Trump's America Could Be Worse. It Could Be Gaza

We’re in for a hell of a ride when Donald Trump becomes president and Republicans hold both houses of Congress. I know that things will get rough in this country—or, rather, rougher. But it bears repeating: Nothing the American people endure in the next four years can touch the horrors we’ll help inflict on Gaza in the next hour.

I also know how many Democratic voters are still mourning. The Democratic Party’s institutional positions may differ significantly from mine, but I share many values with most Democratic voters: on sensible gun regulation, a stronger social contract, fighting racism, ending poverty, the environment, women’s rights, and more.

These values are savaged every day, with the full backing of a Democratic administration—in Gaza, Lebanon, the West Bank, Yemen, and other fronts in Israel’s many-pronged war on its neighbors.

It’s never the wrong time to do the right thing. Because fighting for justice is a muscle that grows stronger with each use.

If there’s a silver lining, it’s this: Democrats don’t have to wait. They can fight for these values today—by fighting for Palestine.

Climate and the Environment

The United Nations reports how, in Gaza, “there has been complete degradation of the soil, water, land, and agriculture. Sewage, wastewater, and solid waste management systems and facilities have collapsed. The destruction of buildings, roads, and other infrastructure has generated millions of tons of debris, some of which is contaminated with unexploded ordnance, asbestos, and other hazardous substances.”

“Greenhouse gas emissions are stacking up,” the CBC reports, “from explosions, military vehicles and overseas weapons shipments,” adding that much of the destruction is “irreversible.”

Women’s Rights

Many Democratic women are feeling this loss especially deeply. I share their concerns about the future of women’s rights. I can only imagine what they must feel.

But Democratic women can do so much today for their sisters in Gaza. Women’s healthcare—an urgent issue in the US—was a disaster even before the current onslaught. 70 percent of Gazan women were “unable to access vital medical care due to restrictions on their freedom of movement,” according to UNICEF. Infant mortality in Gaza was already seven times higher than Israel’s, just across the fence.

As of now, more than 20,000 women and girls—probably much more—have already been killed in the region by American weapons. Those of us who support a woman’s right to bodily autonomy can only recoil when we consider how brutally that principle is violated with each woman’s murder.

The right to choose was already difficult for the women of Gaza. Abortion is illegal there, and the occupiers permitted few women to leave for any reason. Today, Gazan women don’t even have the “right to choose” whether their children live or die. They can only watch as their children perish from American weapons, lack of medical care, starvation, and the other fruits of the US/Israeli partnership.

Childcare

Our country urgently needs adequate childcare. It doesn’t get any less adequate than this: Official reports say that over 40,000 people have been killed in Gaza, of whom one-third were children. That comes to roughly 15,000 kids.

The real number is undoubtedly much larger. Last July, medical journal The Lancet found it reasonable to presume that 186,000 people or more had already died in Gaza. At current adult-to-child ratios, that comes to 70,000 dead children—or more.

Gun Regulation

We’re not controlling guns in the Middle East. We’re sending them—literally, tons of them.

The Trace, a publication dedicated to reducing gun violence, reports the US sent “more than 27,500 handguns to Israel” in one two-month period alone. At the same time, per the Forum on the Arms Trade, “U.S. companies dramatically increased the number of military rifles ... ammunition and guided missile parts exported to Israel.”

It's not just guns or spare parts, of course. Here’s a partial list of US weapons deliveries to Israel, per the Arms Trade Forum:

50 F-15 fighter jets and related equipment; 32,739 120mm tank cartridges; 30 Advanced Medium Range Air-to-Air Missiles; 50,000 M933A1 120mm High Explosive mortar cartridges and related equipment; 6,500 Joint Direct Attack Munitions (JDAMs); at least 14,000 of the MK-84 2,000-pound bombs; 6,500 500-pound bombs; 3,000 Hellfire precision-guided air-to-ground missiles; 1,000 bunker-buster bombs; 2,600 air-dropped small-diameter bombs and other munitions ... ... 1,800 MK84 2,000-pound bombs; 500 MK82 500-pound bombs; "the transfer of 25 F-35A fighter jets and engines worth roughly $2.5 billion” fuses for 155 mm artillery ammunition”; 4,792 rounds of M107 155mm artillery ammunition; 52,229 rounds of M795 155mm artillery ammunition; 30,000 M4 propelling charges; 36,000 rounds of 30mm cannon ammunition, 1,800 of 3,000 requested M141 bunker-buster munitions, at least 3,500 of 5,000 night-vision devices, some Hellfire missiles and other weapons had been delivered from the United States and European Union.F-16s Small Diameter Bombs, ammunition and JDAM Tail Kits; “precision-guided munitions, such as joint direct attack munitions, small-diameter bombs, 155-millimeter artillery ammunition and other categories of critical equipment”; 1,000 250-pound small diameter bombs ... [ and it goes on]

You get what you pay for—which, in this case, is between 15,000 and 70,000 dead kids.

