On October 23, Nancy Pelosi came to Harvard Square in Cambridge, MA (my old hometown) and spoke at the First Parish Church. Her talk was organized by The Harvard Book Store and moderated by Massachusetts Governor Maura T. Healey. Pelosi made a point of defending the Biden administration’s handling of the war in Gaza. “He has been very concerned about a two-state solution for the region,” according to the former Speaker of the House. “He has been such a strong supporter of humanitarian assistance for the people of Gaza.”
Fifty or so people holding signs and very different views stood outside on the street and voiced their objections to Pelosi’s allegiance to the Biden-Harris commitment to Israel. While she called for an end to the carnage in Gaza, she repeated the justification for continuing to arm Israel: Hamas is “dedicated to the destruction of Israel.” A reader might infer that we (the U.S. government) must make sure Israel has what it needs to defend itself against this “terrorist organization” and therefore, despite the carnage, there can be no end to the flow of U.S. weapons to Israel.
Pelosi is a long-term and die-hard supporter of Israel. In December of 2018, during the annual conference of the Israeli-American Council in Hollywood, Florida, she assured her Jewish American audience that the pro-Palestine views of Rashida Tlaib and Ilhan Omar, new members of Congress, “would not affect the U.S. relationship with Israel.” To drive home the point that U.S. loyalty to Israel remains impervious to critics like Tlaib and Omar, Pelosi said: “If this [nation’s] Capitol crumbled to the ground, the one thing that would remain would be our commitment to our aid, I don’t even call it our aid, our cooperation with Israel. That’s fundamental to who we are.”
In a press release from the Department of State, the U.S. on September 30, 2024 announced that it will provide an additional $336 million in humanitarian assistance to Gaza and the West Bank. This amount “brings the total U.S. humanitarian assistance announced for the Palestinian people to more than $1 billion since October 2023.” Two weeks later, Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin warned their counterparts in the Israeli government that if they failed to increase the amount of humanitarian aid allowed into Gaza within the next 30 days, “it could risk losing access to U.S. weapons funding.” At the same time, the Biden administration assured Israel, its ally and the “biggest recipient of military aid” that “America’s support for Israel is unwavering.”
Hala Rharrit was a career diplomat with 18 years of service in the U.S. State Department. In April, she resigned her post, becoming the first State Department diplomat to publicly resign in response to the Biden administration’s policy with respect to Gaza. As the Arabic-language spokesperson for the State Department at the time of her resignation, Rharrit is well acquainted with the public relations arm of the department. When asked about Blinken and Austin’s warning to Israel that military funding might be compromised if humanitarian aid to Gaza is not increased within 30 days, Rharrit said:
this, unfortunately, is a public relations ploy. I am sad to say it, but it’s the truth. It is conveniently 30 days, marking the time after the election. … The reality is that the State Department and the administration at this point is trying to give voters, especially those that are so concerned about the conflict in Gaza, some level of hope … We don’t need another 30 days. We have had ample evidence from within the United States government, not just the State Department, but a multitude of U.S. agencies, with proof that Israel is violating so many of our laws, is systematically withholding humanitarian assistance from going in.
Around the time of Rharrit’s resignation, in April, the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) and the State Department’s refugees bureau informed Blinken that “Israel had deliberately blocked deliveries of food and medicine into Gaza.” In a detailed memo, USAID “described instances of Israeli interference with aid efforts, including killing aid workers, razing agricultural structures, bombing ambulances and hospitals, sitting on supply depots and routinely turning away trucks full of food and medicine.” U.S. law requires the cessation of military aid to countries that block the delivery of U.S.-supplied humanitarian assistance.
Blinken, responding to the memo from USAID, informed Congress that “We do not currently assess that the Israeli government is prohibiting or otherwise restricting the transport or delivery of U.S. humanitarian assistance.”
