Vote and Don’t Just Vote―Stand Against Genocide

Roy DeCarava, via Musée Magazine.

365 days and counting. A year of witnessing what began as shocking, disgusting, and dismaying, but seemingly turned into a daily increase in savagery that most of us have never seen before. Captured on our phone screens, the unbearable truth of this manufactured “conflict” has unfolded. It’s become apparent that the masses and our gullibility have been long used to embolden the most evil individuals and acts in this world. Despite the public outrage and out-pour for an end to the massacre Israel is committing in Gaza, the West Bank, and now Syria and Lebanon, the Western “leaders” continue to align themselves with Netanyahu and his Zionist ideology. The West’s unwavering commitment to funding and openly supporting a literal war criminal and savage has underscored in 2024 that white supremacy remains the ultimate goal for the elite few who, for centuries, have sought to control historical narratives.

For anyone in November 2024 still uncertain about the right and wrong of Israel’s recent actions alone, it’s a stark admission of indifference to the sheer violence and evil that would justify eradicating an entire people. The hatred I've heard from Zionists—be they parents, children, teachers, or members of the IDF/IOF—reminds me painfully of the propagandistic vitriol that fooled some of my German relatives. This mindset has merely been rebranded to sustain white supremacist aims today. The reality is, things haven't gotten better; they haven't changed. Instead, the majority of this world’s population continues to be under the subjective, violent, and oppressive foothold of the same groups who have long clung to this idea of supremacy. 

Zionism, at its core, is an ideology rooted in settler colonialism—and it is 2024. 

Why isn't shame and disapproval sufficient to disrupt the systems of the empire?  How can we all feel such levels of shame and it not be enough to change anything? Perhaps it is because many are not ashamed at all—or worse, they are so uninterested in the current horrors of the world, that a genocide committed wide in the open fails to shake us. 

Aren't we tired yet? I know I am exhausted, pissed off, worn out. I haven't personally had to escape the bombs or have my family members massacred. But that doesn't change the fact that I have bore witness to these crimes. As a biracial woman, whose mother is German and whose father is African American, between the enslavement of African individuals to the Nazi regime and the Holocaust, I have spent my life trying to answer the question of, what would I have done if I had been there? Would I have risked my life, or my family’s lives, to protect my Jewish neighbors? I know I’m not alone in pondering how I might have responded. Would I have turned a blind eye and lived as if people around me weren’t disappearing? It’s easy to imagine the good we would have done or the injustices we would have stood against, especially when no real action is required—no risk, no putting ourselves on the line. 

Well, under my circumstances and context, I'm tackling the question, What are you going to do? And I don't understand how so many individuals are unaware that the question is in the present tense. 

We, Ordinary People 

We—the world, humanity, those of us, in all ethnic categories from all walks of life— are the majority! We outnumber the fascist few, no matter how loud and vile their voices are. We are the heroes one another needs! I don't have the answers, or road map on what this looks like, at all. I am no expert in community organizing or mobilizing and am not a political figure. I am just a person. A mom. A daughter, wife, friend, who is tired of being consistently gaslighted by world leaders into accepting the massacring of humans as a righteous deed instead of one rooted in self-actualization and self-preservation for a select few. 

Instead, one year later, we are watching a land invasion into Lebanon. We are watching the targeting of mosques, residential buildings, men, women, and children by Israel, with the same goals and aims it set forth to accomplish in Palestine. The same tactics, with new evolved iterations like the pager terrorist attacks. My Lebanese-German family members are unable to reach loved ones, glued to their TVs and phones in the same way my Palestinian friends have been for the past year and before. I am not okay! And neither should you be! 

I refuse to frame this in a way that comforts the white minority—saying things like, “Imagine if Gaza, or Lebanon, or Syria were in Europe, and some other entity was taking the actions of Israel!” I refuse to try and portray it this way for individuals to see the humanity in the people who are currently being savagely attacked and oppressed by Israel and the United States. It would be me admitting to some white supremacist notion that the only true victims are white and the only true terrorists are brown or black! This has never been the case. Historically speaking or otherwise, most of the documented and undocumented evils of this world have been caused by white supremacist ideals and notions. 

Doing the Right Thing At the Right Time

How do we continue to allow history to repeat itself? Why do we continue to buy into the systems of oppression that exist to only support and embolden their aim and never the needs of the masses? How did we allow the few to set standards that the rest must follow? And more importantly, how do We, the people, end this vicious cycle? 

I use my words deliberately, as it has also become ever more apparent that our world leadership in government serves only their self-interests and not the interests of the majority. Even during an election year in the United States, when politicians should be making promises to the masses, whether they uphold them or not, and selling us on why they deserve our vote, we see no efforts on the sides of the Republican or Democratic Party to address an end to the Israeli regime and tirade. Instead, what we have are both sides doubling down on their support of Israel and its genocidal aims and an attempt to diminish all of the opposing viewpoints. 

The US, UK, Germany, Canada, and Australia are at the forefront of the support for Israel. This shouldn't be shocking given that these countries' entire existences were built upon genocide. They all defend Israel because the racist dehumanization of others is integral to the ruling institutions of these nation-states. We watch as our governments take our tax money and spend it on Israel and its genocidal, land-grabbing aims, while our citizens suffer. And before someone turns this into a Biden-Harris-specific issue, our entire government—largely made up of Republicans, Democrats, and Independents—has supported Israel for modern recollection. There is no intention to end funding for Israel, and that’s extremely concerning.