Now that Joe Biden is on his way into the history books as a president who refused to stop a genocide, we have his vice president coming into focus as the heir apparent should the voters choose her in November instead of the evil nemesis from Mar-a-Lago. Kamala Harris (whom many support as the light in our collective nightmare of the horrors a second Trump term might wreak) seems to have borrowed a page from Herbert Hoover’s 1928 presidential campaign. Building on the economic prosperity of the U.S. (before the Great Depression), a group of Republican businessmen ran an ad in a New York paper with the headline “A Chicken in Every Pot.” Instead of a chicken, Harris, one could argue, is promising a smile in every heart and a resurgence of joy in the American zeitgeist. Yes, of course, who doesn’t want to feel joyful, hopeful, and determined to advance personal and professional goals. Writing in Psychology Today, psychologist and researcher Dr. Gabriela Khazanov notes that positive emotions include not only “joy, laughter, and enthusiasm, but also strength, pride, and determination.”

But according to Khazanov, there’s a lot more to Harris’ decision to infuse her campaign with positive, forward-thinking energy. “She is also tapping into something called the ‘Black Joy’  movement. Led by Black artists, authors, activists and others, the movement declares that Black people’s humanity will not be defined by trauma or oppression but by something else.” That something else is what author Tracey M. Lewis-Giggetts, in her book Black Joy, calls “A joy that no White man can steal.” 

What better way to stave off the growing threat of full-blown fascism replacing our imperfect democracy than with the politics of joy. I suppose a campaign promising a more joyful future is a potent alternative to what Trump promises — deporting millions of immigrants, getting even with political enemies, weaponizing the Department of Justice, gutting rules and regulations intended to protect the air we breathe, the food we eat, the water we drink, rewarding rich benefactors with tax cuts and handouts in the form of subsidies for fossil fuel companies and other corporate offenders of the common good. 

But joy? I tell you, I’m not feeling it, Madam Vice President. I look at what’s happening in Gaza, the West Bank, and now in Lebanon, and no trumpets of joy sound in my ears. I see missiles blowing up homes, schools, markets, shelters; the people mourning the bodies of loved ones killed by U.S.-supplied Israeli weapons; children burned to death, missing limbs, even decapitated from the blasts of Israeli missiles; and I feel no joy. I see the fathers carrying their dead children. I see the wounded receiving a bare minimum of care in crowded hospitals, families forced to live in tents with no protection from Israeli warplanes and drones, children wasting from malnutrition, and I feel not even a scintilla of joy at the prospect of a Harris victory in the upcoming election. What I do feel is anger and a deepening grief for the people in Gaza, and now Lebanon, under constant Israeli bombardment and displacement. How utterly naive of me to imagine that, if Harris and Biden were only made more keenly aware of the suffering of these people, their innate goodness would kick in, and they would see that what really, really matters is to stop the bleeding, end the killing, go to bat on the side of humanity, of compassion for the downtrodden, the oppressed, the impoverished — all those unjustly targeted and murdered by the very weapons we have provided and continue to provide the killers. 

And you, Madam Vice President, what do you have to say about Israel’s genocidal war whose principal victims are women and children, and whose primary target, I am not alone in positing, is everything that provides Palestinians with a dignified and sustainable life in Gaza and the West Bank — schools, universities, mosques, churches, libraries, hospitals, water and sewage treatment plants, electricity, and of course, homes. On the last day of the Democratic National Convention, Harris told us exactly what she thinks about the war:

“Let me be clear, I will always stand up for Israel’s right to defend itself and I will always ensure Israel has the ability to defend itself.” Israelis, she said, should “never again” go through the horror and “unspeakable” attacks of Oct. 7. In a nod perhaps to those uncommitted voters reluctant to support her candidacy, she added:  “At the same time what has happened in Gaza in the past 10 months is devastating. So many innocent lives lost. The scale of suffering is heartbreaking.” 

