I registered to vote in 1998 and have voted Democrat ever since. I have not always had a good opinion of Democratic candidates. In fact, I have often felt angry, disillusioned, disappointed, and dirty after voting. Yet that was part of being a citizen in a pseudo-democracy. It was not the only task, but it was something.
In November, however, I have no intention of voting for the Democrats. If the party’s presidential candidate, Kamala Harris, does not change her policy on Israel, I will not vote for her.
And I won’t be alone. More than 700,000 Americans voted “noncommittal” in the Democratic primaries, demonstrating their rejection of the Democratic Party’s “unwavering” support for Israel.
If Harris wants to win the progressive vote, she must support an arms embargo on Israel and stop funding Israel’s genocide of Palestinians in Gaza. That’s a red line for many of us who haven’t bought into her liberal cult of personality.
When President Joe Biden finally dropped his bid for the 2024 Democratic presidential nomination on July 21, I was not one of the many people who applauded his endorsement of the vice president. Harris was on the wrong side of history as San Francisco’s district attorney when she opposed criminal justice reform, and she has been on the wrong side of history when it comes to Israel, of which she is a staunch supporter.
Yet a small part of me hoped she would be perceptive enough to understand the power of the “uncommitted” movement—which conditioned voting on support for an embargo on Israel and a permanent ceasefire in Gaza—and the level of outrage felt by those who oppose the ongoing genocide, funded over the past decade by U.S. aid. I was wrong.
At a rally in Detroit on August 7, Harris was greeted by a group of anti-genocide and pro-Palestine protesters who chanted, “Kamala, Kamala, you can’t hide! We will not vote for genocide!” In a democracy, this is a perfectly reasonable and acceptable (even necessary) action. Politicians serve the people, and the people have the right (and the responsibility) to make demands of their political leaders, especially when those leaders solicit their votes and campaign donations.
But Harris decided to respond: “You know what? If you want Donald Trump to win, say so. If you don’t, I’ll do the talking.”
What is the point of this attitude? The protesters were simply expressing their demand that Harris commit to stopping arming Israel in its genocidal war on Gaza. A war that has officially killed more than 40,000 people in Gaza; some estimates put the figure at 186,000 or more. A war that has put a million children at risk of starvation, according to the international nonprofit Save the Children. A war that has decimated Gaza’s health sector, leading to the re-emergence of polio infections for the first time in 25 years.
Many of us spend our days watching the most horrific images imaginable: toddlers decapitated by Israeli airstrikes, people burned alive in their tents, emaciated children starving to death, political prisoners brutally raped by Israeli soldiers. The atrocities continue. My days and nights are haunted by these images, and none of this would be possible without American help, without our tax dollars.
But Harris doesn’t want to respond to these perfectly reasonable demands – to stop funding this slaughter, this genocide, this horrific violence. Instead, she wants to be celebrated for her charisma, for her impact, for her energy.
This politics as a vibration is not new. It is just a celebrity culture that is intruding into politics. It can also be called fascist.
I am reminded of Erik Larson’s 2011 book, In the Garden of Beasts: Love, Terror, and an American Family in Hitler’s Berlin, which tells the story of William Dodd, the U.S. ambassador to Germany from 1933 to 1937, and his family. In the years since the book was published, I have thought occasionally of Dodd and often of his daughter, Martha, who accompanied him to Berlin.
The ambassador was chairman of the history department at the University of Chicago at the time of his appointment and simply wanted to be allowed to finish his book on the American South before the Civil War. He was somewhat concerned but not overly alarmed by what was happening in Germany, telling President Franklin Roosevelt, “Give men a chance to try out their plans” as the Nazi party prepared to deny citizenship to Jews.
Martha, meanwhile, was caught up in the “glamour” of the Nazi party and its social life, frequenting and sleeping with Nazi officers.
Many liberals I know are a kind of William or Martha Dodd. Like William, they are either too concerned with their own comfort to care about the daily atrocities experienced and endured by Palestinians, or, like Martha, they approach politics through the framework of celebrity culture and feel-good sentiment, happy to fangirl over Harris, whose charisma and Beyoncé-inspired ads overshadow the boring reality of genocide.
After all, it’s about feeling good. “Don’t ruin our fun!” they shout at me (and so many others) on social media. The outrage is deafening. But you can’t live on your emotions alone.
In her memoirs, written a few years after she left Nazi Germany, Martha admitted that she did not really like Jews. This casual anti-Semitism prefigures today’s liberal attitudes toward Palestinians, a contempt rooted in Islamophobia and anti-Arab racism that are at the root of genocide.
This is a defining moment: We must pressure Democrats to change their position on Gaza before the November elections. We should all do absolutely everything in our power to end the genocide, but the bare minimum right now is to demand that a presidential candidate who needs our votes commit to ending U.S. funding to Israel. It’s not that complicated.
Harris may be the lesser evil to Donald Trump, but the lesser evil is still evil. If she wants to win in November, she needs to offer us more than just atmosphere and celebrity culture—she needs to make a real commitment to ending the genocide in Gaza, first and foremost by not funding it. Anything less would cost her the progressive vote and, quite possibly, the presidency. If that happens, liberals across the country will likely blame a nebulous “left-progressive” bloc, but ultimately, the loss will be on Harris herself.
The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial position of Tel Aviv Tribune.