Dear Madam Vice President:
For the last several weeks I have been hard at work trying to dissuade fellow Muslims from abandoning your campaign in favor of third party candidates. I have to acknowledge that the Democrats, only slightly less than the Republicans, have failed the Palestinians. Over the last year I have referred a few times to the Palestinians as “the Negroes of our time”, meaning that, in Washington at least, they are second-class to Israelis.
Disappointed and even angry as I am with the Biden-Harris administration, I keep harping on the point that the Palestinians would fare even worse under another Trump administration. On top of that, I emphasize that Trump is unstable, vengeful, and quite dangerous.
There are plenty of Muslims who have been saying the same thing, hoping to head off a critical number of Muslims in swing states abandoning your campaign. But our job is an uphill fight, especially since you refused to invite a Palestinian to address the Democratic National Convention.
We have not seen enough by you to give us hope that you intend to finally get real with Israel and its oversized lobby. By assuring Israel that we will maintain its military edge over all possible enemies, we have allowed successive Israeli governments to suppose they can postpone indefinitely justice for the Palestinians. This cannot bring security for Israel.
Dominant power does not restrain itself. If we do not provide a check on Israel, hostile forces in the region eventually will.
This week millions of Americans saw a video of 19-year-old Palestinian man named Sha’ban al-Dalou burning alive along with his mother in an Israeli airstrike next to a hospital. The week before that, many of us read a shocking account in the New York Times of what volunteer medical workers in Gaza saw: large numbers of young children who had been shot in the head or chest, leading to only one gruesome explanation. (See: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2024/10/09/opinion/gaza-doctor-interviews.html.)
Unquestionably, Israel is in violation of both American and International law. It is a national shame that we continue to supply it with offensive weapons.
Of course, Hamas is also deeply complicit in this nightmare for the Palestinian people. As a convert, I consider Hamas to be a disgrace to Islam. But when America guarantees Israel a military edge over all enemies and never insists on a political solution, groups like Hamas are the logical result.
Were it any country other than Israel, I doubt that so many American politicians would have defaulted so long to the sorry excuse that if Hamas is going to keep attacking Israel and hiding in the midst of the Palestinian population, there is not much we can do.
If it were any country other than Israel, by now America would have resolved to stop obliging extremists on both sides by fueling Israel’s war machine. By now this simple reasoning would have prevailed: the only way to defeat Palestinian terrorism is by insisting that Israel end its oppression of the Palestinian people.
Israel does not need any more offensive military assistance from us. It needs to end its wars in Gaza and Lebanon, and begin the politically difficult but necessary task of relocating settlers in the West Bank back to Israel proper, and accept the Green Line as its permanent eastern border.
In the immediate, American Muslims need to hear you articulate a truly New Way Forward on Israel and Palestine.
Sincerely,
Todd Buchanan
Get Real with Israel 