More than 100 Arizona Palestinian, Arab, Muslim, and progressive Democrats and community leaders have signed a letter making the case for those reluctant to support Kamala Harris against Donald Trump.
“We know that many in our communities are resistant to vote for Kamala Harris because of the Biden administration’s complicity in the genocide,” the letter, published Thursday night, reads.
“Some of us have lost many family members in Gaza and Lebanon. We respect those who feel they simply can’t vote for a member of the administration that sent the bombs that may have killed their loved ones,” the letter continued. “As we consider the full situation carefully, however, we conclude that voting for Kamala Harris is the best option for the Palestinian cause and all of our communities.”
Welcome to your first exposure to the NGO and political class constellation. You might notice that the letter itself is not just Palestinians, either, but includes, per their own statement, Arabs, “Progressive Democrats”, and “Community Leqders”. Notice how many are top-level leadership of various Dem-connected NGOs and how few seem to be average folks.
Dems have done the same thing when it comes to supporting cops against demands for racial justice re: policing. They gather a set of black " community leaders", I.e. business owners and heads of NGOs and party-associated orgs, and then say, “but actually we want more cops!” It is tokenizing.
But you have correctly identified its purpose: to get you to participate in the tokenization and have a green light for complicity in genocide. After all, Real Palestinians ™ gave you permission, right?
It’s not false that Trump would be even worse though, having encouraged Netanyahu to be even more brutal than he is. So if you have the choice between a vote to keep Trump out, or not voting and making it easier for him to take over, the less worse (but still bad) option for Palestine is to vote for whoever will most effectively keep Trump out.
I know this kind of electoral pragmatism feels a bit disgusting, but the cure for that is to get politically active outside of the electoral system, in addition to keeping the worst candidate out at election time.
Netanyahu already has unconditional material support for the genocide from the Biden-Harris administration and they help run interference quite competently both internationally and domestically. They would still have you believe they are working for a “ceasefire” while celebrating the assassination of negotiators and sending unlimited JDAMs to bomb children in refugee camps.
There is no worse. They are far more competent at this.
Though again, you should be against genocide and not support genociders. It is not strategic to nirnalize genocide. It is not smart tactics to be a guaranteed lever pull even up to genocide.
It is not pragmatic at all. It is just the lesser evil argument that Dems always use to sheepdog people with a conscience into helping them out. It is a one-way street, as they never actually have to do anything at all that you demand, they are, correctly, treating you as a guaranteed cote. They will just send their PR teams at you.
We are in this position right now because of this “pragmatism” that prevents any notion of accountability or principal or the idea that you should be able to make a demand and have it reflected in policy. The genocide in Gaza is very unpopular at least in polls. The reason the political class does not follow this popular will is that you are not perceived as any kind of threat. You gladly give away all leverage and announce you will always do so, even up to voting for genocide!
And this is just disempowerment at the level of an individual. We are of course much more powerful when we organize together and build towards leverage. But that must be done through organizations and cannot happen through me, an individual, telling you that you have a moral responsibility to work against and never for genociders.
See in the start you’re right, yes, Trump and Harris have the same policy in regards to the Palestinian Genocide. But you act like that means they’re identical human beings who have identical intentions and who will make identical political actions.
Such people do not care. They didn’t care that Roe got struck down because they acted like Clinton would have picked the exact same SCOTUS justices since “both parties are the same.”
And when brown people and queer people get marched into camps under Trump, they’ll tell us that Harris would have done the same thing and if we wanted change, we should have voted for a third party candidate without saying which candidate that should have been.
Very easy to have such opinions from your ivory throne.
Actually I argued that the Biden-Harris administration is particularly competent at it, as they provide full, unconditional support but also rope Europe into it and convince their domestic base to not oppose them.
If Trump had been in office the people here currently doing genocide apologetics would be in the streets and building power against this. And Europe would be less subservient to US interests.
