In the presidential candidates' debate on September 10, Trump and Harris clashed over Israel. But the terms were not over WHETHER, but HOW to enable Israel to pursue the genocide in Gaza and increasingly throughout Palestine.
Trump set the terms by declaring, “She [Harris] hates Israel. If she's president, I believe that Israel will not exist within two years from now. And I've been pretty good at predictions.” In the last debate, Trump had repeated a similar charge against his then-rival Biden, and followed up by saying that he told Israel to “finish the job” and to effectively keep the press out when they did so.
Harris declared, “That's absolutely not true. I have my entire career and life supported Israel and the Israeli people. He knows that. He's trying to again divide and distract from the reality, which is, it is very well known that Donald Trump is weak and wrong on national security and foreign policy.”
Harris’s Double-Talk Cannot Hide the Blood on Her Fangs
Yes, Harris lamely tacked on claims to be working “around the clock” for a ceasefire to provide those Harris voters who profess to be troubled by, or even opposed to, the war with an excuse to ignore a reality of mass murder and truly horrible suffering, made in the USA and backed to the hilt by Harris’s Democratic Party.
In fact, the Biden administration has actually been “working around the clock” to shore up the U.S. position as the dominating power of the Middle East. The main end of that has been providing Israel with virtually unlimited weaponry to murder, maim, torture and destroy. At the same time, they have also advanced certain ceasefire proposals, at least in large part to deceive the vast majority of people around the world who hate what Israel is doing (for more on this, see here and here). And despite the fact Netan-nazi is the main one who has blocked and sabotaged every ceasefire agreement when it nears completion, the Biden-Harris administration has consistently lied that the obstacle to a ceasefire is Hamas, while as a matter of policy “insulating [Israel’s Prime Minister] Netanyahu from [public] criticism.”
Of course—and again, as a way to keep those Democratic voters who want to convince themselves that they can vote for a genocider and still be a decent person—after going on and on about how rabidly she supports Israel’s right to “defend itself” (carry out genocide), Harris once again added that “how it does so matters.”
Really? Here’s how Israel was “defending itself” on September 10, the very same day as Harris was bragging about supporting Israel her entire career (and calling “weak” the bloodthirsty Trump, who in the last debate called for Israel to “finish the job” and keep out the press when they did so):
Israel dropped at least two 2,000-pound bombs on defenseless Palestinian people in Gaza seeking shelter in the so-called “safe zone” in Al-Mawasi. Biden and Harris, who supposedly stopped enabling Israel to use 2,000-pound bombs against civilians, didn’t say a word in response! (See the sidebar, “The sky was filled with screams: The Challenge of the Al-Mawasi Slaughter.”)
Israel claimed that this massacre, carried out with these weapons of mass destruction, was a series of “precise strikes” aimed at a few Hamas operatives. That claim is so ridiculous, so outrageous, so intentionally unbelievable as to underline the reality that the real target of Israel’s slaughter in Gaza is not Hamas, but the ability of the Palestinian people to survive as a people.
What the MAGA Fascist Republicans and War Crimes Democrats Have in Common
What Trump (and the Republi-fascists) and Harris and the genocidal Democrats have in common is a recognition of the critical role Israel plays in U.S. capitalism-imperialism dominating the planet. In this, we again return to Bob Avakian’s social media dispatch (#7) from last January:
In the face of all the lies, it is crucial to keep coming back to this basic, essential reality: Here is the entire ruling class of the U.S., and all its major politicians, both Democrat and Republican, fully supporting an apartheid state, Israel, carrying out the genocidal slaughter of Palestinians in front of the whole world….
Why is Biden, and basically the entire government and ruling class of the U.S., supporting Israel in carrying out genocide against the Palestinian people, before the whole world? Here is the answer to that crucial question:
This is not because of “the power of the Jewish lobby”—or because of some ignorant, ridiculous and outrageous notion that “Jews are controlling everything.” It is because Israel plays a “special role” as a heavily armed bastion of support for U.S. imperialism in a strategically important part of the world (the “Middle East”). And Israel has been a key force in the commission of atrocities which have helped to maintain the oppressive rule of U.S. imperialism in many other parts of the world.
What We Need Now
People in this country—the country that is arming, enabling, and whitewashing Israel’s crimes—have a responsibility to do everything in our power to STOP THE GENOCIDE.
Right now, the rulers of this country are trying to shut down protest against Israel with blacklisting, censorship, suspension from school, and police violence. And, in a one-two punch, they are hitting people with BEB—bourgeois electoral bullshit. Literally hundreds of millions of dollars are being poured into portraying genocide-enabling Kamala Harris as a “lesser evil.”
But you, if you want to call yourself a decent person, need to proceed from the reality that Israel is escalating genocide and that this is being done in your name. You need to proceed from the reality that it has to STOP NOW.
As I said last week:
What we need now—particularly as school starts, and into what will be a politically volatile autumn—is renewed resistance against this U.S.-backed genocide. That resistance must reach out as broadly as possible, uniting all who can be united and waging this struggle as boldly as required to actually end the genocide. And very importantly, we need a movement with full and honest debate about the road forward for this struggle and for the future of humanity overall.
"The sky was filled with screams"
The Challenge of the Al-Mawasi Slaughter
What the crater in al-Mawasi means for Israel’s war on Gaza | From Al Jazeera, The Take, reporter Nils Adler
Al-Mawasi is refuge of last resort for Palestinian people in Gaza. Almost two million people—90 percent of Gaza’s population—have been displaced at least once by Israel’s U.S.-supplied missiles and bombs. UN reports estimate the displaced include over 40,000 pregnant women. In Al-Mawasi, people stand in line for hours to get water from aid agencies whose work is constantly harassed, even attacked by Israel. Multiple families are packed into a single tent.
An estimated 60 of those tents were hit with Israeli bombs on September 10.
Analysts from Al Jazeera, as well as three experts cited by the New York Times, concluded that the massive 50-foot-diameter holes left by bombs dropped by Israel on Al-Mawasi were from 2,000-pound bombs. These bombs are designed to be “bunker busters,” to penetrate steel-reinforced armed sites. And they explode in razor-sharp fragments that can kill people over several hundred feet away from the impact site.
Tala Herzallah, a 22-year-old woman from north Gaza, told Al Jazeera what it was like to be in the Al-Mawasi “safe zone” when Israeli bombs hit in the middle of the night.
We were all asleep. Then suddenly, everything was turned upside down—the colour of the sky changed. The scene was like one of my nightmares, but it was real life. The sound,… the huge damage the bombs caused, made us realise that these were meant for the largest buildings and not for tents made of the weakest materials in the world. I saw two colours—red and grey. Everything turned grey [from the dust], and there were red flames everywhere. The sky was filled with screams, crying and the sound of ambulances.… Now, we’re literally surrounded by death. It’s hard to admit, but this is our daily life now.
I am with my mom and dad, but my siblings aren’t with me. We’re trying to split up so that not all of us are gone in one second. One is abroad, and two are here—one in Deir el-Balah and the other at Nuseirat camp. Families are now being completely erased in one bomb. It’s so scary. We want people to be able to tell our stories. There’s no way they can get rid of all of us. This is our means of survival.
We want our readers to read that last paragraph again, and think about what it means that these are the calculations that some families are now making. This is a challenge to all of you: think about what Tala Herzallah says, about the calculations that now drive Tala and her family. Think about it… and act.