As noted above, the amount of U.S. humanitarian aid going to Gaza since October 7 of last year is more than $1 billion. In addition to humanitarian aid, the U.S. has provided Israel with generous amounts of weaponry to continue its “self-defense.” More than fifty-thousand tons of weapons, to be precise. Here’s a list of some of them sent by the U.S. over the past year:
· 14,000 MK-84 2,000-pound bombs
· 100 2,000-pound BLU-109 bunker-buster bombs
· 3,000 Hellfire missiles
· 13,981 120mm tank shells
· 57,000 155mm artillery shells
So, $1 billion in humanitarian assistance vs. $23 billion for offensive weapons that have killed, injured, maimed, and terrorized mostly women and children — and continue to do so not only in Gaza but in the West Bank and Lebanon. Imagine an old apothecary scale. Try as one might, there’s no way to balance the two pans when one is humanitarian assistance to Gaza and the other is high-tech weapons to Israel. And yet we are supposed to believe that the Biden-Harris administration truly cares about the welfare of the people of Gaza and is “working night and day” to secure a ceasefire.
Before the attacks of October 7, according to Amnesty International, “about 500 trucks entered Gaza every day, carrying aid and commercial goods, including things like food, water, animal fodder, medical supplies and fuel. Even that quantity fell far short of meeting people’s needs.” In August, only about 69 aid trucks made it into Gaza with essential supplies. The reason for this drop in humanitarian aid is due entirely to the Israeli government’s inhumane policies toward the people of Gaza, including what has become known as the “Generals’ Plan.” A strategy formulated a year ago by a group of army officers, it is the brainchild of Giora Eiland, a retired Israeli military general and former head of the National Security Council. Discontented with the “lack of progress” in the war with Hamas and failure to bring the hostages home, Eiland calls for much stronger pressure against Israel’s enemies. He is quite comfortable with the commission of war crimes by the Israeli military: “Gaza must be completely destroyed: terrible chaos, severe humanitarian crisis, cries to heaven…”
As for humanitarian aid, Eiland says there shouldn’t be any going into Gaza. As for the most vulnerable Palestinians, he is unmoved by their plight: “after all, who are the elderly women of Gaza – they are the same mothers and grandmothers of Hamas fighters who committed the terrible crimes on 7 October.” The Generals’ Plan is now being implemented in the north of Gaza as Israeli forces seek to displace the entire population and turn the area into a closed military zone under Israeli command.
Eyewitness reports from the Jabalia refugee camp in northern Gaza describe a nightmarish situation in which Palestinian families have been deprived of food and water while being subjected to airstrikes and artillery shelling, and Israeli ground forces
directly and systematically attack homes and buildings used as shelters by displaced families, forcing everyone out at gunpoint. … The buildings, including UN schools and houses, are subsequently either razed or burned by Israeli soldiers to prevent people from returning.
During a recent CNN broadcast, Anderson Cooper asked the vice president what she would say to people whose strong feelings about Gaza would lead them to vote for a third-party candidate or choose to stay home rather than vote for Kamala Harris, who has so far refused to call for a ceasefire or to support a total arms embargo. Her reply to Cooper:
I don’t know that anyone who has seen the images who would not have strong feelings about what has happened, much less those who have relatives, who have died and been killed. And I, and I know people and I’ve talked with people, so I appreciate that.
Harris went on to say: “But I also do know that for many people who care about this issue, they also care about bringing down the price of groceries.” Cheaper groceries, preserving and strengthening our democracy, establishing bi-partisan support for policies that benefit all Americans and not just the wealthy few, and safeguarding a woman’s right to decide “what to do with their body” — these are among the central issues upon which Harris has built her campaign. Undoubtedly, they are crucial to the health and well-being of our country and at great risk of being sabotaged should Trump get elected.
But there are other, equally important matters worthy of being included in the national debate this election year — but aren’t. Specifically, the welfare of innocent Palestinian and Lebanese families; the end of U.S. diplomatic and military support for the extremist, genocidal government of Israel; that country’s failure to comply with international laws that prohibit ethnic cleansing, collective punishment, the crime of apartheid, and Israel’s numerous violations of human rights,
including torture, imprisonment without charges or trial, land confiscation, harassment at checkpoints, unwarranted civilian shootings, not punishing Israeli settlers’ crimes against Palestinians, unwarranted disruption of medical care, commerce, employment, free movement, destruction of public and private property, family separation …
Caring about the ongoing carnage in Gaza, the West Bank, and now in Lebanon if we are to take Kamala Harris at her word, is roughly equivalent to wanting to reduce the price of groceries Despite her awareness of the suffering of Palestinians and her customary, campaign-trail admission that “far too many have died,” she is not willing to commit to ending U.S. complicity in this suffering and the unconscionable killing of women, children, and entire families by Israeli forces. Apparently, as responsible citizens rightly fearful of Trump’s return to power, we are supposed to set aside any moral qualms we might have about the wholesale terror visited upon the innocent in Palestine and Lebanon, and vote for Vice President Harris. And if too many of us can’t set aside our “qualms,” our repulsion for the non-stop massacres, the weaponizing of hunger as a deliberate strategy to either kill or force the displacement of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians, and the willful obstruction of humanitarian aid, then Harris could very well lose the election.
