The Moral Dilemma of This Moment

Democrats' Joy and Palestine Justice

I didn't get to watch the Democratic convention live, because I'm traveling in France and teaching right now. But I did listen to most of it, thanks to MSNBC’s rebroadcasting and Rachel Maddow’s podcast. I admit it, I love a good political speech. As a writer and someone who does a fair amount of public speaking myself, I enjoy hearing language well deployed, and the convention featured an abundance of great orators, from Michelle Obama to folksy Tim Walz to Kamala Harris herself. The joy and energy were infectious enough to lift my heart thousands of miles away.

And yet amidst all the joy there remains the shadow. As someone who has been active in the struggle for justice for Palestine for many decades, I cannot forget the death, the slaughter, the starvation, and the sheer scale of suffering going on now in Gaza, and spreading wholesale to the West Bank, and the northern border with Lebanon. Our permaculture course included seven incredible students from Lebanon who are doing food sovereignty and social justice work, and their presence brought home even more the seriousness of the struggle and the danger for that entire region.

Nor can I forget the pain and horror suffered by Israelis in the Hamas attack, and the ongoing plight of the hostages.  Yet that pain cannot justify the wholesale slaughter of the Palestinian people, nor its funding and arming by the US.

Now the Convention is over and the run up to the election itself begins. I so want to throw all of my energy and influence behind the effort to elect Kamala Harris and Democrats up and down the ticket. And yet I am also hearing the voices of my fellow activists, and of many people of good will wrestling with the dilemma of how to morally support those who continue to arm a genocide.

Before you immediately start formulating arguments and counter arguments in your head, could we just stop for one moment and admit that this is a moral dilemma that deserves respect? Before we accuse those who don't agree with us of being either blind and stupid or supporters of evil, can we just acknowledge that this is an inner struggle that does not have a simple and clear solution?

It is a valid moral position to not want to support those who are arming the collective punishment of the Palestinian people, the mass starvation, and the murder of tens of thousands of innocent civilians, women, and children.

And it is also a valid moral position to say we need to look at the whole picture, at the reality of what our choices are and choose those who will be best for the country, the many issues at stake in these elections, and not least, ultimately better for Palestine and Gaza, as well as for Israel, the hostages, and the ultimate goal of peace and justice in that region.

I cannot tell you how to resolve this dilemma for you. I can only share how I wrestle with it myself.

For me it's clear that the prime challenge of this moment is to stop the rise of the extreme right and prevent the triumph of fascism. For Trump to win another term, for a man who is so deeply unstable, mentally disturbed, narcissistic, and incapable of empathy to hold the power of nuclear weapons in his hands, not to even mention the thousand other powers of our Chief Executive, puts the whole world in extreme danger. We must at all costs prevent this from happening.

The dangers of the Trump regime go far beyond the threat of potential nuclear war or accident, which granted may seem unlikely.  Inevitably,  Trump's reelection would put heart into every racist and xenophobe in the country, and give momentum to every oppressive regime, insular nationalist, racist and patriarch around the world. And it would deeply dishearten all of us who have spent our lives fighting on the many fronts of struggles for justice. It's not even so much what Trump might do, it's what his election would say about all of us that gives me that squirrely feeling in the pit of my stomach..

But there are other extremely important reasons why we cannot afford to let Trump win. Climate change is one of the most urgent, and least talked about. But while I write, fires burn towards the homes of friends who've been evacuated, a terror that repeats over and over again now every summer as the climate warms. We are already seeing so many impacts, in the weather, droughts, floods, hurricanes, natural disasters, calamities of all kinds. We desperately need a global effort to take action, and we have many tools at our disposal to regenerate ecosystems and bring the world back into balance. But we need to get on with it!

 The Democrats have done their best to pass climate legislation, against enormous odds. Trump has vowed to undo all their efforts.  He has promised to let oil executives have unbridled license to drill baby drill.  Again, we cannot let that happen. The earth cannot afford four more years of this irresponsibility. And Gaza, Palestine, Israel, the Middle East in general can truly not afford the projected increase in the warming of the planet. How tragic and ironic it would be for the issues dividing Palestinians and Israelis to be finally settled by the entire region becoming uninhabitable!

There are so many other reasons why Trump's election would be a calamity, for the right to bodily autonomy, the right to make our own choices about sexuality, gender, and reproduction, for the safety of trans and queer folks, for schoolchildren and all of us vulnerable to gun violence, for Ukraine and other countries struggling to maintain their independence and freedom, for immigrants and for the tens of thousands, possibly millions, who would risk forced deportation or incarceration in new concentration camps which the extreme right has promised. I could go on and on, but you probably already know all that.

