Some protesters embrace the slogan “Free Palestine from the River to the Sea.” Others envision a binational state, grounded in the equality of both peoples. Still others advocate a two state solution. Netanyahu and his extremist coalition partners, in contrast, with the use of force, destruction, expropriation and plunder, are bloodily embedding a single unitary Jewish apartheid state from the River Jordan to the Mediterranean Sea. In other words while the protesters advocate one or another solution to the current crisis, Netanyahu and his criminal coalition are establishing, via bloody facts on the ground, their vision of an unequal, racist, land grabbing, anti-democratic state in a land long occupied by two peoples.
The MAGA movement and its Republican representatives in Congress are attempting – working overtime in fact – and in plain sight to weaponize antisemitism to discredit opposition to Israel’s occupation and policy of genocide in Gaza as well as to divide the anti-MAGA movement ahead of the elections. That should be resisted. So should the spike in incidents and expressions of antisemitism that date back, at least, to Trump’s election in 2016.
President Biden in a televised evening address should speak to the country (and world) on the crisis and famine in Gaza. Among other things, he should say it is intolerable, insist on a permanent ceasefire and appeal to the global community to provide humanitarian assistance and the wherewithal to rebuild Gaza into a habitable place to live, work, and worship. This is as much a moral as a political imperative.
I don’t know what they are thinking in the White House, but it’s past time to demand a permanent ceasefire and freeze the weapons of war going to Israel. The people of Gaza are paying the steepest price – famine, not food insecurity, is widespread and only getting worse – for Biden’s political and moral failure. But Biden too – and by extension the American people – will pay a stiff price this summer and on election day for this failure.
