Madam Vice President: If you lose, it is all on you

Madam Vice President,

Previously I recommended to you Nicholas Kristof as a balanced commentator on the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. I also recommend Mehdi Hasan as an informed and thoughtful Muslim commentator on the same topic.

Daily, Hasan is making the case that voting for you is the only way Muslims can hope to avoid a disastrous second term for Donald Trump, with respect both to Gaza and the Nation.

Hasan also points out that should you lose to Trump in part due to Muslims voting Green, or even for Trump, it will be your own doing.

To date you have failed to demonstrate that you intend to break from the Biden-Harris policy of sponsoring Israel’s horrific collective punishment of the Palestinians. You have yet to acknowledge it is time to leverage our military aid to Israel.

When it had long been obvious that Israel was in violation of both U.S. and international law, you and President Biden gave Israel thirty days to allow more humanitarian aid to reach Gazans, or face the prospect of going without some weapons. Conveniently, by that arrangement, you don’t have to make any decision before November 5.

This past May 3, 88 members of Congress wrote to President Biden out of concern that Israel was indeed in violation of the Foreign Assistance Act. Here is that letter, initiated by Representative Jason Crow: https://crow.house.gov/sites/evo-subsites/crow.house.gov/files/evo-media-document/Letter%20to%20President%20Biden%20re%20Humanitarian%20Crisis%20in%20Gaza-v2.pdf

A few days later, President Biden halted one shipment of arms, then proceeded to exonerate Israel, ostensibly in compliance with his own NSM-20. But that exoneration only demonstrated the power of the Israel lobby. AIPAC rivals the NRA for its disregard of the national interest.

Every day you are losing Muslim votes. If these votes prove decisive, and Trump wins a second opportunity to seek vengeance on his political opponents and subvert our democracy, you will have only yourself to blame.

Open Letter to Kamala Harris

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

Should Muslims Abandon Harris?

American Muslims face a real predicament this election. On the one hand, both the Democratic and Republican parties have failed the Palestinians. Although more Democrats than Republicans have distanced themselves from America’s sponsorship of Israels’ “Mighty Vengeance”, the Biden-Harris administration is running the show.

Many Muslims are urging the community to abandon Harris to send the message that staunch support of Israel is a political liability.

On the other hand, many of the same Muslims understand that the Republican presidential candidate poses a unique threat to Muslims and American democracy. But they reason that having survived one Trump administration, Muslims and America can survive another. That would seem to underestimate the Trump threat.

Imam Tom Facchine has a good grasp of the nature of political power: for any group to wield such power, it must be feared or respected, not liked. And he maintains that Muslims must make sure Harris loses this November, by voting for a third party candidate. Those Muslims who choose instead to vote for Harris to avert a Trump presidency, he sees fit to call “sell outs”.

Sami Hamdi specifically urges Muslims to vote for Jill Stein, the Green Party candidate, and believes that together with their allies Muslims can garner five percent of the vote and thereby qualify for federal and state funding in future elections. This, Hamdi asserts, will break the two party system, and demonstrate that caving to the Israel lobby does not pay.

Hamdi has a powerful delivery which is intended to Wow us, which may obscure the merits of his argument. But he is careful not to resort to name-calling.

Tom Faccine and dozens of fellow Imams have signed a letter calling on American Muslims to reject both Harris and Trump and vote third party instead. Their concluding paragraph contains this sentence: “The Democratic Party’s ongoing refusal to show any intention of reform, even as we witness the greatest catastrophe in modern history, along with the Republican promise to only worsen this evil, leaves us no choice but to take this step.”

And yet, growing numbers of Democrats are calling for the conditioning of American military aid to Israel, and as the sentence states, Trump’s policy promises even worse. (As a sidenote, as awful as it is for the Palestinians, the on-going bloodshed in Sudan is arguably worse.)

It is notable that the Uncommitted Campaign is not abandoning Harris.