And while I hear some of my friends on the left crying “Oh, but the Democrats are just as bad! They're neoliberals, they're doing bad things too!” I say, don't ignore the very real and profound differences between who the Democrats are today, and what the Republican party represents. The Democrats are not perfect and they are not the blazing advocates for transformation and social justice some of us might like to see. But to have any hope of electing true social justice warriors, we will need to build a much larger and stronger progressive movement. We'll need to do a better job, not just of complaining about Democrats who don't support our policies, but of also more strongly supporting those who do. We've lost two great progressive politicians in this primary season already, Jamaal Bowman and Cori Bush, who did stand up for justice in Palestine. I now feel profound regret then I didn't do more to support them when they were under attack in their primaries from AIPAC and other forces on the right.

Finally, we can look at the candidates’ own positions on Palestine and the Middle East. Harris has joined Biden in calling for and working for a ceasefire. What they have not done is use the leverage of American funding and support to arm twist Netanyahu into making an agreement and standing by it. The failure of the Democrats to allow a Palestinian speaker at the Convention was, in my opinion, a serious mistake and a moral failing. But Harris has shown that she can be influenced by strong movements that push her to take stronger action than Biden is willing to do.

Contrast that with Donald Trump, who somehow manages to combine dog whistle anti-Semitism and dinners with Nazis with blatant Islamophobia, and expresses completely unfettered support for Netanyahu and anything he might want to do in the region.

Neither choice is what I would want for the people of Palestine, or for that matter for the people of Israel whose true security, I firmly believe, must rest on a foundation of justice for Palestine, and peace and reconciliation among all the peoples of that region. But between the two candidates, I have no doubt which choice is better for Palestine, for Israel, for the Middle East and for the world.

What about voting for Jill Stein and the Green Party? Or simply not voting at all?  If you live in California, or New York, or another seriously blue state, you might have that luxury. But if you live in a swing state or even a red state, we need every possible vote to erect a bulwark against the rise of the extreme right. This election will be close, and even the small margins likely to vote for Stein could deliver important swing states to Trump.

 But even if you do choose to vote for Stein or Cornell West, or choose not to vote for President at all, I would still urge you to vote for Democrats down ballot. Because our system of government is not a monarchy, and our Chief Executive does not have unlimited power, at least not yet. That could well change should the extreme right triumph, but in the world as it stands we need a Democratic House and a Democratic Senate in order to actually get the many good policies done that Harris and Walz have promised, which includes support for voting rights, protection of reproductive rights, action on climate change, and many good economic ideas. And if we hope to enact yet more progressive policies, we will need support from every branch of government.

And I would especially urge you to strongly support those brave politicians that have spoken out for justice in Palestine, up and down the ticket, including local office seekers, who can make a big difference. One example: in San Francisco, we failed to adequately support our progressive District Attorney Chessa Boudin against a right-wing recall effort. And now, the new D.A. Brooke Jenkins is pursuing felony charges against peaceful protesters for Palestinian justice, who blocked the Golden Gate Bridge.  Sign a petition to call for her to drop the charges here: https://act.newmode.net/action/aroc/defend-golden-gate-26

I can't tell you how to resolve your moral dilemma. It's clear to me, in my own moral reckoning, that the best thing I can do for those suffering in Gaza, for the hostages and those suffering from the losses and terror of the Hamas attack, for the cause of peace and justice in the Middle East, for the many other vulnerable people in the US and around the world, and for the cause of liberty and justice for all to which I've devoted my life, is not just to vote for Harris and Walz, but to do everything I can in my power to see that they are elected in a huge blue wave that will bring us a Democratic House and Senate and push back the rising tide of fascism.  And to that end, I embrace the joy and excitement and enthusiasm I saw at the Democratic Convention and feel from so many around us. It's not a heedless joy that says everything's all right in the world. It's the joy of a traveller lost in a dark woods who looks up and sees a faraway light beckoning and knows where to head, the joy of a surfer navigating a big, big wave, the joyful vision not of what is, but of the just and flourishing world that could be.

That’s my short term strategy. The long term strategy is to do everything I can to continue to build a much more broad-based and powerful progressive movement, that can assure us a better range of choices in future years, and can enact policies that will actually improve our lives, regenerate ecosystems, and ensure for the future a viable and resilient world.

(As part of that long term strategy, I’m writing a book on movement building, The Movement We Need, here on Substack chapter by chapter. Access is free, but support is always welcome! Subscribe and get them as they come out.)