Dispatch #148 White Lesbian Age 72 Considers That Kamala Harris Promises Joy and Justice at the DNC, But Refuses to Address the Extreme Suffering of Palestinians Caused by Israel
- Kathleen A. Maloy
- Aug 27, 2024
- 8 min read
Updated: Aug 24
August 28th 2024 1315 Days Since Inauguration of First Woman Vice-President
69 Days Until 2024 Presidential Elections 11/5/2024
796 Days Since SCOTUS Ruled American Women Don’t Have Human Rights
327 Days Since Israel Began Genocidal Assault on Palestinians in Gaza
At the Democratic National Convention, uncommitted delegates – who voted uncommitted in their state primaries to protest the Biden Administration’s funding for Israel’s war on Gaza – made one request to the Harris/Walz campaign: allow a Palestinian American doctor 5 minutes on the stage to speak to the delegates about the unimaginable suffering of Palestinians, especially children, caused by Israel’s brutal and relentless attacks on Gaza. The campaign refused.
As the world watches this US-funded genocide broadcast on multiple social media platforms, Secretary of State Blinken roams the Middle East peddling “bridging conditions” to the UN-Security-Council-approved/Hamas-accepted-ceasefire agreement. As Israel continues to rain carnage on Palestinians and the US continues to send billions in arms to Israel, Harris’s statement that the US is working ceaselessly to gain a ceasefire is obviously a lie – an arms embargo would immediately yield a permanent ceasefire.
Democrats to Palestinians: Drop dead | Michael F. Brown | Power Suits/Electric Intifada 27 August 2024
The Democrats’ ignore-the-Gaza-genocide gala concluded last week in Chicago with presidential nominee Kamala Harris insisting that as “commander in chief, I will ensure America always has the strongest, most lethal fighting force in the world.”
She was determined to show voters she can be more bellicose than any Republican candidate. Democratic delegates were enthralled. Indeed, as The Electronic Intifada livestream discussed last week, the party platform brags about how willing the Democrats are to bomb other countries, in contrast to Donald Trump’s supposed “weakness.”
Harris will make President Joe Biden’s genocide in Gaza – in which she is already fully complicit – her own chartreuse genocide. She saw no need to mention dispossession, apartheid or occupation. Many delegates didn’t want to hear about these realities funded, supported and justified by Democrats and Republicans alike or be told about Palestinian casualties.
Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Senator Bernie Sanders disappointed Gaza genocide protesters with vague calls for a “ceasefire” that were devoid of any call for action from their own ruling party to bring it about: namely, cutting off the weapons supply to Israel. Ocasio-Cortez claimed falsely that Harris is “working tirelessly to secure a ceasefire in Gaza and bring the hostages home.” This sort of language has been heard for months about the Biden administration, which continues to use the cover of endless “ceasefire negotiations” in which Washington acts as Israel’s lawyer to buy time for Israel to continue its extermination campaign in Gaza.
There is a stark recognition among many anti-genocide protesters that Democrats are responsible for the worst of what humans can do to fellow humans. Democrats will now be associated with genocide for a whole generation of young people and protesters.
The foregoing indictment is NOT about whether Democrats or uncommitted should vote. Electing the fascist Trump and his acolytes will only hasten the extermination of the Palestinian people and the forfeiture of their land. When we elect Kamala Harris, then she must be held accountable for US complicity in genocide. When we elect down ballot Democrats who will demand an arms embargo against Israel, then we must continue to be in the streets until this demand is met. Activism, justice, morality and practicality must occasionally collaborate.
“Trying to Repeat the Nakba”: Israel Launches Largest Military Raids in West Bank in Two Decades. The Israeli military has launched its biggest operation in the occupied West Bank in close to two decades, with hundreds of troops, backed by armored vehicles, bulldozers, fighter jets and drones. Democracy Now! 28 August 2024
Dr. Mustafa Barghouti reports: The Israeli army is invading not only Jenin and Tulkarm and Nur Shams camp and Tubas and Faraa camp; they are invading in so many areas in the West Bank. So many villages tonight were attacked and continue to be attacked. Hundreds of people have been arrested in this campaign. And the worst thing is that the Israeli army and bulldozers are destroying the infrastructure in many refugee camps, especially Nur Shams camp and Jenin camp. They are destroying roads. They are destroying power infrastructure. They are destroying water pipelines. They are destroying homes. And there is no limit to what they are doing. And at the same time, the world is watching and doing nothing.