Despite her “unwavering” commitment to Israel’s security, Kamala Harris  “will not be silent” about the humanitarian catastrophe that has transformed Palestine into a place where human rights, international law, so-called “Western values” go to die. In other words, it has become a memorial to Israel’s rabid, escalating violence — a wrath that knows no bounds, respects no laws but its own predatory, bloodthirsty, merciless nature; and a testament to the blindness of the Biden-Harris administration’s unqualified backing of Israel, a settler colonial state whose aggression Biden and Harris (as well as much of the commentariat and legislators on both sides of the aisle) excuse as the “right to self-defense”. 

As the former attorney general of California, Kamala Harris knows a thing or two about the law. Has she forgotten that under international law, Israel cannot claim the right to self-defense when it comes to attacking people living in territories it unlawfully occupies? According to UN Special Rapporteur Francesca Albanese, 

Israel claims that what it is doing in the West Bank [and Gaza] is justified under the law of self-defence. This claim has no validity. Twenty years ago the [International Court of Justice] determined that Israel could not invoke self-defence under article 51 of the UN Charter …This past July the Court indicated that Israel’s very presence in the [Occupied Palestinian Territory] is itself unlawful. …

Israel’s perversion of the law on self-defence must be recognized for what it is: a brazen attempt to provide an imprimatur of ‘legality’ to the maintenance of its unlawful aggression against the territorial integrity and political independence of the State of Palestine. If Israel truly wants to achieve its claimed security, the best and most obvious way to do that would be to cease its colonization of another people’s land, withdraw from all of it, and make appropriate reparation for damage caused (as requested by the ICJ), while being sure to apologize to its victims on the way out.

We are nearing the one-year anniversary of the October 7 attack on Israel by Hamas and other militant groups. At least 1,139 Israelis and foreign nationals were killed and at least 8,730 were injured. In addition, over 200 Israelis were taken hostage. After one-year of bloodletting, the figures for deaths and injuries in Gaza and the Occupied West Bank tell quite a different story: Gaza: at least 41,788 killed with another 10,000 missing and likely buried under rubble; at least 96,794 injured. A study undertaken by The Lancet and published online in July of this year says the death toll is likely very much higher than figures presented by the Gaza Health Ministry. The Lancet study looks at deaths from both direct (violence) and indirect causes: 

Even if the conflict ends immediately, there will continue to be many indirect deaths in the coming months and years from causes such as reproductive, communicable, and non-communicable diseases. The total death toll is expected to be large given the intensity of this conflict; destroyed health-care infrastructure; severe shortages of food, water, and shelter; the population’s inability to flee to safe places …

 The Lancet further states that “it is not implausible to estimate that up to 186 000 or even more deaths could be attributable to the current conflict in Gaza.” 

In the West Bank, at least 723 people have been killed and at least 5,750 injured. In Lebanon, the death toll after less than two weeks of war has already surpassed 2,000 killed with another 10,000 people injured and over 1.2 million people displaced as Israel conducts both a ground invasion and an escalating bombing campaign.

A new report by Oxfam “has revealed that more women and children have been killed in Gaza by the Israeli military over the past year than in any other conflict over the past two decades.” Somewhere between 6,000 and over 10,000 women have been killed in Gaza along with an estimated 11,000 to 16,500 children. Here in North Carolina where I live, the western part of the state has been devastated by Hurricane Helene. Roads and bridges washed out. Over 200 people killed by the storm. Homes swept away in flood waters. Hundreds of thousands without power. On Wednesday, October 2, Kamala Harris went to Augusta, Georgia to witness the devastation wrought by Helene. She comforted families, handed out meals, and assured residents federal help would be forthcoming. On Saturday, October 5, Harris will visit my state to assess the damage. 

