President Kamala
The choice this November is clear
The following is a presidential endorsement for the U.S. 2024 presidential election. My previous endorsements have included Hillary Clinton (2016), Andrew Yang (2020), and Joe Biden (2020).
Vote for Kamala Harris. Look, Harris never topped my list of presidential choices, and I was skeptical of her ability to appeal to a wider electorate than Joe Biden. Yet given Biden’s apparent cognitive issues and his disastrous debate performance with Trump, his decision to not seek re-election was what was best for the country. Many Americans are now feeling excited for Harris and I think she has a real shot at victory. Harris has a solid progressive history. As a California prosecutor, she promoted anti-recidivism programs and fought predatory for-profit colleges. As a California senator, she helped lead the fight against the cruelties of the Trump Administration and stood against the persecution of the Uighurs in China. I will not gloss over my problems with Harris here, but all those who care about the survival of liberal democracy in America must lend her their pragmatic support.
Harris’s Positives
There’s a lot to like about Harris’s platform. She supports the full legalization of marijuana. This is long overdue. Marijuana doesn’t kill people, and yet it is illegal, while tobacco and alcohol, which do kill people, are sold in gas stations across the country. The War on Drugs (1971-present) has cost taxpayers $1 trillion, has been an financial boon for the Mexican drug cartels, has disproportionately targeted black men, and has led to an overcrowding of our prisons. Legalizing weed is a fundamental step to dismantling a policy that was partially started by President Richard Nixon to criminalize black people and the Anti-War Left.
Harris supports demilitarizing the police. The militarization of the police from domestic law enforcement to an occupying army has been terrible for peace and justice. The police have abused SWAT teams, attacked journalists, and hurt non-violent protestors. Demilitarization is a necessary corrective. To this end, Harris co-wrote and supported the Justice In Policing Act (2020), which later became the George Floyd Justice In Policing Act (2021). The law would limit qualified immunity, restrict no-knock warrants and chokeholds, and train officers to intervene when one of their own uses excessive force. Not quite the overhaul we need, but a step in the right direction if it passes.
Harris will try to restore the federal protections to abortion under Roe v. Wade, but the Supreme Court will likely strike it down, anyways. Still, her presence alone will be enough to prevent a federal abortion ban. Roe v. Wade was a fair compromise between the liberty of the woman and the protection of the unborn. It made abortion a right in the first trimester, allowed certain regulations in the second, and outright banned it in the third except to save the woman’s life or health. Now that Roe v. Wade has been overturned, the legality of abortion has been handed to the states, each with their own levels of restriction. The effects of this have been terrible.
A ten year old girl from Ohio had to travel to Indiana to get an abortion after pregnancy by rape. A Texas woman, Lizelle Gonzalez, took an abortion pill and was jailed for two days on murder charges. A Georgia woman, Amanda Thurman, died after doctors waited 20 hours to remove fetal tissue related to an abortion pill complication. Another Georgia woman, Candi Miller, also died after not getting surgery to remove unexpelled fetal tissue. In Wisconsin, a woman who had an incomplete miscarriage was unable to get the remaining fetal tissue removed, and was left to bleed out for 10 days. A thirteen year old rape victim was forced to give birth in Mississippi. Mayron Hollis, a Tennessee woman, had to get an emergency hysterectomy after being denied an abortion due to pregnancy complications. Of the 14 states that ban abortion, nine have no exceptions for rape. Texas, a state with one such ban, has had 26,313 rape-related pregnancies since the overturn of Roe v. Wade. This is unbelievably cruel and misogynistic. The most secure way to restore abortion rights for women is to go state-by-state and pass constitutional amendments, or expand the Supreme Court to include more liberal justices. Harris will likely lend her support to these efforts.
Harris recognizes that the climate crisis is an “existential threat” and thank goodness for that. NASA estimates that humans have increased carbon emissions by 50% since 1750, 97% of climate scientists and 200 scientific organizations agree that global warming is human-caused, and the Pentagon has called climate change a “threat multiplier” to U.S. security. The consequences of this warming include rising sea levels due to global ice melt, more intense weather events, and the mass extinction of many plants and animals. This year alone, we have seen coral reefs suffer their fourth mass bleaching event and Hurricane Milton grow to Category 5 due to record-warm waters in the Gulf of Mexico. In order to avoid the worst effects of climate change, it’s imperative that we keep the Earth’s global temperature at 1.5 C. The 2015 Paris Climate Accord serves to meet that goal.