I would like to propose another strategy for Muslims and their allies who are intent on changing U.S. policy regarding Israel and Palestine. Let’s start challenging any AIPAC-endowed incumbent legislators we can, with credible candidates in up-coming primaries. It is not too soon to organize and announce our purpose and begin searching for articulate and studied individuals willing to get in the public eye and make the case for a balanced policy on Israel and Palestine, among other foreign and domestic topics candidates should be versed on.

Muslims don’t owe Democrats anything. But politics will remain the art of the possible, and they would be wise to exploit the growing discontent within the party, rather than voting Green this election and handing the Oval Office to an insurrectionist and mentally unfit individual.

Harris Needs a New Way Forward on Israel and Palestine

American politicians like to repeat that America’s and Israel’s interests align. But neither our interests nor Israel’s are served by arming Israel to the teeth, believing that will make Israel more secure. Instead, it has allowed Israeli governments to believe they can postpone justice for the Palestinians indefinitely. Preponderant power does not check itself.

Arming Israel to the teeth has allowed Prime Minister Netanyahu to believe he can postpone his own day of reckoning with the people of Israel by provoking a war with Hezbollah. An end to his war against the Palestinians would cool things with Hezbollah, but that is not what he and his fellow nutcases in Tel Aviv want.

America needs a president who has had enough of Israel calling the shots in Washington. The American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), has effectively silenced too many politicians, including my Congressman Joe Neguse and my Senators Michael Bennet and John Hickenlooper.

The failure of the Democratic Party to ask a Palestinian to address the national convention delegates and its viewers last month speaks volumes. I fully intend to vote for Kamala Harris, but I am ashamed of how our Democratic president and lawmakers have, on the whole, treated Palestinians as second class to Israelis.

Before October 7, I regarded Congressman Neguse as presidential material. But his unwillingness to publicly oppose our sponsorship of Israel’s war against the Palestinians, in Gaza especially but increasingly in the West Bank as well, leaves me inclined to support a Democratic challenger in 2026.

Congressman Neguse’s colleague, Jason Crow, (D-Colo.) has demonstrated a little more nerve on this issue. Crow was the author of a May 3 letter to the Biden administration arguing that indeed Israel was in violation of the Foreign Assistance act and National Security Memorandum 20, which President Biden had issued on February 8. (Neguse was among eighty-six House members to sign that letter, but I never saw mention of it on his website and he did not seem eager for his constituents to know.) The administration did delay one arms shipment, then exonerated Israel with some cynical acrobatics.

In that maneuver, as well as the decision to not provide for a Palestinian speaker at the Chicago convention, as well as in every vote to supply offensive weaponry to Israel, the hand of AIPAC has been evident.

To repeat, the staunch support which Democrats and Republicans alike have provided Israel has not made Israel more secure.The billions America spends on Israel’s “security” would be much better spent helping to relocate West Bank settlers back to Israel proper. If all of those Jewish settlements were dismantled, Israel would still retain 78 percent of historical Palestine.

Make no mistake, Israeli leaders would like to rid Gaza of Palestinians, to make way for Jewish settlements. Those who are offended by charges of genocide ought to realize that what we have witnessed in the last year is at least an attempt at ethnic cleansing.

Vice President Kamala Harris needs to make a very tough decision, given the influence of the Israel lobby. She needs to call for a freeze on offensive weapons shipments to Israel. That is the only way the Israeli government will get the message that America is finally wise to its game.

I have no illusions about Hamas. But Hamas is the logical result of the many years of neither Israel nor the United States taking the plight of the Palestinians seriously. The only way Hamas or its kind will disappear is if Democrats muster the nerve to make any and all support for Israel conditional on a political solution. In the meantime, obliging Hamas leaders by continuing the war is utter foolishness, which can only produce more Palestinians who hate Israel.

Kamala Harris needs to articulate this new way forward today. Otherwise, she may very well lose critical Muslim, Black, and youth voters in this election.

Re: “Screams Before Silence”. An Open Letter to Sheryl Sandberg and Anat Stalinsky

Dear Ms. Sandberg and Ms. Stalinsky,

I am an American Muslim convert, and I regard Hamas to be a disgrace to Islam. At the same time, it is no mystery why Hamas came to be, given the unjust order Israel has imposed on the Palestinians over several decades by virtue of its military preponderance. Such power does not balance or restrain itself; hence, Hamas.