It is important to understand that impact is not just the overt garbage a politician says, it is what their policies are and how effective their propaganda is.
No I don’t.
Called it.
“I care more about Palestine than those worthless Palestinians do.”
“But I don’t care at all about Ukraine or any domestic issues.”
Better yet, ask TheOub about Tiananmen.
Or the Uyghurs. Bring that topic up, and suddenly his mama is calling him home for dinner.
“Domestic issues” - they can’t complain about the domestic issues, because the country they are in will then send them to a gulag or help them fall out of a high window.
Please do your best to not tokeize marginalized communities. I have mobilized more Palestinians for actions than there are Palestinians on this list. They do not speak for Palestinians. These are party insiders and the heads of NGOs. And, oer the letter itself, which you obviously did not read, it is signed not just by Palestinians, but by “Arabs, Progressive Democrats, and Community Leaders”.
Democrats do this tokenizing bullshit all the time. Their favorite target is black people where they use the same subclass of people and claim thev speak for " the black community" itself a racist statement, as black people are not a monolith, just like Palestinians are not a monolith.
Imagine if you saw a headline and letter that read, “Latinos sign letter urging lower wages for Latinos” and it was just signed by a bunch of CEOs. Would you go around telling people that if they want higher wages for Latinos, they know better than Latinos? Would you pretend this is a representative group? Would you go around demanding lower pay?
Thank goodness those backward people have you as their savior!
I work in solidarity, not saviorism. Please do your best to act in good faith and not make things up. It is particularly disgusting when I am opposing a genocide for you to attempt dishonest zingers.
The point I was making was that this letter is not representative despite the various commenters here attempting to tokenize Palestinians.
In solidarity with the Palestinians who agree with you but not the Palestinians who don’t, apparently. Their opinions are irrelevant.
I work in solidarity with all Palestinians, but that does not mean I agree with or do work in agreement with the opinions of every Palestinian. That is the tokenizing logic I am referring to.
Palestinians are not a monolith. Please stop treating them as one. They are real, actual people.
And the Palestinians who signed this letter - which was not just signed by Palestinians - are relevant. Unfortunately their relevance in this instance is in a display of party loyalty and in favor of a candidate doing genocide, and it is not coincidental that they drew from NGOs and party insiders to curate the signatories.
I thought acknowledging their opinion was participating tokenism that gives a green light to genocide.
Interesting how you’ve suddenly changed your tune. Especially after that absolutely pathetic attempt to imply that I’m a racist for considering their opinion to be valid with your Latino comparison.
You are very confused. My critique of the letter and the class character of its signatories is already a recognition of it.
You have offered nothing but a series of bad faith attacks and lies. And in service of trying to undermine someone telling you to oppose genocide and not support genociders. Please do some introspection.
I have been consistent.
You are very confused and clearly did not understand that. I don’t think it was confusjnglu written, though. Feel free to ask questions.
There is a Palestinian owned grocery store here, with attached restaurant, that acts as a hub for their community here. Some are not going to vote, but the great majority are Kamala is not good for Palestine, but Trump is completely unacceptable to Palestine, every Muslim outside of the richest oil producers, and every Muslim in the US. So they are begrudgingly voting for Kamala. These people are not politically well connected, most are laborers, a handful are business owners, and white collar workers. Why do they do this if they aren’t politically connected, not in NGOs, etc.?
This is the opposite of my experience in Palestinian spaces in the US, including at community centers and community organizations. There have been some people attempting to organize support for Harris, but they have been shut down and signs against Harris put up. Of course among very politically engaged left groups of Palestinians the sentiment is 100% anti-Harris, but that is not representative. Both of these sentiments are things from across several states, including cities with large Palestinian populations. Also, to be clear, not all Palestinians are Muslim. These spaces are also not exclusively muslim. There are Palestinian Christians with this same trend.
Palestinians are not a monolith, of course. They will have diverse opinions.