What's Missing From the Debate Over Israel-Palestine and the Election

It's about power, the purpose of activism, and a guy named Trump.

Official White House photo by Shealah Craighead

A great many liberals and leftists are grappling with the question of their vote for president this November because they are displeased with Joe Biden, in particular for his support of the Israeli government as it wages war on Gaza. Many others have ceased grappling and have decided not to vote at all. This is more than a matter of angry disputes among the extremely online; this election could be decided by a few thousand votes (or even less) in a key state or two. Unfortunately, there are vital dimensions to this issue that almost no one is talking about. 

They revolve around the question of power: Who has it, how it is used, and how it can be moved. Engaging in politics requires serious thinking about power; without that, we’ll miss the whole point. 

Yes, I’m going to make an argument for why people who are angry at Joe Biden should not only hope he gets reelected but should vote for him themselves. This is not because I don’t appreciate the pain and anger so many people are feeling; I do. Before anyone says “You just want us to shut up and vote for Biden!”, that is not at all what I am arguing. Just the opposite: I want those of us who are appalled at what is happening in Gaza to preserve our ability to do something about it. 

Guess what, it matters who the president is

Let’s start with this inarguable premise: The president of the United States has a great deal of power to affect Israeli policy. We give Israel billions of dollars in aid that can be increased, decreased, or offered only with conditions. If the president chooses, he can exert pressure on the Israeli government, which in the past has proven effective at changing Israeli behavior. Even the most committed pro-Palestinian protester shouting “Genocide Joe! Genocide Joe!” is doing so because they agree that the president matters in this equation, and if he were doing something different then the situation on the ground in Gaza might change. That’s why they’re trying to convince him to take a different course. 

Which brings us to the second point: Activism is about changing government policy. It has many other goals as well — enhancing public understanding, persuading people, building solidarity that can be called upon in the future — but all those are means to the end of changing policy. As a consequence, activists need to think about power and policy. Who has power now, and where does their power lie? How can we increase our own power? Where are the points where pressure can be applied? Which tactics, including the combination of inside and outside strategies, will be most effective? 

The willingness to think seriously about those questions is what separates movements that succeed from those that fail, and individuals who make a difference from those whose activism does nothing more than make them feel good about themselves. 

I’ve long argued that from the standpoint of the left, the best thing about Joe Biden is his malleability. He has always placed himself where he perceived the center of the Democratic Party to be, changing as the party has changed, and he has few commitments that are not open to revision. On many issues, he has been a far more progressive president than anyone would have predicted ten or twenty years ago, not because he underwent an ideological conversion but because he responded to pressure from within his party. 

If you’re an activist, the next best thing to having a president who already agrees with you is having one you can persuade. Granted, Biden’s response to that pressure when it comes to Israel-Palestine has so far been underwhelming. He halted one shipment of 2,000-pound bombs to the Israeli government while other military aid has continued to flow. His warnings to Prime Minister Netanyahu not to go ahead with an invasion of Rafah went unheeded, and he has not taken any steps in response. He has become more critical in public and private of the Israeli government’s conduct, but that hasn’t been backed up by any genuine threat to cut off military aid. His administration has been working to arrive at a peace agreement, but so far without success. 

But if Biden is reelected, activism will have a purpose, because persuading the American government to change its policy toward Israel-Palestine will still be possible. If Biden loses, that will no longer be the case.

Don’t pretend Trump doesn’t exist

That brings us to the third point: We can’t ignore Donald Trump. If Biden is not president next January, then Trump will be. Trump has gotten away with saying almost nothing about Gaza (other than scolding Netanyahu for being beaten “at the public relations front” by Palestinians), but we don’t have to wonder about what his approach will be. 

Trump is an unabashed racist leading an intensely Islamophobic party that doesn’t even pretend to consider Palestinians to be human beings (and no, they don’t care that many Palestinians are Christians). If tomorrow Netanyahu announced that it was his intention to commit a literal genocide — not killing tens of thousands of Palestinians but massacring all 7 million in Gaza, the West Bank, and within Israel — the leadership of the GOP would praise and celebrate him for it. Many would consider it a salutary acceleration of the preconditions for Armageddon.

For his part, Trump will not be moved by activism or arguments about human rights or anything else; his response to pro-Palestinian protests could well be to order the military to shoot protesters in the legs. He’ll try once again to ban Muslims from entering the United States. Everyone making and implementing policy toward Israel-Palestine in a second Trump administration will be hostile to Palestinian rights. He’ll support Netanyahu’s refusal to allow the creation of a Palestinian state. He’ll encourage West Bank settlement, which we know because in 2019 he broke with decades of U.S. policy, declaring that those settlements were no longer considered illegal under international law. Here’s a video of him endorsing Netanyahu in 2013, even before he became president:

If you care about Palestinian lives and about the effect American policy has on those lives, you can’t just wave away the possibility of a Trump presidency. See point #1: The president has great power to affect Israeli policy, and if that president is Trump, the American government will be reinforcing the Netanyahu government’s most brutal intentions in both Gaza and the West Bank. More Palestinians will be likely to die, and the prospects for Palestinian self-determination will move further into the distant future. 

In sum, you can’t be outraged at our current president over what he’s done with regard to Israel-Palestine and simultaneously be indifferent to who will be president for the next four years. And no, I’m not encouraging anyone to just shut up and vote for Biden. If you’re unhappy with what he has done, you should be as loud about it as possible: Organize, protest, march, call your member of Congress, use your voice in every way you can. But we’re all going to have to make a choice in November.

If you want to argue that the most likely path to a transformational change in U.S. policy toward Israel-Palestine is for Donald Trump to get elected, go ahead and make that case; you can explain how and why it will happen, and why those who believe in the Palestinian cause should do what they can to help Trump win. I’m skeptical, but perhaps there are angles I haven’t considered. 

Few people would make that claim; far more common is the idea that there’s no difference between the candidates. If that were true it would imply two things. First, you’d be saying that every protest should shut down immediately and we should all just give up worrying about Gaza since there’s nothing we can do. Second, if there’s no difference between the candidates on Gaza then everyone should decide their vote, and whether they vote, based on all the other issues that matter: abortion, health care, education, LGBTQ rights, labor policy, climate change, voting rights, etc. And I’m pretty sure I know where most of the people who care about Palestinians would come down on those. 

In other words, no matter what you care about, no one can be indifferent to who the next president is. We simply don’t have that option.