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With only rare exceptions, U.S. news media and members of Congress continue to dodge the reality of genocide against Palestinians in Gaza, normalizing atrocities on a mass scale.
Whatever the outcomes of Israel Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s visit to the White House on Monday and the latest scenario for a ceasefire in Gaza, a bilateral policy of genocide has united the Israeli and U.S. governments in a pact of literally breath-taking cruelty. That pact and its horrific consequences for Palestinian people either continue to shock Americans or gradually normalize indifference toward ongoing atrocities on a massive scale.
Recent news reporting that President Donald Trump has pushed for a ceasefire in Gaza is an echo of a familiar refrain about peace-seeking efforts from the Biden and Trump administrations. The spin remained in sync with the killing–not only with American bombs and bullets but also with Israel’s refusal to allow more than a pittance of food and other essentials into Gaza.
Under the cloaks of the Israeli and American flags, the official stories insist that the unconscionable should be invisible.
Last year began with a United Nations statement that “Gazans now make up 80 per cent of all people facing famine or catastrophic hunger worldwide, marking an unparalleled humanitarian crisis in the Gaza Strip amid Israel’s continued bombardment and siege.” The UN quoted experts who said: “Currently every single person in Gaza is hungry, a quarter of the population are starving and struggling to find food and drinkable water, and famine is imminent.”
In late February 2024, President Joe Biden talked to journalists about prospects for a “ceasefire” (which did not take place) while holding a vanilla ice cream cone. “My national security adviser tells me that we’re close, we’re close, we’re not done yet,” Biden said, before sauntering off. He spoke during a photo op at an ice cream parlor in Manhattan, while the UN was sounding an alarm that “very little humanitarian aid has entered besieged Gaza this month.”
During the 16 months since then, variants of facile verbiage from top U.S. government officials have repeated endlessly, while normalizing genocide with a steep race to the ethical bottom, so that—in Orwellian terms, much like “war is peace, freedom is slavery, ignorance is strength”—genocide is not genocide.
Refusal to acknowledge the complicity and impunity is most of all maintained by avoidance and silence. The process makes a terrible truth inadmissible rather than admittable.
All the doublethink and newspeak must detour around the reality that the U.S.-supported Israeli siege of Gaza is genocide, which the international Genocide Convention defines as “acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group”—with such actions as “deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part.”
Israel’s actions in Gaza clearly meet that definition, as Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch have unequivocally concluded with exhaustive reports.
But under the cloaks of the Israeli and American flags, the official stories insist that the unconscionable should be invisible.
Liberal Zionist groups in the United States are part of the process. Here’s what I wrote in an article for The Nation early this year after examining public statements by the “pro-Israel, pro-peace” group J Street:
Routinely, while calling for the release of the Israeli hostages, the organization also expressed concern about the deaths and suffering of Palestinian civilians in Gaza. But none of J Street’s 132 news releases between October 7 and the start of the [temporary] ceasefire in late January 2025 called for an end to shipments of the U.S. bombs and weapons that were killing those civilians while enforcing Israel’s policy of using starvation as a weapon of war – a glaring omission for a group that declares itself to be ‘pro-peace.’ It was as if J Street thought that vague humanistic pleas could paper over these gaping cracks in its stance.
However, J Street felt comfortable taking a firm line on the question of whether Israel was committing genocide in Gaza. Here, it aligned itself completely with the position of the U.S. and Israeli governments. In mid-January 2024, when oral arguments ended at the International Court of Justice in the case brought by South Africa that charged the Israeli government with violating the Genocide Convention in Gaza, a news release declared that ‘J Street rejects the allegation of genocide against the State of Israel.’ Four months later, on May 24, J Street responded quickly when the ICJ ordered Israel to ‘immediately halt its military offensive’ in Rafah. ‘J Street continues to reject the allegation of genocide in this case,’ a news release said.
Likewise, with rare exceptions, U.S. news media and members of Congress dodge the reality of genocide against Palestinians in Gaza.
Meanwhile, the events in Gaza and the evasions in the United States have been enormously instructive, shattering illusions along the way. Many Americans, especially young people, know much more about their country and its government than they did just two years ago.
What has come to light includes mass murder of certain other human beings as de facto policy and functional ideology.
It's true that the party isn’t dead... yet. But if it does not seriously reflect on its disastrous 2024 performance—and all that led up to it—the future is beyond bleak.
A few months after the Democrats’ bitter defeat in the 2024 elections, the party convened an Executive Committee meeting. Instead of taking a long hard look at the reasons for their poor performance, the meeting devolved into an orgy of self-congratulations. “We had the best convention ever.” “We raised more money than ever.” “We had the best team and the best cooperation between the White House, the Harris campaign, and the party.”
