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Friday, August 23, 2024

A Palestinian American’s Place Under the Democrats’ Big Tent? By Ta-Nehisi Coates in Vanity Fair

"Last summer I spent ten days traveling the lands under Israeli rule. What I saw was hauntingly familiar. For as sure as my ancestors were born into a country where none of them was the equal of any white man, Israel is a state where no Palestinian is ever the equal of any Jewish person. In Israel itself, I met with Palestinians who were nominally empowered, with the right to vote. But whereas their Jewish countrymen could pass on their citizenship to their non-Israeli spouses, these Palestinians could not pass on citizenship to their spouses born a few miles away, in the West Bank or Gaza. Moreover, discrimination against them was perfectly legal. Frequently they were the subject of outright racism, as when Netanyahu warned his country during the 2016 election that “the right-wing government is in danger. Arab voters are heading to the polling stations in droves.”

Palestinians in the occupied West Bank are packed onto an archipelago of land. There they have enjoyed local elections through the Palestinian Authority. But that authority is still subordinate to Israeli rule, which Palestinians can neither vote for or against. Meanwhile, their neighbors, Israeli settlers, enjoy the full benefits of Israeli citizenship. And then there is Gaza, which had alarmed human rights advocates and public-health officials well before last October. For 17 years, the people of Gaza have been trapped by a blockade that extends across air, sea, and land. Gaza is commonly referred to as the largest open-air prison in the world, and it is here that so many American bombs have been dropped.

Israel and its defenders often claim that it is the “only democracy in the Middle East.” But what I saw was an ethnocracy, where half the people are first-class citizens, and the other half are something less. And this is a system sponsored and endorsed by the United States of America. The endorsement is not contradictory. For most of its history, America too was an ethnocracy in democratic clothing. The ostensible triumph over that old system, which we call Jim Crow, is one of the most uplifting stories America tells itself, one that has been repeatedly invoked at the DNC. How odd I find it that a people, presently brutalized by a similar system, whose relatives are being erased by that system’s wanton violence, are also being erased from the stage." 

A Palestinian American’s Place Under the Democrats’ Big Tent?

Though the Uncommitted movement is lobbying to get a Palestinian American on the main stage, the Harris campaign has not yet approved one. Will there be a change before Thursday—and does the Democratic Party want that?
 
 
 
[AS ALWAYS PLEASE GO TO THE LINK TO READ GOOD ARTICLES (or quotes or watch videos) IN FULL: HELP SHAPE ALGORITHMS (and conversations) THAT EMPOWER DECENCY, DIGNITY, JUSTICE & PEACE... and hopefully Palestine] 

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