As vice president, Harris helped to pass the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act, which is the largest legislative climate investment in American history. If successful, the law could reduce carbon emissions from 25% to 42% by 2030. Still short of the requirements of the Paris Climate Accord, but a step in the right direction. Harris’s climate policy is still strategically ambiguous so as not to turn off swing state voters. The Democratic Party platform, however, has a number of climate policies which Harris may pursue. These include a tripling of clean energy by 2030, making farming net-zero by 2050, eliminating the transportation sector’s carbon footprint by 2050, and building a more climate-resistant infrastructure.
Harris supports Ukraine’s fight for freedom against Russian imperialism. After illegally annexing the Ukrainian territories of Crimea and the Donbass in 2014, Russian President Vladimir Putin illegally invaded Ukraine itself in 2022. The invasion has slaughtered 10,000 Ukrainian civilians and has caused the fastest-growing refugee crisis since World War II. The Biden-Harris Administration has passed numerous sanctions on Russia, has accepted 271,000 Ukrainian refugees, and has given billions in military aid to Ukraine. Harris has opposed any peace plan that would force Ukraine to cede any of its territory and will continue to give Ukraine the armory it needs. Slava Ukraini.
Harris’s Gaza Problem
My biggest issue with Harris is that she’ll continue to support Israel’s ongoing war in Gaza that is killing thousands of Palestinian civilians and putting the lives of Israeli hostages at risk. I understand that Harris is limited in what she may say so as not to turn off the electorate, but until I see substantive evidence to the contrary, I’ll have to judge her based on what we’ve seen thus far.
The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is a long and storied tragedy of atrocities and counter-atrocities. It would be impossible for me to re-litigate the entire history here, but what I can say is that the Israelis and the Palestinians both have legitimate aspirations and ancestral connections to the Holy Land. Both the Israelis and the Palestinians have the right to self-determination where they can live freely and securely in a state of their own.
While Israel is a democracy that has provided safe haven for Jews worldwide, it was also born from the expulsion of 700,000 Palestinians in 1948, has overseen a 57 year military occupation of Palestinians in the West Bank, and has run a joint 15 year blockade with Egypt of Palestinians in the Gaza Strip. In the West Bank, Palestinians under Israeli military rule are deprived of civil liberties, can have their lands stolen by Israeli settlers, and are subject to excessive violence from the IDF. In Gaza (pre-war), travel outside the strip was tightly restricted, electric power cuts could be from eight to twelve hours a day, and most water was unfit for drinking. While Jews around the world have the right to live in Israel, Palestinian refugees displaced in 1948 and their descendants are denied the right to return to their homes in Israel proper. The human rights organizations Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, Yesh Din, and B’Tselem have all labeled Israel’s policies towards the Palestinians as a form of apartheid. Anti-apartheid activist Desmond Tutu came to this conclusion in 2002, as did U.S. President Jimmy Carter in 2006 who was unfairly vilified for doing so.
In many quarters, support for the Israeli occupation is partially motivated by a proven history of Palestinian terror attacks. The Palestine Liberation Organization, the first national representative of the Palestinians, routinely hijacked planes and massacred Israeli civilians in the 1970s. During the uprising known as the Second Intifada in the 2000s, Palestinian militants killed 741 Israeli civilians. Hamas, an Islamist terror group which has tyrannically ruled Gaza since 2007, has fired over 11,000 rockets at Israeli civilians during its rule. While the Palestinians alone are responsible for their crimes, their military occupation and denial of self-determination has only aided in further driving them to such immoral violence as a means of liberation.
In other quarters, support for the Israeli occupation, particularly the illegal settlements, is also driven by far-right Israeli nationalists who see the West Bank and Gaza as part of a “Greater Israel.” Israel is currently led by such people. The Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, who sabotaged the 1990s Oslo Peace Accords, has overseen an illegal expansion of settlements in the West Bank, and has supported Hamas to divide and conquer the Palestinian people, as he said in 2019, “Anyone who wants to thwart the establishment of a Palestinian state has to support bolstering Hamas and transferring money to Hamas.” Netanyahu has also placed anti-Arab racists into positions of power over much of the West Bank. These include Itamar Ben-Gvir, who has been convicted of inciting racism, and Bezalel Smotrich, who claims the Palestinians aren’t a real people.
The Israeli-Palestinian conflict matters to America because we have given more foreign aid to Israel than any other country since the end of World War II. We have also provided Israel with diplomatic support at the UN, vetoing 34 Security Council resolutions criticizing Israel since 1945. In the years leading up to the current Israel-Hamas War, the Biden-Harris Administration was virtually indifferent to the rights of the Palestinians.