When one esteemed party leader raised her hand reminding everyone that “we lost” and suggested that the party needed an autopsy to understand what went wrong, her idea was met with indignation. “What do you mean an ‘autopsy’? We’re not dead!”
True, the party isn’t dead, but its 2024 performance was poor. It lost the White House and the Senate. And polls now show Democrats with their lowest favorability ratings in recent history.
Despite denying the need for an autopsy, during the past few months press reports have included advice from “Democratic party operatives” as to what the party should do moving forward and reports of studies commissioned by one or another party entity analyzing the 2024 defeat. The consensus view that has emerged is that Democrats need to move to the “center” and forego radical or “leftist” political ideas. The problem with this assessment is twofold. First, most of the operatives speaking out or the groups commissioned to conduct the studies (reportedly costing $30 million) are the same consultants who dug the hole Democrats now find themselves in. They do not understand the voters they lost or what needs to be done to win them back. Second, their definitions of “centrist” and “leftist” are inventions to suit their own biases. It’s not enough to say “We need to stop being so ‘woke,’ and instead focus on what voters care about,” especially when they don’t really know what voters do care about.
For years, these same consultants have argued that Democrats need to move to “the center” of American politics, which they define as an amalgam of conservative-leaning fiscal/economic policies and more liberal-leaning on some (but not all) social issues. There was no overall theme to this mish-mash of ideas, and candidates who listened to the consultants often tied themselves in knots trying to appeal to voters without a coherent message.
While pre-Trump, Republicans would focus on the Reagan mantra of lower taxes and smaller government, when one asked Democrats what they stood for, they would read off a litany of issues (abortion, social justice, environment, immigration, guns, etc.) leaving it up to voters to find the forest from the trees. Because Republicans’ “smaller government, lower taxes” only increased income inequality and threatened the economic well-being of most voters, they avoided the details on these matters and instead sought to divert voters’ attention by elevating and exaggerating one or another of the Democrats’ stances on social issues. “Democrats want open borders.” “Democrats are soft on crime.” “Democrats want to abolish police.” “Democrats want transgender athletes to compete in women’s sports.”
Each time Republicans would lay these traps, Democrats would take the bait, focusing on these issues instead of developing an overarching message that would reach a majority of voters.
Twenty-five years ago, I co-authored a book with my brother John Zogby—“What Ethnic Americans Really Think.” It was based on polling John’s firm had done measuring the political attitudes of voters from several US ethnic groups: Italians, Arabs, Hispanics, Asians, Jews, and Africans. Despite the deep differences that existed amongst the communities included in the study, what came through was that their views converged on several issues. Strong majorities in all groups were proud of and had an emotional tie to their heritages and were attached to their hometowns and their family connections. This was true for those who immigrated to and those born in the US.
Contrary to the consultants’ “wisdom,” all of these communities supported what can be seen as progressive economic/fiscal policies. For example, overwhelming majorities, from the mid-80% range to mid-90%, wanted the federal government to: help underwrite health insurance; raise the minimum wage; impose penalties on polluters; oppose a regressive taxation system; strengthen Social Security and Medicare, and support public education. Large majorities also wanted: campaign finance reform; gun control; and a US unilateral ban on nuclear weapons testing.
On social issues, the views of the voters from each of these ethnic groups reflected a more nuanced approach. Smaller majorities, but still majorities, supported the death penalty, limits on abortion, school vouchers and opposition to racial preferences in hiring.
So in reality, the “center” is not being more moderate on economic issues and more liberal on social issues because the economic and fiscal issues have the support of almost 9 in 10 voters and are the foundation for building a majoritarian party. At the same time, instead locking out, demeaning, and refusing to engage with voters with divergent views on social issues, Democrats need to respectfully discuss these issues within the party,.
The lesson that Democrats need to learn is that “the left” is not primarily defined by where you stand on social issues. Instead, unlike Republicans, Democrats must define themselves as the party that understands the government’s positive role in creating an economy and programs that create jobs and opportunities for working and middle class families—Black, Asian, Latino, and White ethnics. When they don’t embrace these concerns, they cede this ground to Republicans, who despite their horribly regressive policies now claim to represent the working class while charging that Democrats only represent elites.
This doesn’t mean that Democrats should ever abandon their commitment to the range of social and cultural issues party leaders have long embraced as critical for our diverse democratic society. But these issues can’t define the party. For Democrats to win, they must reclaim their history as the party of Franklin Roosevelt, Lyndon Johnson, and, yes, Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders. That they are the party that believes that government has a role to play in lifting up those who need a helping hand, and providing for the working classes and middle classes of all ethnic and racial communities.