I live in a swing state (North Carolina), so sitting out this election is not an option for me. Still, as I wrestle with the question of whether or not to vote for Harris, I think back to my times in Iraq as a witness to the devastating effects of economic sanctions imposed by the UN Security Council and enforced by the U.S. Over a nine-year period, I observed those effects — in hospitals, schools, cultural centers, and facilities for internally displaced people. At home, I advocated for the unconditional lifting of the sanctions. Like many others doing this work, I was a “voice in the wilderness.” Two UN humanitarian coordinators posted in Baghdad — Denis Halliday, in 1998, and his successor Hans von Sponeck, in 2000 — resigned in opposition to the sanctions regime, which both men characterized as “genocidal” and which a Democratic administration under Bill Clinton maintained despite the cost to the Iraqi people:
According to U.N. aid agencies, by the mid-1990s about 1.5 million Iraqis – including 565,000 children – had perished as a direct result of the embargo, which included ‘holds’ on vital goods such as chemicals and equipment to produce clean drinking water.
Now, a quarter of a century later, another Democrat stands ready to assume leadership of “the strongest, most lethalfighting force in the world.” Kamala Harris, Biden’s potential successor (as of the day before the election), shows no sign of seeking to restrain the U.S. military or to substantially reduce the military budget, which in 2023 was $916 billion, or 40% of worldwide spending for all things military. Whichever candidate is ultimately declared the winner, chances are the national security community, which salutes Harris for advocating a “muscular US presence in the world,” will continue to have an outsize influence on our foreign policy, a tenet of which is “continued support and security” for Israel.
If Harris wins, should we expect, at the very least, a “kinder, gentler” genocide, one in which uninterrupted arms shipments to Israel go hand in hand with periodic hand-wringing and crocodile tears over the ever-growing number of civilian deaths in Palestine, Lebanon, and God knows where else?
A question comes to mind: If a Democratic administration under Bill Clinton (1993-2001) could enforce a policy that brought immense suffering to the Iraqi people and led to the deaths of thousands of children from easily preventable diseases, why should we imagine things will be any different today under Kamala Harris when it comes to implementing a just and humane foreign policy, and preserving a rules-based global order instead of sabotaging that order out of loyalty to America’s closest and most important ally in the Middle East (West Asia)?
Bilal Irfan, a student of bioethics at Harvard Medical School, worked in Palestine as a volunteer with various medical organizations during this past year. He writes:
In Gaza, the horrors are even more unspeakable. The current official death toll of more than 43,000 does not in any way reflect the true scale of human suffering and demise. What this number does not capture are the deaths and life-altering injuries or conditions that Palestinians now are susceptible to because of Israel’s restriction of food, basic medical supplies like sterile materials and antibiotics, as well as much-needed medicines for the chronically ill. This environment of uncontrollable infection and malnutrition is also a death sentence for many pregnant women and their babies. This is effectively equivalent to the prevention of births, which constitutes a crime of genocide.
Bilal Irfan will not be voting for Kamala Harris.
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George Capaccio is a writer, poet, and performer now living in Durham, North Carolina since migrating from the Boston area. Beginning in the 90s, his concern for the people of Iraq under U.S.-imposed sanctions led him to make numerous trips to Iraq as a witness to the effects of these sanctions. At home, he advocated for their lifting through writing and public speaking while raising funds for families in Baghdad whom he knew and continues to be in touch with. He appreciates hearing from readers. He can be reached by email: [email protected]