While their administration opposed the proposed 2021 evictions of Palestinian families in the Sheik Jarrah neighborhood of East Jerusalem, which even the deputy Mayor of Jerusalem said was part of an ethnic cleansing strategy, they failed to restrict continued settlement in the West Bank. While the administration condemned Hamas rocketfire at Israeli civilians during the 2021 war, it failed to similarly condemn Israeli war crimes against Gazan civilians. The administration supported normalization deals between Israel and the Arab nations, but these deals excluded Palestinian rights. The administration also signed a $38 billion defense package to Israel in 2022, but this package had no provisions regarding the Palestinians.
In 2022, an Israeli sniper murdered Shireen Abu Akleh, a Palestinian-American journalist for Al Jazeera. The Israel Police also attacked her funeral procession and bulldozed a memorial to her. Israel has refused to conduct a criminal investigation into her death, and has also refused to cooperate with an investigation into her death by the FBI. Even though Akleh was a U.S. citizen, the Biden-Harris Administration opposed Al Jazeera submitting a request to the International Criminal Court to investigate and prosecute those responsible. In short, this conflict was one big tinderbox that the administration saw no real interest in resolving.
The tinderbox was set aflame on October 7th, 2023. During the Jewish holiday of Sukkot, 6,000 Gazans, including 3,800 Hamas militants, crossed the southern border into Israel, while 5,000 rockets from Gaza were fired. These terrorists killed 1,195 people, 815 of which were civilian and 36 of which were children. 365 people were killed at the Nova Music Festival, which is not only the worst Israeli civilian massacre, but also the deadliest concert attack in history. It is also possible that Hamas committed acts of sexual violence against Israelis. Hamas also took some 250 people hostage, including children, the elderly, and some foreign nationals. It is clear that the IDF killed some of their own to save them from being taken hostage, but the UN estimates that the civilian toll from these acts is only around 14. This was the worst day for Jewish death since the Holocaust, and that generational trauma renewed itself afresh with Jews once more hiding in their homes while gunmen hunted them down. While the Palestinians have the right to resist the occupation, that does not include the right to murder or kidnap civilians. This was not the First Intifada or the Great March of Return. This was yet another pogrom in the dark annals of antisemitism.
While Israel had every right to seek justice against those responsible for this attack, they had no right to recklessly wage collective vengeance against the Palestinian people. Early on in this war, Biden wisely warned Netanyahu not to make the same mistake America made after 9/11 of being consumed with rage. Netanyahu didn’t listen.
As of this writing, Israel’s assault on Gaza has killed over 43,000 Gazans with another 10,000 likely buried under the rubble. Among the dead are 10,627 children, 5,956 women, 2,770 elderly, 168 journalists, 855 medical staff, and 79 paramedics. The 2023 blockade on Gaza led to the collapse of its healthcare system, the widespread hunger of nearly 2.2 million, and an increase of preventable diseases. The Israeli bombing has destroyed 79,000 homes, more than 2,000 agricultural sites, at least 53 schools, over 200 cultural and historical landmarks, at least 16 cemeteries, and at least 1,000 mosques. 1,000 children have lost limbs and 19,000 have been orphaned. The IDF has also used Gazans as human shields to test tunnels which may be booby-trapped. IDF soldiers have also posted sadistic videos playing with Gazan women’s underwear in the houses they looted.
Israel has even extended this war to the West Bank, with a number of raids which have killed 600 Palestinians and arrested another 10,000. Several Palestinians are held in administrative detention without charge or trial. These prisoners have also been sexually abused. West Bankers have also suffered 800 Israeli settler attacks since the start of the war.
This is the deadliest war for Palestinians in the history of the conflict. Many scholars of genocide, like Israeli historians Raz Segal and Omer Bartov, (and even some genocide survivors), have made serious allegations of genocide against Israel. If these allegations are true, then America may now be complicit in the darkest of all crimes. This should weigh heavy on us all.
This chaos and destruction was all predictable. Not only given Netanyahu’s racism towards the Palestinians, but also given the fact that previous Gaza wars saw repeated war crimes by Israel that have disproportionately killed civilians. There were also disturbing statements early on from Israeli officials, such as Rear Admiral Daniel Hagari, who said that airstrikes would focus on “damage not on accuracy.” I understand that giving Hamas an early ceasefire and hostage deal would’ve essentially rewarded them for the worst Jewish massacre of the 21st century, a military response was not unjust on the face of it, but the moment it became clear that Israel’s reaction would not be strategic or humane, the Biden-Harris Administration should’ve immediately cut off U.S. military and diplomatic support.
