There has been a surge of approval for Kamala Harris ever since current US President Joe Biden dropped out of the 2024 presidential race and endorsed her as the Democratic Party’s presidential candidate. 

However, many of those in the Palestinian liberation movement are choosing not to vote for Harris due to her unwillingness to hold Israel accountable for its crimes against humanity. I believe that their decision is entirely logical, as I see Harris and the Democratic Party’s policies as detrimental to humanity. 

There are no “two sides”

Many liberals have praised Harris’ ability to account for both sides amid the occupation and genocide in Palestine, arguing that the frustration against Harris is overblown given that she has expressed a dedication to establishing a two-state solution with Israel in historic Palestine and securing a ceasefire in Gaza. However, I believe her attempts to appease two sides are futile.

Since October 7, 2023, nearly 42,000 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli forces as of writing. This number does not account for bodies stuck under rubble or burned beyond recognition, nor those who died from diseases or forced starvation by the Israeli government. A recent study from the medical journal Lancet even suggests that the Palestinian death toll is closer to 190,000. 

I believe this genocidal war on Gaza would not be able to proceed for so long without billions of American funding, which accounts for 15 per cent of Israel’s defense budget as of March 23. This percentage has likely increased given that the US supplemented their aid by 3.5 billion USD in August — a portion of the 14.1 billion USD funding bill passed by Congress in April. Since Harris stated in August that she will not place an arms embargo on Israel, I think it is nonsensical to say she cares about Palestinian lives.

Harris should drop the two-state solution which, in my opinion, has only grown more unrealistic in each passing decade, with the rise of Jewish-only settlements in the West Bank. 

I think the ‘solution’ is also unjust given that Israel is a settler colony founded on the ethnic cleansing of the indigenous Palestinian population. After killing more than 15,000 and forcefully displacing more than 750,000 Palestinians in the 1948 Nakba — or ‘catastrophe’ — Zionists declared the establishment of the state of Israel on May 14, 1948. 

Given this, while I believe the state of Israel has no right to exist, this does not mean that Jewish people should be expelled from the land. There is no reason why Jewish people cannot live in a single Palestine, as the land was before Britain’s Balfour Declaration — which helped facilitate mass Jewish immigration into the land to establish a “national home for the Jewish people.”

There is no appeasing the “two sides” during a genocide and an occupation. My perspective might come across as reductive “black and white” thinking, but I think it is sensible in this context. As someone who lives right next to Israel, I am exhausted from hearing people tell me otherwise.

I am so incredibly exhausted — not only from having to bear witness to the occupation and genocide of Palestinians but also seeing the destruction and underdevelopment that Israel brought upon the rest of the Levant in service to Israel’s longevity and the American empire’s expansionist policies. 

Breaking out of the binary

Arguments that Americans should vote for the Democratic Party’s “imperfect” candidate because she is the “lesser of two evils” are annoying to me because the lesser evil is still evil.

I think Americans must escape the shackles of a Republican-Democrat binary that does not present them with any meaningful changes. They should consider voting for someone like Green Party candidate Jill Stein, for the 2024 US presidential election, who has long supported Palestinian rights. 

Even if Stein loses, her voters will convey a powerful message: people of conscience refuse to be satisfied with their politicians’ compromises or moderate stances that attempt to appease two sides that I believe are separated by basic morality and unspeakable depravity. 

Finally, I hope we can stop being critical of those who vote for smaller parties because they supposedly threaten to let the ‘Big Bad Conservatives’ win in America, or even in Canada. I also hope we can quit looking down on people who decide not to vote at all — they may not necessarily be apathetic, but simply see no real choice. 

I myself used to say that if you do not vote, you do not get to complain. But now I am not so sure.

Lina Obeidat is a second-year student at Innis College studying political science and English.