The protest vote over Joe Biden's unrelenting support for Israel continues to gain momentum, with voters writing variations of "uncommitted" and "leave it blank" on Democratic ballot measures to demonstrate their disgust over the president's refusal to help end the war.
I've seen some pieces floating around arguing against the effectiveness of this strategy. But this finger-wagging—sorry but that's exactly what it is—is incredibly frustrating. An antiwar protest at the ballot is one of the loudest, most visceral ways to warn a president that he risks losing their support in an election that he himself brands the battle for democracy.
I was glad to read my colleague Noah Lanard's interview today with former State Department official Annelle Sheline, who resigned last week in protest of the Biden administration's wartime support for Israel. What struck me most about their conversation was Annelle's thoughts on why it was so important to go public with her decision, rather than quit quietly to reduce the risk that her resignation wrangle future employers. As she told Noah:
It came from observing the ways in which public pressure—including through things like the uncommitted campaign—seems to be the only thing that is getting this administration to shift even a little bit. When colleagues asked if I’d be willing to resign publicly, that is what ultimately caused me to make that decision. My hope is that by resigning publicly I can contribute to this effort to build public pressure.
Public pressure. This is what uncommitted voters—sickened by the US's support for a war that has already killed more than 32,000 people, laid the groundwork for imminent famine, and killed seven aid workers—are building. So for any detractors of the protest vote, ask yourself: Do you really want to be someone grading nonviolent acts of resistance?
As Annelle said, "I would encourage people to publicly express their opposition to the policy by putting up a ‘Ceasefire in Gaza’ sign. Because I think that’s what it’s going to take: Other people seeing that they’re not alone."
"There are people working very hard inside State to try to hold Israel accountable, but none of that will actually go into effect unless Biden wants it to," says Annelle Sheline.
BY NOAH LANARD
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Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – The Israeli newspaper Arab 48 reports on the conscription crisis that may cause the Netanyahu government to fall and tear Israeli society apart. The Israeli Supreme Court issued the ruling on Thursday evening, which freezes — as of April — the funds for ultra-Orthodox Jewish schools, the students of which […]
( Middle East Monitor ) – It is truly astonishing that Washington abstained in voting on the resolution adopted by the UN Security Council on Monday, although the resolution is consistent with the US position that rejects the call for a permanent ceasefire, as it only calls for “an immediate ceasefire for the month of […]
( Middle East Monitor ) – It is truly astonishing that Washington abstained in voting on the resolution adopted by the UN Security Council on Monday, although the resolution is consistent with the US position that rejects the call for a permanent ceasefire, as it only calls for “an immediate ceasefire for the month of Ramadan” (of which one half has already passed), adding as a good wish that this would be “leading to a lasting sustainable ceasefire” (the resolution did not use the term “permanent”, but “lasting”, which refers to a duration instead of a final cessation). Indeed, the parties that drafted the resolution made a special effort to use expressions and concepts that would satisfy Washington so that the text reconciles the US position with the Arab position. Thus, the resolution deplores “all attacks against civilians and civilian objects, as well as all violence and hostilities against civilians, and all acts of terrorism” recalling that “the taking of hostages is prohibited under international law”.
The resolution was such this time that Britain itself could vote for it, after it had until now tail-ended the US position, not daring to contradict it except by abstaining once while Washington used its veto. As for the US administration’s justification of its abstention on Monday by pointing out that the resolution did not name “Hamas”, it is a completely vain pretext that cannot fool anyone, since the resolution did not name Israel either, even when talking about the necessity of opening the way for international aid to enter! Avoiding the two direct designations constituted indeed one of the compromises upon which the resolution is based.
The truth is that Washington’s abstention was intended to try to alleviate the resentment of the Israeli side so that Washington would not appear as if it were participating in a UN Security Council’s consensus on a resolution that Israel rejects. Just last Saturday, the Likud-Zionist Foreign Minister, Israel Katz, had accused the United Nations of having become, under the leadership of the current Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, “an antisemitic and anti-Israeli body that shelters and emboldens terror”! With this, Israel’s usual policy of labelling any criticism of its policies as anti-Jewish reached a new low in decadence and vulgarity.
