Democrats are at a crossroads. Will they finally listen to their base?

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Friday: The U.S. releases billions in military funding to Israel.

Early Saturday morning: The Israeli military slaughters over 100 displaced men, women, and children taking shelter inside a school in Gaza City. 

This massacre, like countless others in Gaza, was carried out using U.S.-made weapons. 

To put it another way: If you live in the U.S., your tax dollars are directly funding this horror. 

The Democratic Party is at a crossroads, one that will define its legacy for years to come. If they decide to break with Biden’s disastrous policy of arming a genocide, they may be able to rebuild some of the trust they lost with voters — something they desperately need to deliver in November. 

While the political terrain is shifting, we have a critical opportunity to double down on our demands that Biden and Congress enact an immediate arms embargo, and press Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris to call for the same. 

Massacred while praying 

At dawn on Saturday, as Palestinians sheltering inside al-Tabin school rose for prayer, the Israeli military dropped three bombs, at least one of which was a “US-made GBU-39 small diameter bomb.” 

Men, women, and children were ripped apart and burned to death as a fire spread throughout the school — their bodies rendered so unrecognizable that even hours later, their families were searching through the charred remains, desperate to know whether their loved ones were among the dead.

Most of the 2.3 million Palestinians who live in Gaza were forced to flee their homes, many of them countless times over. Now, with almost all of Gaza under “evacuation order” by the Israeli military, Palestinians have nowhere left to go — but the bombs continue. Saturday’s massacre was at least the fifth Israeli attack on a school that week.

Your tax dollars at work

According to a 2016 agreement, the U.S. provides Israel with $3.8 billion in military funding annually. Since October, Congress and Biden approved an additional $14 billion in unconditional military funding to the Israeli government, and Biden has authorized well over 100 foreign military sales to Israel, most of which didn’t require congressional notification.

Israel used U.S.-made weapons in May when it slaughtered Palestinian families sheltering in tent camps in Rafah. Israel used U.S.-made weapons when it bombed the al-Mutanabbi school in Khan Younis in early July, killing over two dozen displaced Palestinians seeking refuge there. And it used U.S.-made weapons on Saturday to murder over 100 Palestinians while they prayed.

Democrats at a crossroads

Biden continues to send weapons to Israel, and both political parties — Republicans and Democrats — have cheered on the Israeli government’s slaughter and genocide of Palestinians in Gaza. This is a U.S.-perpetrated genocide as much as it is an Israeli one. 

But the Democratic voting base is calling for something different, and we have seen the progressive and increasingly mainstream wing of the party begin to echo this need. We are playing a critical role in driving the Democratic party to finally catch up to the demands of its own base. 

Day after day, people of conscience across the U.S. have mobilized in unprecedented ways to demand Biden end this disastrous and immoral policy. That included hundreds of thousands of Democratic voters who have taken to the streets and to ballot boxes across the country casting “uncommitted” or similar votes instead of supporting Biden during their state primaries — a direct message to the President to end U.S. complicity in genocide. Eventually, his disregard for his own base played a role in making him unelectable. 

Right now, we have an opportunity to re-center Gaza in the national conversation and continue building pressure on the Biden administration, on Kamala Harris, and on Democratic members of Congress to support an immediate arms embargo. 

Even when a ceasefire is reached, this won’t be over. Tens of thousands of men, women, and children have been killed. Gaza’s vibrant cities and lush orchards and olive groves have been razed beyond recognition, reduced to a gray wasteland of rubble and debris. It will take billions to rebuild Gaza, but it will be impossible to recover all that has been lost. 

Biden bears much of the responsibility for these horrors. Enacting an immediate arms embargo won’t erase the harm that has already been done, but it’s a first step toward accountability — and it’s the only way to guarantee an end to the genocide.

Tell Kamala Harris: Not another bomb.

Take a minute to sign the petition demanding Kamala Harris support an arms embargo, and join a local action with Not Another Bomb, a coalition of which JVP is a part.

‘Torture that amounts to a war crime’

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