In a debate against Republican candidate and former president Donald Trump, Vice President and Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris only spouted more of the same rhetoric that made Biden seem a better option to Trump. “Israel has a right to defend itself, but it matters how,” said Harris. “Let’s understand how we got here,” she added, referencing 7 October as the starting point, while also stating that many “innocent Palestinians have been killed.” With regard to a ceasefire, however, that was tied to the release of Israeli hostages, not to stop Israel killing more Palestinians.
Is 7 October really “how we got here”?
The genocide is not happening because of 7 October, but because Israel decided it wanted to ethnically cleanse Gaza, and the cross-border incursion provided an opportune moment to begin in earnest. It is happening because after decades of settler-colonisation, Palestinians are still doing their best to remain in their land. Gaza is the epitome of the Palestinian anti-colonial struggle. It is a population of refugees, a population that has endured, and resisted — and is still resisting — annihilation by Israel. Harris’s dissemination of her limited understanding is merely patronising and also ensures that people do not understand at all.
On what grounds will Harris now be a better option as president than Trump? If both refuse to end Israel’s genocide in Gaza because both support Israel’s warped idea of what “self-defence” means (it has no inherent “right” to defend itself against the people living under its military occupation), what will differentiate Harris from Trump? And if any differentiation can be made, just remember that a Palestinian killed by Israel with full US complicity will still be killed, regardless of who enters the White House in January.
So, 7 October is not the date that Harris should be thinking about. The entire history of Zionist colonisation in Palestine points to Israel committing genocide in Gaza. US involvement and complicity is long.
US presidents have given concessions to Israel since the initial recognition of the occupation state in May 1948.
However, now that the Biden administration has utilised Trump’s unilateral concessions to Israel and arrived at genocide, what is left to discern other than expose the emerging pattern of increasing colonial violence and US complicity? Will Harris be seen as a better option because her main opponent is Trump, and only that? How will the Palestinian Authority, which rushed to endorse Biden after being shunned by Trump, react if Harris wins the election in November? Will the PA endorse a genocide enabler? That is what she is, just as much as Trump will be.
Harris is promoting a short-sighted and blurred version of history. Anyone endorsing any candidate who finds excuses for genocide is willingly dissociating from history, which is something that the Palestinians have never done. It serves the interests of a presidential candidate, as well as Israel, to refute historical connections and remain tethered to 7 October as much as it serves the genocide in Gaza. Harris is not a better alternative, she is just an extension of the Biden administration and part of US foreign policy on Palestine, in much the same way Trump was, and is. They are two sides of the same imperialist, settler-colonial coin.
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