“Genocide is not a political problem. It is a moral one. We cannot, no matter what the cost, support those who commit or are accomplices to genocide. Genocide is the crime of all crimes. It is the purest expression of evil. We must stand unequivocally with Palestinians and the jurists from South Africa. We must demand justice. We must hold Biden accountable for the genocide in Gaza.”
Chris Hedges
As I’ve mentioned before I’ve flirted with leaving the Democratic Party for quite some time now but when it actually came to election day actions I would dutifully vote for the democrats as the lesser of two evils. That has changed. The Democrats have gone from the lesser of two evils to the party actively participating in genocide. It started with supplying the arms to Israel. It escalated to having our military fly drone surveillance over Gaza and then boots on the ground at secret bases in Syria and Jordan. In a more recent development, the Biden administration has decided to defund the UNRWA the main agency trying to help Palestinians, based on dubious claims made by Israel who has repeatedly been caught lying about many aspects of the ongoing genocide. This effectively is an attempt to starve the Palestinian people.
As of this writing more than 25,000 Palestinians have been murdered including more than 12,000 children. This deliberate slaughter is being carried out almost exclusively by American made weapons supplied by the Biden administration. The administration had to circumvent their own policy to supply these weapons. In February of 2023, the Biden administration implemented a new Commercial Arms Transfer ( CAT ) policy that said that the State Department would not approve arms transfers that “more likely than not,” will be used to commit or facilitate genocide, crimes against humanity, breaches of the Geneva Conventions, or serious violations of international law. All of this was clearly happening when this administration approved billions of dollars in weapons transfers to Israel.
Which brings me to the point of this essay. As everyone knows, Joe Biden is up for re-election, and he is running against Donald Trump in a rematch of the 2020 election. I cannot bring myself to vote for someone who tried to overthrow our government and I cannot vote for someone who is actively participating in genocide. Any belated attempt by the Biden administration to stop the slaughter will be too little, too late.
The most distressing part of this horror domestically is how little the democrats, and their supporters care about being the party of genocide. They are going about the business of the 2024 presidential election as if the Biden administration is not committing genocide even though they have supplied an endless flow of arms to Israel, have supplied boots on the ground to prevent Hezbollah from opening up another front, attacked the Yemenis for their attempts to stop the genocide and defunded the UNRWA making it harder for the survivors in Gaza to get desperately needed food and medical supplies. That is evil on a monumental scale.
I am not a person who has a large coterie of people I would consider close friends. I have never had the social graces to develop many close friendships and the few close friends that I did cultivate scattered around the country and we lost track of each other. Some have died. In the last ten years or so, because of my attempts at activism I have many of what I consider friendly acquaintances and it’s been my conversations with them that have been particularly distressing.
It started out with the denial that a genocide was taking place. Some blamed Hamas, as if the whole situation started on Oct. 7th, not decades ago before Hamas was even created. Some acknowledged that what Israel was doing was evil. Some even went so far as to call it by its proper name, GENOCIDE, but even the one’s that were willing to call it genocide still are clinging on to a strange cognitive dissonance that allows them to acknowledge genocide and still say they will vote for Biden any way.
The world that said “Never Again,” after WWII has repeatedly stood by and watched genocide unfold in places like Bosnia, Rwanda and Myanmar and it was somewhat understandable that many Americans were indifferent to events in far away places but now that our government is committing the greatest of all evils it is our duty, not as Americans but as members of the human race to unequivocally denounce those complicit in genocide and not reward them with another opportunity to lead this country. Biden is the ringleader but he has plenty of support in congress. Very few democrats have been willing to condemn the Biden administration’s role in committing genocide.
I have talked to some people who I respected, and it deeply saddens me the ways in which they try to justify their support for Genocide Joe. I’ve tried hard not to burn any bridges but I know I will not be able to look at these people the same way again, people who I once thought decent, caring people still support a genocidal regime and there are millions of people like them in the country who will dutifully go to the polls in November and pull that lever marked genocide.
I agree 100% with what you've so eloquently described. I've had so many people tell me it will be partially my fault if Trump wins because I can't bring myself to vote for Biden. According to my son and his fiancee, I will ruin their lives and any children they might have. I've been a human rights and civil rights activist for all his 28 years of life, so that hurt. My first response was “Have you met me?” Ha! He knows where my moral compass is and the red lines I've had since his birth. I tried to explain to him I can not support Biden or any other Democrats who are okay with funding or arming genocide. It's not a temper tantrum. It would go against everything that makes me who I am.