I condemn all terrorist acts committed on October 7 by members of Hamas and other Palestinian groups, as well as Israel’s disproportionate military response over the seven months since. As you know, the majority of the 35,000 victims of Prime Minister Netanyahu’s “mighty vengeance” have been women and children.

I watched your documentary, “Screams Before Silence” (https://www.screamsbeforesilence.com/) three times through, and while the testimonies are riveting and I have to presume much if not most of the content is credible (despite what some informed critics have alleged), I do find parts of the film problematic as I specify below.* As to whether sexual violence rose to the level of “systematic”, as you hope the viewer will conclude, I am not competent to judge.

It is unlikely that even a consensus by qualified human rights organizations will dispel the controversy surrounding the allegations. However, we must wait to see how close those organizations come in their final reports to such a consensus.

But just as it is relevant to pose the question whether sexual violence on October 7 was systematic, it certainly appears that a disregard for civilians and aid workers in Gaza by the Israeli government has been systematic. One might say the same of Hamas, but Israel has been dropping the bombs and imposing the siege.

I believe that Israel’s stated goal of eliminating Hamas, which will prove to be elusive and counterproductive, is a cover for what amounts to ethnic cleansing. The government would like nothing more than to rid Gaza of Palestinians to make way for Israeli settlements. If hostages are still enduring sexual violence, ending that is not a priority of the government, despite its exploiting the allegations of October 7.

In your May 6, 2024 interview by Shany Littman of Haaretz, Ms. Stalinsky, Littman asked if you are concerned that the film could be perceived as an attempt to justify the “continued Israeli attacks on Gaza”. You responded that you could not imagine how anyone could think that was your motivation.

You later said you thought the Israeli government is “sentencing us to doom”.

In light of these remarks, I urge you to undertake a documentary addressing the violence perpetrated against Gazans and West Bank Palestinians in the aftermath of October 7. For all the reasons you both state for producing “Screams Before Silence”, the stories of victims of this mighty vengeance must be told.

Just as you were troubled by what you perceived to be denialism of sexual violence by people outside of Israel, I am troubled by what seems to be denialism by many Israelis with respect to the war on Gaza especially. I was alarmed to hear recently that most Israelis oppose humanitarian aid to Gazans.

At the conclusion of your film, you, Ms. Sandberg, tell Ms. Stalinsky: “Anyone who watches this film can bear witness….And we can take that pain, and take that trauma and turn it into hope, turn it into commitment, turn it into conviction that we are not going to let this happen again.”

Indeed. And in the same vein we all must face what has been going on in Gaza everyday since October 7 in retribution for the horrors suffered by Israelis on that day. Israelis especially should know how their government’s war on Gaza has impacted innocent women, children, and men alike. No two people are better qualified for that task than you.

Sincerely,

Todd Buchanan

* We should be suspect of any taped confessions, because of what is not seen. What was the motivation for the alleged Hamas prisoners to “confess” to acts of sexual violence? The viewer cannot know. And at least one of the prisoners appears to have facial indications of physical abuse, i.e., a possible “black eye”.

In a couple of the interviews, you, Ms.Sandberg, seem to be “leading the witness” with your question about whether sexual violence on October 7 appeared to be systematic. It is clear that is the answer you want.

On this point, human behavior in highly-charged circumstances, including mass violence, cannot be explained simply in terms of the presumed intentions of the actors. We know that sexual violence is endemic in warfare. In other words, there may indeed have been patterns of sexual violence without it having been intentional by the Hamas leadership.

Some critics of the documentary have questioned the reliability of some of the witnesses, if not most of them, and assert that their accounts of witnessing sexual violence or its aftermath have changed over time. Critics assert that some of the alleged witnesses of sexual violence did not include such accounts in their initial public statements, though I would not infer from that, if true, that their accounts were invented afterward.