This is a letter to people who care about the human beings who are being killed, tortured, starved, dehumanized, and subjected to some of the most depraved crimes against humanity. I’m talking about Israel’s U.S.-backed slaughter of the Palestinian people in Gaza. This is a letter especially to those people in the U.S. who have risked their education, their careers, their bodies, their friendships and relationships to STOP the genocide. 

But who… in angst and agony, are trying to navigate which “lesser evil” to support in this election.

In this letter I will make a case that you cannot stop but you will enable genocide by choosing a “lesser evil.” That this is a time to fight the criminal system behind the genocide, not become complicit with it. And that we have a responsibility to humanity to seize a very rare chance to bring into being something completely different and much better than this system through an actual revolution. 

This is not a dream. It is evidence-based reality. Stick with me on this, the stakes are historic.

Expecting Anything but Genocide in Gaza from Harris (or Trump) Is Delusional

You know the situation. On October 17, UN agencies reported that more than 1.8 million people, or almost 90 percent of Gaza’s population, are experiencing crisis levels of hunger! And Israel has been dramatically escalating mass murder by shutting off almost all food aid for two weeks. 

As I write this, the New York Times is reporting that the Biden administration warned Israel that “failure to allow the delivery of more humanitarian aid within 30 days could trigger a cutoff of military aid.” [Emphasis added] Taking that warning seriously, at least without a major change in the scale, scope and determination of struggle to STOP THE GENOCIDE here and around the world, is the depths of self-delusion. 

Biden has been issuing “demands” that Israel dial down the "optics" of the most barbaric genocide from the earliest days when Israel seized on Hamas’s October 7 raid to escalate decades of ongoing slow genocide into wholesale slaughter in Gaza. Less than a month after October 7, Biden and Harris warned Israel of “dire consequences” relating to U.S. military aid if Israel didn’t reduce the scale of “humanitarian suffering” including targeting refugee camps. 

The genocide escalated and the flow of U.S. weapons did too. 

In April 2024, Biden said he would stop “weapons that have been used historically” by Israel if Israel all-out invaded Rafah. After that happened, on September 11, 2024, Israel used U.S.-supplied 2,000-pound bombs on desperate refugees in tents in Al-Mawasi. And Harris has been literally in the middle of all this.

Listen to Them!

Even when Harris needed the support of the millions of people in this country who wanted to see a cutoff of U.S. arms for Israel, she banned any Palestinian speaker from speaking at the Democratic National Convention. And the Democrats flooded the convention with American flags and chants of “USA! USA!” 

Even now, when Harris desperately needs the votes of Palestinians and others who are outraged by Israel’s genocide in Gaza in Michigan and other “swing states,” the New York Times reported that her team’s message is that “the empathy she has expressed as vice president should not be confused with willingness to break from American foreign policy toward Israel as a presidential candidate” (emphasis added).

And Trump!? In May he told supporters, “Any [yes, he said any] student that protests [Israel], I throw them out of the country.” Venting your anger at the Democrats for enabling Israel’s genocide by voting for Trump is enlisting in that!

Stopping an Aggressive and Deadly Threat to Humanity Requires Acting on a Scientific Diagnosis

Why are Biden, Harris, and Trump such determined supporters of Israel? 

Yes, there is the Israel lobby, AIPAC. Yes, the establishment media systematically covers up, lies, and dehumanizes the Palestinian people while describing Israel as “besieged” as it creates death, destruction, and terror now throughout the whole region. These things are part of the picture. But—to put it in medical terms—these are symptoms of the problem. They are not the source of the problem any more than a ferociously aggressive malignant (cancerous) tumor can be understood and treated as just pain and bleeding.

The problem is a system of exploitation from child laborers in the coffee plantations of Honduras and the mines of Congo to enslaved women in the sweatshops of Bangladesh. And that system, capitalism-imperialism, is a dog-eat-dog system enforced by the most horrific and depraved violence and terror. Harris and Trump are cold-blooded embodiments of this system. And when it comes to operating as the U.S. empire’s rabid dog in a strategic region, there is nothing like Israel. That is why, despite their ferocious differences, both the MAGA fascists and the war criminal Democrats are “all in” on backing Israel.