Don't count birthdays. Follow the money.
Sometimes a little procrastination can be a good thing. A recent case in point was this year’s California Democratic Party’s convention decision to postpone consideration of a resolution calling for a mandatory retirement age for state and local officials. By not acting on the measure the party has, at least for the moment, spared itself a diversion from the real question of just what message it wants to convey – regardless of the age of the messenger.
The resolution was offered by Eric Kingsbury, a member of a heavily tech-funded slate that succeeded in moving the San Francisco Democratic Central Committee dramatically to the right in the last election. Kingsbury was quick to state that this was “decidedly not about Nancy Pelosi. If every elected leader in this country were like Nancy Pelosi [the 85-year old San Francisco Representative who is a fellow Committee member] we wouldn’t have to have this conversation.” And yet SF Democratic Committee Chair Nancy Tung suggested a specific age cap of 70: “That’s the general thought. Though we are thinking that an exploration by the state party is the way to go. But 70 is an age that other jurisdictions have adopted for judges and the like.”
This all, of course, is a predictable reaction to Joe Biden’s inept debate performance widely believed to have cost the Democrats the White House. It is also something of what we might call a “best seller-list solution,” in this case a follow-up to the success of “Original Sin,” the account of the Biden decline in his White House years that immediately hit the top of the New York Times non-fiction list. This book comes close on the heels of “Abundance,” the best-seller pro-growth manifesto also touted by centrist members as the cure for what ails the Democrats. .
Perhaps the quickest refutation of the age-limit solution is Senator Bernie Sanders, currently traveling about the country conducting (often in the company of Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez) the largest anti-Trump Administration rallies to be found anywhere, while also sponsoring the (unfortunately unsuccessful) U.S. Senate resolutions to block weapons shipments for Israel’s use in further devastating Gaza. Sanders is 83, a year older than Joe Biden. Would we really want to silence the principal challenger to the Trump agenda in the currently trendy cause of fighting gerontocracy? Well, actually the people behind the convention resolution just might.
What is the new leadership of the San Francisco Democratic Party all about? As they say, just follow the money. In winning control of the Central Committee, the SF Democrats for Change slate raised over $2.2 million, more than tripling the amount raised in support of the Labor and Working Families slate of incumbent members and allies.
The source of that overwhelming financial edge was predominantly high tech capital. Backers included billionaire Chris Larsen of Ripple cryptocurrency, once estimated to be the fifth richest person in the world, now down to #407; Yelp CEO Jeremy Stoppelman; and Zack Rosen, CEO of the venture-backed software company Pantheon. But the group’s most prominent and infamous supporter is self described “centimillionaire” Garry Tan, CEO of startup incubator Y Combinator (I’ll leave you to do your own research on the exact meaning of that), and also an early employee of Palantir Technologies, the data analysis and technology firm that has received over $113 million in federal funding from the Trump administration for the implementation of the executive order for federal government cross-agency data sharing.
Tan, who is estimated to have spent something like $400,000 on SF politics in the past few years, achieved his moment of maximum fame with a wee hours X post directed at a majority of the then members of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors: “Fuck Chan Peskin Preston Walton Melgar Ronen Safai Chan as a label and motherfucking crew … And if you are down with Peskin Preston Walton Melgar Ronen Safai Chan as a crew fuck you too … Die slow motherfuckers.” When someone responded suggesting that he was drunk when he posted what was apparently a reference to a Tupac Shakur song, Tan responded, “You are right and motherfuck our enemies.” (The posts were subsequently deleted.) Tan describes himself as a “moderate.”
While all of the big bucks backers of SF Democrats for Change may not be as crude as Tan, one trait we can be certain that they do share is disinterest in any campaign to radically shift the status quo in America. Do they share their proteges’ interest in a political age cap? Who knows, but it’s nothing that’s going to make them start asking for their money back. Whereas, if they were to hear that the recipients of their campaign funding were calling for an end to the corporate domination of politics, we can be pretty sure they’d let us know what they thought about that.
That the party needs to find a way to recapture the hearts and minds of the working class has become a truism in Democratic circles. And that doing so will require advocating clawing back some of the wealth and power that the nation’s corporate elite have amassed in recent years is obvious to anyone who takes the time to think it through. But you ain’t going to keep the support of the people whose cash put SF Democrats for Change in power by talking that kind of talk.
This is a scenario we can expect to see repeated in every state over the next couple of years. Age limits! Deregulation! Strong defense! Cut bureaucracy! Patriotism! Less political correctness! It’ll all be rolled out as party “moderates” try to achieve the impossible status of being both the party of the working class and the party of billionaire and centimillionaire financiers. Beware!