A thought experiment: Imagine Harris transported to Gaza to assess the destruction from Israeli’s incessant airstrikes with bombs and missiles supplied by the U.S. and key allies. How might the vice president respond should she find herself in what’s left of a school used by displaced Palestinian families and flattened by a 2,000-pound bomb from Uncle Sam? Looking around the wreckage, she would likely see bodies torn to pieces, including the bodies of children. The smell of still fresh blood would be unavoidable. Families who survived the attack would likely be too occupied searching for the remains of their loved ones to bother with this visiting U.S. dignitary. As journalists and camera crews gather around the vice president, would she announce once again, “I will always stand up for Israel’s right to defend itself” as someone from a news agency hands her a recent press release stating that more than 900 families in Gaza have been entirely wiped out by Israeli forces in the past year — with the active assistance of the Biden-Harris administration? 

Is it possible there’s another Kamala Harris waiting to emerge from the shell of orthodox allegiance to Israel and the security needs of a settler colonial state? Might she be so moved by the plight of traumatized civilians in Gaza that, as she did with families in Augusta, Georgia, Harris will rest her hand on the shoulder of a woman whose children died in the bombing. Even embrace that woman, comfort her, let her own tears well up from that place within us all where we find common ground in grief and the pain of immeasurable loss? Would she travel so far from her calculated political platform as to help out in a traditional community kitchen, or tekia, ladling ample portions of steaming lentil soup into the outstretched pots and bowls of famished Palestinian children? The UN World Food Program estimates that 96 percent of the population in Gaza, or 2.2 million people, “are still in dire need of food and livelihood assistance.” Only a permanent ceasefire will make it possible to restore the flow of adequate humanitarian aid, reduce the threat of imminent famine, and begin the rebuilding of the Occupied Palestinian Territories.

How is it conceivable, I ask, to go on living a “normal” life when our own government is complicit in genocide. We provide Israel with diplomatic cover, weapons, and funding so it can continue murdering and mutilating innocent people day after day. How can we ignore the catastrophic suffering experienced by the people of Palestine and Lebanon, and live as though none of it were happening — as if none of it mattered, at least not enough to interrupt our life in the slightest way, or lead us to take a good, hard look at the values that shape and guide our life. Some might say that Kamala Harris has a good heart. After all, the story goes, she recognizes that Palestinians and now the people of Lebanon are experiencing an unprecedented crisis. We  are expected to believe she feels for them. The war must end, she says, and on various occasions assures us that “the President and I are working around the clock to bring about a ceasefire.” 

I’m far from feeling assured. So were thousands of uncommitted voters outraged by the refusal of the Democratic National Committee to allow a Palestinian American to speak during the Democratic Convention. Activists wrestling with the decision of whether to support Harris contend she must do more than pay lip service to the goals of negotiating a permanent ceasefire and preventing an ever-widening war in the Middle East (more accurately called West Asia). Only an arms embargo against Israel, they argue, will stop the genocide dead in its tracks.

A group of leading Muslim American scholars and imams have called upon Muslim voters to shun the Harris-Walz ticket because of Harris’ unequivocal support of Israel and its questionable “right of self-defense.” In a letter to the Muslim community, the authors wrote: “We may not know what the future holds, but we know this: we will not taint our hands by voting for or supporting an administration that has brought so much bloodshed upon our brothers and sisters.” Those who signed the letter are not blind to the possible consequences of a second Trump presidency. Their opposition to Kamala Harris is not, they emphasize, an endorsement of Donald Trump and his “vile, racist agenda, which includes advancing the apartheid and genocidal interests of a foreign state.” The group argues their position “is about [prioritizing] our faith and humanity, taking a stand for justice, and rejecting anyone who has supported, enacted, or promised to perpetuate such evil.” 

George Capaccio is a writer, poet, and performer now living in Durham, North Carolina since migrating from the Boston area. Beginning in the 90s, his concern for the people of Iraq under U.S.-imposed sanctions led him to make numerous trips to Iraq as a witness to the effects of these sanctions. At home, he advocated for their lifting through writing and public speaking while raising funds for families in Baghdad whom he knew and continues to be in touch with.  

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