala, “No arms embargo, no vote.” Their excuses are all forms of genocide denialism.

Claiming Trump will be worse is like saying, “I oppose a hypothetical genocide not an actual one.” On top of that, the real death toll, including disease, starvation, and missing, could be well over 100,000 dead. This is not far off the pace of the Holocaust from 1939 to 1945. How precisely can Trump make this worse?

One common response is fantasy: Kamala will end the genocide after she wins. In reality, she was quick to oppose an arms embargo on Israel and invoked Israel’s “right to defend itself,” a dog-whistle for genocide. Harris is so pro-Israel she is willing to alienate more than 200,000 Muslim-American voters in Michigan she likely needs to win the swing state. If she won’t call for an arms embargo now, when the potential cost to her is the highest, then why would she after we have cast our votes?

Asking Palestinians to wait in a purgatory of bombs, famine, and pestilence for an imagined promise is unimaginably cruel. Opposing a permanent ceasefire is also wildly unpopular among voters: 70 percent favor an end to the violence, only 20 percent oppose it. 

Then there is the tendency to imply protesting genocide is worse than genocide. When demonstrators chanted, “Kamala, Kamala, you can’t hide! We won’t vote for genocide,” Harris responded, “You know what? If you want Donald Trump to win, then say that.” 

Liberals like to cite Trump’s calls for a Muslim ban to insinuate that Arab and Muslim voters don’t know their own self-interest. In a remarkable New York Times video interview, Muslim voters demolished talking points like that. One voter said Democrats would be speaking out against genocide if Trump were doing it, unlike now. Another said he had been “scared” of a second Trump presidency, “but after the Gaza genocide our worst nightmare has taken place.” A third bluntly stated, “I’d rather see my community banned than see them slaughtered.”

Muslim voters also said they want to hold Democrats to account for genocide by defeating them. That is how power works. You make demands, declare the price to be paid, and stick to your guns. One voter said “I love and value” universal healthcare and student debt elimination, but “genocide outweighs every single domestic policy.”

The answer is simple. If Democrats want to defeat Trump, they need to end the genocide they created. Asking anyone to vote for genocidaires, especially the family of victims, is grotesque.

By treating genocide as a single issue, liberals see Palestinians as disposable. Genocide is the worst form of racism imaginable and the essence of fascism: purifying the nation by eliminating the subhumans. Liberals have skipped fascism and gone straight to genocide. If Israel succeeds in Gaza, the West Bank is next. Six million Palestinians are in danger of being murdered and ethnically cleansed, a number heavy with historical significance. 

Liberals will accept any atrocity as long as Team Blue doing it. The genocide next time is already taking shape under the Democrats. Biden and Harris have made the U.S. the top crude oil and natural gas producer in history. By one estimate, there could be 1.2 billion climate refugees by 2050. Biden and Harris have also adopted Trump’s cruel immigration policies. We are barreling towards a world where the Americas become a giant killing field for anyone trying to escape the climate chaos, cartels, and destitution we’ve created.

Liberals are willing to throw 90 percent of humanity under the bus for crumbs. 

We cannot accept anything less than ending the genocide of Gaza otherwise we open the doors to a century of horror. I know it’s tempting to believe Kamala will never agree to an arms embargo and permanent ceasefire.

One thing I have learned is movements only win if they absolutely believe they can win. That means no compromise, no half measures, no surrender. 

Our hope lies in each other, socialism, and internationalism. I will be in Chicago to amplify the voices against genocide and for all of humanity.