Israel trying to transfer the genocide war that is conducted in Gaza and the war of ethnic cleansing from Gaza to the West Bank. And what we see here is a unilateral war from the side of a huge Israeli army, which has airplanes, which has tanks, which has huge number of soldiers, against a basically civilian Palestinian population.
You have to understand that the West Bank is an area that has been under Israeli military occupation continuously since 1967, so it’s an occupied territory. And now the Israeli army is conducting a war on occupied people. It’s the worst and gravest possible violation of international law that governs the behavior of an occupying power. Their goal is ethnic cleansing. Their goal is annexation of the West Bank.” www.democracynow.org/2024/8/28/west_bank_raids_mustafa_barghouti
Killing Their Way to Peace | Tareq Baconi | New York Review of Books 15 August 2024
Israel’s targeted assassinations have never succeeded at dismantling Palestinian resistance movements. Now they threaten to set off a regional war.
The Biden administration, either in reckless adventurism or utter weakness, is allowing itself to be pulled into a war not of its choosing by a nation intent on maintaining a genocide with no achievable military goal, legal basis, or moral justification; a nation that the international human rights community, before October 7, had accused of committing the crime of apartheid against the Palestinian people, and whose leaders face possible arrest warrants issued against them by the International Criminal Court.
In the process, Netanyahu is driving the US’s interests further from those of its supposed ally. A regional conflict would not be limited to Palestinians, or even to Lebanon and Iran; it could quickly expand to include Iraq, Syria, and Yemen, with dramatic consequences for Jordan and Egypt. Yet rather than use America’s military, diplomatic, and political leverage to demand a cease-fire, Biden softly urges Israel’s leaders to abide by the agreement they ostensibly brokered, even as he refills their military and financial arsenals and defends them in the international arena.
All evidence suggests that these recent assassinations are at best a pyrrhic victory. Israel may keep claiming that, in Haniyeh’s absence, it will corner Hamas into a cease-fire, that a peace can be forced onto Gaza, and that its actions are deterring Iran and Hezbollah. But this rings hollow. Israel has never looked weaker, more divided, or more erratic, and alongside its American ally it has made a mockery of international governance and the rules of war. Netanyahu and Biden both seem poised to make the same mistake as their predecessors: to believe that Israel can kill its way to peace.
U.S.-Led Ceasefire Talks Are Just Buying More Time for Israel’s Genocide | The Intercept | Sunjeev Bery 22 August 2024
For anyone paying attention, it is now abundantly clear that the U.S.-led Gaza ceasefire talks have become a tool for the perpetuation of Israel’s genocidal war. What began as a liberatory demand by Rep. Cori Bush and grassroots peace advocates has now been fully co-opted by President Joe Biden, Vice President Kamala Harris, and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. The so-called ceasefire negotiations are a form of camouflage that is being deployed by Biden and Harris to distract from the reality of their support for Israel’s mass atrocities in Gaza.
One of the worst examples of this came earlier this week, when progressive icon Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez stood at the podium of the Democratic National Convention on Monday and wrongly praised Harris for “working tirelessly to secure a ceasefire in Gaza and bringing hostages home.” Ocasio-Cortez offered Democratic voters the seductive fiction of Harris as a vice president who is doing something other than enabling the continued supply of U.S. weapons for the daily massacre of Palestinian civilians.
To believe that Biden and Harris push for a real ceasefire is to accept the fantasy that they can be advocates for peace when they are already the primary enablers of genocide. The blunt reality is that Biden and Harris must be pushed to enact a full arms embargo on Israel and end U.S. support for Israel’s genocide of Palestinians. That may seem too politically difficult to achieve, but to continue to talk of ceasefires is to unwittingly enable Israel’s genocide by failing to accurately describe what the U.S. is actually doing.
What you Didn't Hear at DNC: Israeli Expulsion Decrees Disrupt last Gaza Aid Hub, jeopardizing Aid Workers, Thousands of Civilians | Juan Cole| 23 August 2024
Norwegian Refugee Council is saying that when the Israeli commanders keep pushing thousands of families from one place to another, they are also displacing the humanitarian volunteers who are trying to provide them food, water, medicine and other essentials that are in short supply. They note that at least 24 non-governmental organizations have reported disruptions due to these directives in the past week, resulting in the forced relocation of staff, obstructed operations, and the abandonment of at least one location sheltering civilians under assault. Warehouses storing supplies are situated within the areas subjected to these orders, making them inaccessible.