As for the administration of US President Joe Biden, it has reached for its part a new low in hypocrisy. It continues to supply Israel with weapons and ammunition, as it began to do immediately from the beginning of the Zionist genocidal war on Gaza, so that it has become fully complicit in the ongoing onslaught, which is in fact the first fully joint war between the United States and the Zionist state. While Benjamin Netanyahu cancelled a visit to Washington that was scheduled for a delegation headed by one of his advisors on strategic affairs, the Minister of “Defence” in his government, Yoav Galant, who is of course also a member of the smaller war cabinet formed at the beginning of the current onslaught, arrived in Washington on Monday. His visit is much more important than the one that Netanyahu cancelled. Upon his arrival in the US capital, Gallant declared that his armed forces would inevitably invade Rafah. He came to consult with the Biden administration on how to package the Rafah invasion so that both sides could claim that they took into account the humanitarian considerations that have become a highly sensitive issue for the US administration.
Needless to say, this sensitivity does not stem from any dedication to those humanitarian considerations themselves. How could they stem from them after Washington has fully participated in the killing of approximately forty thousand people and the wounding of tens of thousands more, including a high percentage of seriously injured; in the destruction of the Gaza Strip to a degree the likes of which history has never witnessed with regard to the extent of damage achieved in very few months; and in the displacement of the vast majority of the population of the Strip to the Rafah area? The food aid boxes that Washington drops from the air are gesticulations that are far from being able to disculpate the US administration as intended, as all the persons in charge of international humanitarian aid have confirmed that it is an expensive and ineffective way to eliminate the deadly famine that is spreading among the Gazans. They point instead to the thousands of trucks lined up on the Egyptian side of the border, which Israel prevents from entering, while it would be enough for Washington to exert actual pressure on the Zionist state by seriously threatening to stop its military support in order to force it to open the doors to aid via land, which is the only way that is truly capable of reducing the humanitarian crisis and preventing the spread of famine and its exacerbation.
As for the port that they are building on the coast of Gaza, it is also not capable of resolving the crisis. Moreover, people have every right to question the true intention behind it, as it may be used to encourage the Gazans to emigrate if the gates of Sinai remain closed to them. Indeed, the fascist Zionist government intends to complete the second Nakba by uprooting the Palestinians from the land of Palestine one more time, this time from the Gaza Strip. Their first intention was to deport them into Sinai, but the rejection of this perspective by the regime of Abdel Fattah al-Sisi (for security considerations, not humanitarian ones, of course) made them consider deporting them to various parts of the world. They made contacts with several countries for this purpose, according to Netanyahu’s own testimony.
Recently, voices have been raised in Israel suggesting a concentration of the Gazans in some corner of the Negev desert on the Egyptian border so that the Zionist state could annex the Gaza Strip as a much more valuable property, especially due to its coastal line. All this worried Washington, which prompted it to invite Benny Gantz, a member of the war cabinet who opposes Netanyahu and the Likud government, to discuss the matter with him. It also received Gallant, who is also an opponent of Netanyahu, but from within Likud. The US administration is concerned about the deportation project, which contradicts its position calling for preserving the Oslo framework and getting the “Palestinian Authority” to supervise the Gaza Strip again, primarily under Israeli tutelage, which might be accompanied by the deployment of regional or international forces.
Translated from the Arabic original published in Al-Quds al-Arabi on 26 March 2024.
The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Monitor or Informed Comment..
( Tomdispatch.com ) – With his perfect tan and slicked-back hair, California Governor Gavin Newsom stood at a podium at Sacramento’s Cal Expo in late September 2020 and announced an executive order requiring all new passenger vehicles sold in the state to be zero-emissions by 2035. With the global Covid pandemic then at its height, […]
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