Palestinian Americans have learned that the Democratic Party will bomb your homeland, kill your family, use your own money to do it, and still expect your vote.
Kamala Harris arrives at Philadelphia International Airport on August 6, 2024.(Matthew Hatcher / AFP via Getty Images)
The genocide in Gaza is happening with the support and assistance of Democratic President Joe Biden. It is being carried out using US-made bombs whose transfer to Israel Biden refuses to end. It is, in so many ways, a crime against humanity made in the USA.
I voted for Joe Biden in 2020. Last October, he authorized the weapons transfers necessary to bomb my family members, some of the last Palestinian Christians in Gaza, and then cast doubt on the death toll that same week.
But Palestinian Americans like me are discovering something this year: the Democratic Party will bomb your homeland, kill your family, use your own money to do it, and still expect your vote. More than that, Democrats will curse you and shame you if you push back.
Despite what many people might say, the genocide is not a “single issue” or an isolated phenomenon. It is a devastating sequence of events that fundamentally changes how you view the world. If Democrats lose the upcoming presidential election, it will not be the fault of Palestinians and Palestinian Americans who have begged and pleaded with our elected officials for months to stop killing our families.
Opposition against this genocide from everyday Americans has been used to justify an authoritarian assault on our civil rights and liberties, mostly notably freedom of speech and freedom of assembly. Democrats warn of Project 2025 and wax poetic about impending “fascism,” but the truth is that a fascistic crackdown is already being perpetrated against the Palestine movement, especially if you’re a person of color. Over the past few months, I’ve watched my friends at college campuses across the country get arrested, evicted, and suspended for supporting Palestinian liberation. Across the country, Palestinians are forced to fundraise tens of thousands of dollars through social media and grassroots campaigns, so that their relatives may have a chance at evacuating to safety through the Rafah crossing at the Egyptian border—all to avoid violence that is being funded with American tax dollars.
As hate crimes targeted at Arabs, Muslims, and Palestinians have surged across the country, Democrats remained mostly silent. There is endless outrage for protest chants, but when it comes to attacking Columbia students with hazardous chemicals, or a Muslim Stanford student’s being run over with a car, there is little, if any pushback from Democrats. Democrats were among those cheering and clapping for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu during his address to Congress last month, as if they were at a Taylor Swift concert instead of a speech by an internationally condemned war criminal.
To suggest that we should simply expect Kamala Harris to do better on Palestine, or that we should simply expect the Democrats to do the right thing, is ludicrous given Biden and Harris’s track record on Palestine.
Harris cannot expect to win over Arab, Muslim, and Palestinian voters if her approach to Palestine remains the same as Biden’s—or if her supporters treat Gaza as some disposable issue unrelated to their lives.
Palestinian Americans are being reported to the FBI by Kamala Harris supporters, simply for opposing the Biden-Harris administration’s approach toward Palestine. Tim Walz, Harris’s pick for vice president, is being heralded as the personal savior of Palestinians despite refusing to meet with his own Palestinian constituents. To this day, Harris’s campaign has no detailed policy stance on Palestine, and no plans for an arms embargo on Israel. All we get is a donation link, Charli XCX memes, and the candidate talking down to Palestinians who dare to protest her.
Many people have reacted to the controversy around Harris and Gaza by saying that foreign policy is not their priority and that they’re focused on domestic issues. But whether most Americans care to accept it or not, foreign policy is domestic policy. Apart from the fact that presidents have much more power over foreign affairs than domestic ones, every single taxpayer dollar spent on bombs and weapons headed to Gaza is money that could have been spent on the American people, on healthcare, on education, on investing in our communities. And the mass arrests that we’re seeing nationwide, thousands of college and graduate students across the country, in response to Gaza solidarity encampments on university lawns, occurred under a Democratic president.
With a hostile incoming administration, a massive infrastructure of courts and judges waiting to turn “freedom of speech” into a nostalgic memory, and legacy newsrooms rapidly abandoning their responsibility to produce accurate, fact-based reporting, independent media has its work cut out for itself.
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Harris has made some seemingly empathetic statements about Palestine. But people in Gaza don’t need empathy. they need the bombs to stop dropping and the Rafah crossing to be opened. Palestinians need aid to come quickly, and they need critical infrastructure, for water treatment centers and hospitals to be immediately repaired. Palestinians need to no longer be forced to pay exorbitant fees by the Egyptian government just so their loved ones can flee to safety. They need a massive influx of medical professionals and supplies within Gaza to address a healthcare system that is in shambles.
To ignore these urgent needs will prolong Palestinian suffering in Gaza while simultaneously alienating Arab, Muslim, and Palestinian voters in the United States. Continuing to disrespect these voting groups means turning away some of the most loyal and consistent Democratic voters, who are likely to vote third-party or stay home altogether. Bullying and patronizing Palestinians is not a winning campaign strategy.
To even consider voting for Kamala Harris, I would need to see a substantial change in her administration’s approach towards Palestine. Continued and sustained pressure from voters on the Democratic Party is urgently needed. Mere platitudes and performative gestures are not enough. To those who say that I am being too harsh or that I should simply fall in line, no candidate, elected official, or government is above criticism or critique. If Kamala Harris truly wants to win the presidential election, she will realize that the death and destruction we are witnessing in Gaza must end.
Layla SalibaLayla Saliba (she/her) is a Palestinian American graduate student at Columbia University. She is studying social work with a concentration in policy practice.