Sally Abi Khalil, Oxfam’s Regional Director for the Middle East and North Africa, is quoted as saying, “Palestinians in Gaza have been relentlessly uprooted, forced from one so-called ‘safe’ area to the next, enduring unimaginable hardship and loss. Among them are brave humanitarian workers who risk their lives every day to save others. Our ability to provide meaningful aid in any part of Gaza does not meet our ambitions, let alone the overwhelming needs. Deir al-Balah, once declared a humanitarian zone, is now under attack with bombardment at our doorstep.” www.juancole.com/2024/08/expulsion-jeopardizing-civilians.html
Israeli society’s dehumanization of Palestinians is now absolute | +972 Magazine | Meron Rapoport | 23 August 2024 https://www.972mag.com/dehumanization-moral-abyss-israelis/
Message from the DNC: The Democrats do not care about Palestinians | Mondoweiss | Mitchell Plitnick | 23 August 2024 |
The Democratic National Convention did not go well for supporters of Palestinian rights where Democrats were largely successful in burying their deep complicity in the Gaza genocide. https://mondoweiss.net/2024/08/message-from-the-dnc-the-democrats-do-not-care-about-palestinians/
Western media can be held legally accountable for its role in the Gaza genocide | Craig Mokhiber | Mondoweiss 24 August 2024 |
Western media companies have made themselves a part of the mechanism of genocide in Palestine, and there are historical precedents for holding them accountable. https://mondoweiss.net/2024/08/western-media-can-be-held-legally-accountable-for-its-role-in-the-gaza-genocide/
Israel’s ‘wanton destruction’ fueling suffering and violence in Gaza | UN – Middle East Monitor | 22 August 2024 |
Tor Wennesland, UN Special Coordinator for Middle East Peace Process, addressed the UN Security Council highlighting the devastating impact of Israeli airstrikes on Gaza’s civilian infrastructure, including schools and mosques, saying that the “wanton destruction of civilian infrastructure is fueling suffering and violence, which is reverberating throughout the broader region.” He stressed that many Palestinians in Gaza feel they have “nowhere safe left to turn.” The re-emergence of polio in Gaza is linked to Israel’s destruction of water and sanitation infrastructure and the blocking of clean water. www.middleeastmonitor.com/20240822-israels-wanton-destruction-fuelling-suffering-and-violence-in-gaza-un/
Israeli army invades ‘most crowded displacement camp in history,’ bombs Palestinians in shelters | Mondoweiss | Tareq S. Hajjaj 22 August 2024 |
Over the past week, the Israeli army has ordered a million civilians to evacuate central Gaza, and has bombed two schools sheltering displaced people in Gaza City mere minutes after issuing warnings. https://mondoweiss.net/2024/08/israeli-army-invades-most-crowded-displacement-camp-in-history-bombs-palestinians-in-shelters/
Gaza: wounded Palestinians will need ‘half a million’ surgical procedures post-war – | Middle East Monitor | 22 August 2024
A Palestinian health official has said that Palestinians wounded in Gaza as a result of the Israeli war will need to undergo about half a million surgical procedures if and when the fighting ends, Anadolu Agency has reported.
“There are more than 94,000 wounded persons in Gaza who each need an average of three to four surgical procedures post-war,” explained Abdul Latif Al-Hajj. “Israel is disregarding all humanitarian values and international laws by bombing hospitals, schools and kindergartens.”
Al-Hajj added that the healthcare system in Gaza faces major, bordering on catastrophic, challenges, including the loss of more than 70 per cent of its clinical capacity due to the bombing of hospitals and clinics, which has taken them out of service.
According to the Palestinian official, 14 hospitals in Gaza are currently in operation, of which only four are major centres; the rest are small non-governmental clinics. He pointed out that more than 50 per cent of essential medicines and 60 per cent of laboratory materials are currently unavailable in Gaza. More than 880 healthcare workers have been killed since the beginning of the war, he added. www.middleeastmonitor.com/20240822-gaza-wounded-palestinians-will-need-half-a-million-surgical-procedures-post-war/
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