I’m glad to see the excitement the nomination of Kamala Harris has brought to the Democratic party, to the whole country.
The glaring problem for the Democrats is how to support Palestinians while the Biden administration continues its complicity in the genocide, starvation, devastation and killing that continues, unrelenting, in Gaza. The bombs continue to fall on children.
I was at the point where I didn’t think I could vote for President Biden because of his support of and the of billions of dollars given to Israel for its relentless, horrific war.
But I struggled with the idea that not voting for Biden would be helping the Republican candidate.
I, as well as some other pro-Palestinian supporters, seem willing to wait to see how Kamala Harris will handle these complex problems. Her remarks have been more supportive of Palestinians and their plight than President Biden has.
Vice President Kamala Harris made some of her most direct and extended remarks yet on the war in the Gaza Strip as she accepted her party’s presidential nomination Thursday night, addressing an issue that has divided Democrats and drawn thousands of protesters to the Democratic National Convention in Chicago.
Offering a forceful defense of Israel and its right to protect itself, she said she was working round-the-clock with President Joe Biden to reach a cease-fire deal in Gaza that would involve the release of American and Israeli hostages still being held by the militant group Hamas.
“Because now is the time to get a hostage deal and a cease-fire deal done,” she told a packed Chicago United Center.
As Harris described a postwar future in which Palestinians can “realize their right to dignity, security, freedom and self-determination,” the crowd erupted with one of the loudest cheers of the night.
Harris strikes balance on Gaza at DNC, in her most extended remarks on war. The Democratic presidential nominee said she would “always stand up for Israel’s right to defend itself,” but also directly addressed the suffering in Gaza by Andrew Jeong and Yasmeen Abutaleb, The Washington Post, 8/23/2024
Palestinian American speaker was not allowed to speak at the Democratic National Convention
The decision to refuse to have a Palestinian American speak at the convention was perhaps the most contentious thing that happened at the DNC.
U.S Arms Embargo
I’m very glad to see Kamala Harris and the Democratic party calling for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza. But that won’t be enough. I believe an embargo of U.S. arms sales to Israel is essential.
It makes no sense to work for a ceasefire in Gaza while, at the same time, we continue sending billions of dollars of arms to Israel. As I wrote yesterday, there are growing calls for a U.S. arms embargo on Israel. https://unflinching.blog/2024/08/22/a-time-of-dark-shame/
Rep. Jamaal Bowman (D-N.Y.) said Monday that he’s hoping Vice President Harris will call for a U.S. arms embargo on Israel before November’s election.
Bowman, an outspoken critic of Israel’s conduct in the war with Hamas, noted that Harris has already taken a more aggressive position on the conflict than President Biden has — at least rhetorically. He said her next step, as she vies to succeed Biden in the Oval Office, should be to endorse a pause in U.S. weapons sales to Tel Aviv for the sake of protecting Palestinian civilians.
“She was the first to say ceasefire – she’s said it multiple times. An arms embargo’s the next step,” Bowman said during the Democratic National Convention in Chicago. “And so I would like to hear her say that before the election, absolutely. Is she going to say it? I don’t know.”
Bowman wants Harris to support an arms embargo on Israel by Mike Lillis. The Hill, 08/19/24
I appreciate what Ami Chen Mills-Naim writes below. “We have always lived in this world of human contradictions, of love and war. Of great kindness and horrific calamity.”
This moment feels like a struggle between some kind of hope beyond hope and the way power has operated throughout recorded history, IMHO. If we are to have any chance of survival on this planet, if we are to live in peace, we are going to need to address the corporate voraciousness and mass consumption that drive imperialism and exploitation. We need to dramatically change our systems. We need to address the greed and sense of internal emptiness that drive greed. We need to actually face that emptiness and find the thing and no-thing beyond it.
Wisdom, love, letting go.
Being at a convention of the national party that might win the White House in November — in perhaps still the most powerful nation on Earth — and to have a Jewish, white man (Doug Emhoff) talk about how he quit his job to move to DC to support his mixed Black and Indian wife as Senator, and then to have that woman be our Presidential nominee, with a VP who organized his high school’s first gay-straight alliance … and to have the night be headlined by a Black couple, held aloft by this roaring crowd … this means something.
I think it means more than a lot of cynical people, and especially folks who are not people of color, nor women, nor Queer, know or feel.
What we don’t know yet is if the experiences of oppression so many of us have lived with will translate into domestic and foreign policy that is about liberation for poor folks, POC, and women and Queer people around the world. Because it is these groups that best understand the ravages of runaway capitalism, racism and patriarchy. Of greed.
I was moved at the convention. I allowed myself to be moved because, really, we have always lived in this world of human contradictions, of love and war. Of great kindness and horrific calamity. I will be moved as well as horrified. Otherwise, I am not really living. As Gangaji has said: “The heart can hold it all.”Love and Loathing at the DNC. At the DNC in Chicago this year, we are asked to “hold it all.” Some reflections from the seat of Empire and also from this place — this idea, this illusion, this dream — we call “America” … The All of It by Ami Chen Mills-Naim, Medium
unflinching 