Why You Need to Vote Democrat to Save Palestinians

My stance on the issue: I don’t care about Israelis. I don’t care about Palestinians. I care about human beings, and I don’t want any of them killing any others in any numbers for any reason. So if the October 7th Palestinian attacks that killed about 1200 Israelis could be plausibly called a genocide by the Israeli government, there’s no question that the Israeli response which has killed over 100,000 people (about 44,000 directly killed and over 60,000 dead by starvation and disease) by this point is also a genocide: much larger numbers dead in an area with a much smaller population.

The situation has been unbearable for about a year, even taking into account a justified Israeli response. So rather than thinking as a political partisan, I think pragmatically: what is the best way forward to save the most human lives? In terms of US response to the ongoing genocide in Gaza, I believe the clearest assessment of political realities in the US leads to support for the Democratic Party over the Republican in this year’s election.

That seems counterintuitive, I know, because the genocide in Gaza has been going on under Biden’s watch, and while he has worked for a cease fire for months now (this link is from May, and he had been working on it for months even then), Biden hasn’t acted definitively to end the genocide until recently. The fact is, however, that both major parties in the US almost unconditionally support Israel and have for decades. Had Trump won in 2020, the situation as it stands would be unchanged.

However, US activity for almost a year would have been very different.

The political reality in the US is that the Republican Party is the party of xenophobes. It is anti-Muslim and has a virulently anti-Muslim base. There is no mass of voters under the GOP banner who cares what happens to Palestinians. Trump, during his presidency, even made the incendiary move of formally recognizing Jerusalem as the capitol of Israel and moving the US embassy there.

However, there is a mass of voters under the Democratic Party’s umbrella — voters who regularly vote Democrat — who care very much what happens to Gazans, and who are disgusted by the genocide. I would say the majority of Americans who are concerned about Gazans are Democrats or to the left.

So the answer is clear: if the Democrats take power this year, we will have a government in place susceptible to pressure to end the genocide in Gaza and establish a ceasefire rapidly. If the Republicans take power, there will be no such government in place, as most Republicans from uncritically pro-Israel Evangelicals to the straight up racists who love Trump literally won’t care what happens to Gazans. The more dead, especially with the latter group, the better.

We need to vote Democrat to save Palestinian lives. And, I would argue, Israeli lives as well.