Today, October 7th 2024, marks one year since the Hamas attack on Israel that many consider to have sparked Israel’s US-backed genocidal campaign against Gaza that is now exploding into a regional war. But history did not begin on October 7th, 2023.
To understand the current situation, we must look back at least as far as 1948 to the Nakba, the brutal mass expulsion of indigenous Palestinians from their homes by Zionist paramilitaries and the newly formed state of Israel. While the world has been watching in horror for the past year as this genocidal rampage has cut short hundreds of thousands of innocent lives, that one year was preceded by generations of violence, occupation, displacement, dispossession, apartheid, and ethnic cleansing.
While we abhor violence, we must understand that settler colonialism, occupation, genocide, and all forms of oppression have always provoked resistance. If we merely condemned violence “on all sides” without first acknowledging the underlying conditions of oppression and doing everything we can to rectify those conditions, we would not only fail to address the root causes of the problem, but would risk becoming complicit in injustice by drawing a false equivalency between oppressor and oppressed. As Desmond Tutu observed, “if you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor.”
One of history’s greatest nonviolent changemakers, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., identified the “great stumbling block in the stride toward freedom” as “the white moderate who is more devoted to ‘order’ than to justice” and “who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice”. For too long, the US government has supported Israel’s version of “order” and “peace” that demands the systematic subjugation of Palestinians to violent injustice. But whenever people are denied their human rights, resistance is inevitable. Even President Kennedy recognized this with his statement that “those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable.”
Dr. King also recognized the hypocrisy and uselessness of condemning the violence of the oppressed without first addressing the violence of oppression: “I knew that I could never again raise my voice against the violence of the oppressed in the ghettos without having first spoken clearly to the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today - my own government.” The US government is fully complicit in the violence that Israel has inflicted on the Palestinians and others, after supplying Israel with over one hundred fifty billion dollars in military aid and shielding Israel from accountability to the international community for its long history of defying international law. For Americans to condemn Palestinian resistance while our own government actively oppresses the Palestinian people would be neither just nor conducive to peace.
The events of October 7th, 2023 have been weaponized to justify the genocide of Palestinians. Yet it has become clear that official accounts of October 7th have not only been divorced from the historical context, but factually distorted to serve the agenda of the Zionist Israeli government. As one example, Australia’s ABC News reported in September that Israeli forces apparently applied the “Hannibal Directive” on October 7th, killing an untold number of their own citizens in attempts to prevent them from being taken hostage. The official discourse on hostages has also been extremely one-sided, rarely if ever mentioning that thousands of Palestinians are held prisoner by Israel without charge. From the “Hannibal Directive” killings to Netanyahu’s disregard for the families of Israeli hostages to Israel’s expansion of the war far beyond Gaza, it’s clear that the Israeli government has not acted out of concern for hostages, but has only used those concerns as justification to launch a preconceived agenda of conquest and genocide.
In just the last few weeks, the situation has gotten even worse. In a massive escalation of its genocidal war on Gaza, Israel has invaded Lebanon. Shortly thereafter, Iran launched a barrage of missiles at Tel Aviv in response to Israel’s attacks on Lebanon, Syria, Yemen, Palestine, and Iran itself, raising fears of an ever-expanding war in the Middle East that could even spark World War III, nuclear war, or both.
If he wanted to, President Biden could stop this war with one phone call to the Israeli prime minister as Ronald Reagan did in 1982. Israel’s war machine is completely dependent on US taxpayer-supplied weapons, money, military and diplomatic support. But instead the Biden-Harris administration is complicit in Netanyahu’s plans to expand this horrific war. A recent Politico article titled “US officials quietly backed Israel’s push against Hezbollah” revealed that top Biden advisors actually encouraged Israel to invade Lebanon - despite the Democrats’ claims that Kamala Harris is “working tirelessly for a ceasefire”.
We do not consent to be dragged into World War III by Netanyahu to support his genocidal land grab in Palestine, Lebanon, and beyond. By allowing Netanyahu to essentially dictate US foreign policy, Biden and Harris have abdicated the responsibility of their office.
As President, the first thing I will do is make the phone call to stop this madness at once and fix the crisis at its source - by ceasing all support to Israel until it ends its genocide in Gaza and agrees to negotiate a settlement for Palestine and the region consistent with international law and the rulings of the International Court of Justice. The US, as the primary backer of Netanyahu’s military campaigns, holds the power to end his assault on Gaza and bring him to account. This is not a matter of diplomacy but of the US electorate exercising its responsibility by voting for leaders with the political will to act. As voters in the most powerful nation on Earth, we bear a unique obligation to hold our government and its allies accountable.
By holding Israel accountable, the US can rejoin the international community, from which we have become increasingly isolated due to our government’s unconditional support for Israel’s defiance of international law. When the United Nations considered membership for Palestine this year, 143 nations voted in favor and only 9 against, including the US and Israel. But the US has consistently used its veto power to shield Israel from accountability, undermining any credibility our nation has to speak on issues of international law and human rights.
As a Jew who grew up just after the Holocaust, with relatives who fled pogroms and a grandfather named Israel, I take “never again” seriously. And that means never again for anyone. In just the last year, I have met thousands of people from all walks of life, including Muslims, Jews, Christians, Palestinians, Israelis, Arabs, and many others from many ethnic, religious and spiritual backgrounds. And I can say with certainty from my personal experience that peace and friendship are possible. We can put an end to war, genocide, and generations of oppression, and start a new path to a world of peace, justice, and human rights for all.
In solidarity and gratitude,
Jill Stein
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