Sadly, it appears that the Biden-Harris Administration doesn’t value Palestinian life with the same weight that it values Israeli life. Early into the aftermath of the October 7th attacks, administration officials warned Biden that Israel could commit war crimes in Gaza. An investigation from The Independent found that Biden also ignored warnings from USAID of man-made famine in Gaza. America cannot plead ignorance here.
Only seven days into the war, 1,900 Gazans had been killed, including 614 children and 370 women, and yet on October 2023, the Biden-Harris Administration vetoed the UN Security Council’s first ceasefire resolution. In November 2023, Harris said that she would not put any conditions on U.S. support for Israel. The Gazans death toll rose to 9,061. In December 2023, Biden twice bypassed Congress to send millions of dollars in military aid to Israel. The Gazan death toll rose to 21,800. In April 2024, the administration vetoed a UN resolution to give Palestine full UN member status. The Gazan death toll rose past 34,000. Since October 7th 2023, we have given Israel $17.9 billion in military aid for this disastrous and foolish war. This funding being done in violation of the Leahy Law which bans U.S. military aid to groups which have violated human rights. This may explain why the U.S. State Department has consistently refused to investigate if Israel had committed war crimes in Gaza.
As the war as dragged on, however, the Biden-Harris Administration has lightly begun to push back on Israel. They allowed a UN ceasefire resolution to pass in March of this year. They have sanctioned 27 Israeli extremists and settlers. In October, they warned Israel to allow more humanitarian aid into Gaza or risk a potential end of weapons transfers. Biden himself has repeatedly criticized Netanyahu in private, going so far as to call him a “liar” who has “no strategy.” The administration has also given $1 billion in humanitarian aid to the Palestinians since the start of the war. Again, this is all too little too late, but it signals that the administration, and perhaps Harris herself, are amenable to changing their positions on Gaza with sufficient pressure.
Harris called for a six-week ceasefire in March, in July she called for the ceasefire to be permanent, and in August she even met with pro-Palestinian protestors and heard their concerns. Even so, Harris refused to consider an arms embargo on Israel that same month. This was said, however, before Biden’s October warning to Israel on humanitarian aid, so her mind may have changed on this matter.
If Harris does intend to be more balanced on Israel, then she will need to start elevating Palestinian voices for peace and justice. She was right to let the parents of an Israeli hostage speak at the 2024 DNC, but she was wrong to deny that same privilege to a Palestinian. If there was ever a moment to put a face on the suffering of Gaza, this was it, and the Democrats fumbled it. Harris will have a hard time persuading Americans to break with decades of bipartisan support for Israel, if her party is still to fearful of humanizing the very victims of the occupation.
Again, it’s possible that, if elected, Harris will be more progressive on Gaza than her rhetoric implies, but for the moment, I have to take her at her word. As Biden’s frustration shows, Netanyahu freely ignores whatever warnings America has for him, (most recently through his insane invasion in Lebanon), because he knows that America will never stand up to him in any substantive way. No lasting peace between the Israelis and the Palestinians is possible until the United States starts putting real consequences on Netanyahu for continuing to choose cyclical war and endless occupation. There’s no guarantee that Harris will be the president to do that, but we have a greater chance with her than we do with Trump, a man who uses “Palestinian” as an insult.
A Final Appeal
Harris’s opponent is Donald Trump, a traitor to the Constitution who incited a coup to overturn a free and fair election. His re-election would set an ugly precedent for any would-be tyrants. If Trump wins again, future Republicans will feel emboldened to continue his undemocratic and illiberal tactics. If Trump wins again, sexual predators will start running for office without fear of consequence. If Trump wins again, racist fear-mongering will once more become the popular currency of political discourse. If Trump wins again, the climate crisis will irrevocably worsen for future generations. If Trump wins again, Ukraine may lose all military support and Russian fascism will ascend over Europe. If Trump wins again, the Republic may suffer institutional damage beyond immediate repair. A second Trump term will take twice as long to fix, if that, and how much suffering will there be in the meantime?
Kamala Harris represents an just and humane future for America and the world. She represents a chance to finally move forward from the MAGA cult which has held the country hostage for nearly a decade. Her speech at the very site where Trump incited the coup of January 6th beautifully laid this out:
“Nearly 250 years ago, America was born when we wrested freedom from a petty tyrant. Across the generations, Americans have preserved that freedom, expanded it, and in so doing, proved to the world that a government of, by, and for the people is strong and can endure.
And those who came before us, the patriots at Normandy and Selma, Seneca Falls and Stonewall, on farmland and factory floors, they did not struggle, sacrifice, and lay down their lives only to see us cede our fundamental freedom. They didn’t do that only to see us submit to the will of another petty tyrant.”
Kamala 2024.
