Harris wants to bring ‘joy, joy, joy’ to Americans. And more bombs for Palestinians

Pro-Palestinian protesters at the Democratic convention have been met with stony faces, jeers – and violence

NB: What does it mean, when tens of thousands of Palestinian corpses and mutilated children mean less to you than Israel’s so-called right to commit genocide? What kind of peace will descend upon Palestinians who have been stateless since 1948 and subjected to innumerable acts of mass murder and daily humiliation? Why does the American establishment presume the rest of the global public is deaf, dumb, and blind to this mountain of grief perpetrated with American weapons? The fundamentalist core of Zionism is the ethnic cleansing of the area of so-called Eretz Israel. That’s part of what expansionist Zionists mean by the term ‘from the river to the sea‘. Legitimacy is sought and found in the Old Testament. Simply put, it signifies the usage of the Bible as a title deed to land. This is blatant racism; and all those who keep silent about this nightmare are complicit. Shame on the ‘leaders of the free world’, shame on all those who sneer and jeer at the suffering of the Palestinian people. DS

What is granted under fear can be retained only so long as the fear lasts: Mahatma Gandhi (1909)

Victory attained by violence is tantamount to a defeat, for it is momentary: Mahatma Gandhi (1919)

What difference does it make to the dead, the orphans and the homeless, whether the mad destruction is wrought under the name of totalitarianism or the holy name of liberty… ? Mahatma Gandhi (1942)

Arwa Mahdawi

Got any spare brooms to hand? I think the folk at the Democratic national convention may need a few extra because they’ve been very busy this week trying to sweep the carnage in Gaza under the rug.

Hope and joy have been the big themes of the convention. On Wednesday, Hakeem Jeffries, the House minority leader, told the crowd that working to get Kamala Harris elected would mean “joy, joy, joy comes in the morning”. It is wonderful to see all this exuberance, all this optimism for a brighter future. But it is also impossible not to contrast the revelry in Chicago with the Biden administration-sponsored suffering coming out of Gaza.

Well, it’s impossible for some of us, anyway. For plenty of delegates at the convention, the suffering of Palestinians, the harrowing images on social media of charred babies and toddlers in Gaza whose heads have been caved in from US-manufactured bombs, seem to be nothing more than an annoying distraction. Pro-Palestinian protesters at the convention haven’t just been met with stony faces, they’ve been met with jeers and violence. One delegate inside the convention was caught on camera repeatedly hitting a Muslim woman in the head with a “We Love Joe” sign. The woman’s crime was that she had peacefully unfurled a banner saying “Stop Arming Israel”. It’s not clear who the man assaulting this woman was but one imagines he will not face any consequences.

To be fair, Gaza hasn’t been completely ignored. On Monday, there was a panel centered on Palestinian human rights, in which Dr Tanya Haj-Hassan, a pediatric doctor who treated patients in Gaza, talked about the horrors she had witnessed. But the panel, while important, wasn’t on the main stage. It wasn’t given star billing like the parents of the Israeli-American hostage Hersh Goldberg-Polin, who gave an emotional speech on Wednesday. It felt a lot like pro-Palestinian activists had just been tossed a few crumbs.

For a brief moment, it did seem like a Palestinian might get a proper chance to speak. The Uncommitted National Movement, which launched an anti-war protest vote during the primaries, had been urging convention officials to include two Palestinian American speakers on the convention’s main stage. “We are learning that Israeli hostages’ families will be speaking from the main stage. We strongly support that decision and also strongly hope that we will also be hearing from Palestinians who’ve endured the largest civilian death toll since 1948,” the movement’s statement released on Tuesday read.

By Wednesday evening, however, it seemed clear that the convention had rejected these requests. In response, a group of uncommitted delegates staged a sit-in in front of Chicago’s United Center. Ilhan Omar joined the demonstration, and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez called in via FaceTime.

In light of the convention’s refusal to have a Palestinian American speaker, the group Muslim Women for Harris made the decision to disband and withdraw support for Harris. “The family of the Israeli hostage that was on the stage tonight, has shown more empathy towards Palestinian Americans and Palestinians, than our candidate or the DNC has,” Muslim Women for Harris’s statement read.

For those of us who have been cautiously optimistic that Harris might break from Joe Biden’s disastrous policy of unconditional support for Israel, this week has been bitterly disappointing. Whoever wins this election, it seems clear joy, joy, joy will not be coming to Gaza anytime soon. Just more bombs, bombs, bombs.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/article/2024/aug/23/harris-joy-campaign-overlooks-palestinians

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