Trying to end the genocide in Gaza while channeling outrage into support for a “lesser evil” representing this system is as useless, and harmful, as trying to deal with a malignant tumor with band-aids and aspirin. 

But there is a way to stop this—it is not an easy solution, but is the only way out.

A Chance We Cannot Pass Up

Analyzing the situation we face requires the kind of breakthroughs in understanding reality, and acting on it that are concentrated in the new communism brought forward by revolutionary leader Bob Avakian (BA). This leadership is the microscope and telescope that allows us to get deeper than seeing surface phenomena; to confront the underlying dynamics behind what is going on in the world right now and what to do about it.

As part of decades of work and analysis, BA has made a scientific assessment that because of the intense contradictions this system has given rise to here and around the world, and most of all, because of how the rulers of this country are more divided than they have been since the Civil War, there is an opening for revolution that may not exist again for a long, long time. And humanity cannot afford for us to pass up this chance.

BA is providing leadership for this revolution in his frequent and timely social media postings and he breaks down why this revolution is more possible now, and what we need to be doing to seize on this: 

The basic reason why this revolution is possible now is because those who have ruled this country for so long are bitterly and deeply divided among themselves, while the country as a whole is being torn apart by divisions that can no longer be covered over and things can no longer be held together in the way they have been for generations.

Everything will very likely be coming to a head and coming up for grabs this year, 2024, with the presidential election this year a sharp focus of the fight between the dominating ruling class parties—Democrats and Republicans—a fight that is very likely to break all out of the bounds of the “normal way” they exercise power over the people, and keep their whole murderous system going.

This kind of deep division—and especially this bitter antagonism among the powers-that-be—has not been seen in this country since the time of the Civil War way back in the 1860s.

This is not a time to be siding with one group of oppressors or another. This is a rare time—a very rare opening—a chance that may come only once in a lifetime—a chance to take advantage of the deep divisions among the ruling oppressors and go after their whole system, with the aim of bringing the whole thing down, and putting something much better in its place.

This rare time must not be squandered—wasted and thrown away. It must be actively and urgently seized on—to bring about a truly emancipating revolution.

 —REVOLUTION #8 @BobAvakianOfficial, “Revolution could happen: right here, right in this time”

This revolution would put into place a system based on the Constitution for the New Socialist Republic in North America, written by BA. This is a concrete blueprint and inspiring vision for a whole different and far better system.  One that includes “the ultimate goal of finally abolishing wars among human beings, with the abolition of the capitalist-imperialist system, and all systems and relations of exploitation and oppression, which are the basis for wars.” This is a revolution for a society with a core value that “the needs of the world revolution come first.” (See We Need and We Demand: A Whole New Way to Live, A Fundamentally Different System.)

A Responsibility to Humanity

It has meant a great deal to the people in Gaza, and people throughout historic Palestine under Israel’s genocidal apartheid, to see courageous students and others in this country defying slanders, censorship, blacklisting, and police brutality to demand an end to the genocide! That inspiring struggle must extend into every corner of society.

Now, imagine what it would mean to the Palestinian people, and people all around this world, to see an emancipating revolution get on the stage in this country. And even more, think about what it would mean for the world for that revolution to win. It would lift a terrible yoke off humanity and pose a whole other way the world could be to people fighting to be free everywhere. We have a chance to make that happen!

An actual revolution here in the country responsible for so much misery and death is not just a dream, or something that would be wonderful (it is!). It is the only realistic way to bring about sustainable, meaningful, radically better change.

If you are moved by this argument, the next step is to follow Bob Avakian, the leader of this revolution, the author of a new communism, on social media: @BobAvakianOfficial is on every social media channel.  And donate to reaching millions with this voice.