Between 2000 and 2022, 206 children were killed in the US by school shooters. I wept for the children of Newtown. Imagine how they feel in Gaza, where up to 339 times as many children were killed by weapons violence in one year as died in over two decades of US school shootings.

Racism

As far as I know, Israel is the only nation the United States has ever explicitly wanted to create so that one ethnic/religious power could rule over others (other than the United States itself).

In Israel and the occupied territories, human rights are contingent on ethnic and religious identity. An occupying army sets the rules for Palestinians, whose identity determines where they can live, work, and even which roads they can use. To be an Arab is to be considered inferior, invisible, and insignificant.

That’s apartheid, and it’s a profound violation of our shared antiracism principles.

LGBT Rights

Between 25,000 and 117,000 adults have died in Gaza. This global survey suggests that slightly less than one in ten adults identifies as LGBT. If that reflects the overall distribution of human sexual orientation, we’ve very likely killed 10,000 LGBT people already, with no end in sight.

One thing seems clear: the US has enabled the worst massacre of LGBT people in at least fifty years.

Fighting Poverty

More than one in six children is impoverished in the US, a number that will almost certainly rise under Trump. There’s no denying that level of suffering—or disgrace. With all those pointless billionaires inhaling our national wealth, we’re still being told we can’t afford to feed the poor. For shame.

In Gaza, everybody lives in extreme poverty. Case in point: the UN expects 60,000 cases of acute malnutrition to develop soon among children six months to five years of age.

Inflation Reduction

Inflation? High food prices don’t matter when there’s no food. This UN report concluded that Gaza’s “famine thresholds may have already been crossed or else will be in the near future.”

That’s right, famine—while we aid and abet (and have become) the perpetrators.

Housing

UNICEF estimates that 1.9 million Gazans—which is most of them—have been rendered homeless. Palestinians are being driven from their homes in the West Bank, too, their villages ransacked and their orchards burned.

We’ve also helped Israel kill thousands of people in Lebanon, leaving well over a million people without housing there.

Affordable Healthcare

Democrats largely support “affordable care”—a phrase I’ve never cared for, since I support healthcare for all. But the better question for Gaza is, What medical care? Health itself is a distant dream when there’s not enough water, food, or medical care.

That’s deliberate. Israel, with US help, has systematically destroyed countless medical facilities and targeted medical workers for assassination, arrest, and torture. As a result, polio has reappeared in Gaza.

A note on incrementalism

Democratic Party rhetoric leans heavily on “incrementalism”—the perceived virtue of doing things slowly and in small increments.

In Gaza, especially, incrementalism is surrender. Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) reports that Israel blocked nearly 95 percent of all coordinated aid movement for much of October and describes “horrific massacres and an unbearable humanitarian situation for people there who remain trapped ...”

MSF says that “humanitarian support is impossible to provide under current conditions.”

The destruction hasn’t been incremental. Our responses can’t be, either.

As I’ve said, my heart goes out to anyone in pain. But the best antidote for pain is action, and Dems don’t have to wait until Trump takes office to fight for their values. They can act now—by telling their leaders that this horror must stop, once and for all.

First, they can call their senators and tell them to vote for the Bernie Sanders resolution which blocks $20 billion in arms sales to the government of Israel until certain conditions are met. (Callers can use the excellent scripts both here and here.)

That’s just the start. Americans of conscience must demand an immediate end to the slaughter, a total arms embargo against Israel, humanitarian aid for Gaza on the scale of the Marshall Plan, and a short and concrete path to Palestinian statehood.

People will say it’s too late because Trump is coming. His new ambassador to Israel doesn’t believe in Palestinians, much less in talking with them. Why pass a resolution that’s purely symbolic?

Because it’s never the wrong time to do the right thing. Because fighting for justice is a muscle that grows stronger with each use. And because there’s no better time than now to make this simple moral declaration: that the principles we support at home apply equally to human beings everywhere.