On November 5, I will vote against genocide | US elections 2024

Earlier this year, as the genocide unfolded in Gaza, I began volunteering with various medical organizations helping Palestinians. I went on a mission to the occupied West Bank and remotely supported medical professionals in Gaza. I taught and mentored Palestinian children, supported groups providing medical care to pediatric and geriatric patients with cancer, chronic diseases, and dementia, and led research collaborations on disease and injury patterns in Gaza and the West Bank.

What I write below is based solely on my views and experiences and does not reflect the position of any organization with which I have been involved.

My work in Palestine and with Palestinians has had a profound influence on the way I view American domestic politics and how I will vote in the upcoming presidential elections.

If there is one important conclusion to be drawn from my work and my recent mission to Palestine this summer, it is that reported Israeli crimes are only a small part of what is actually happening. Many go undocumented because cameras and phones are confiscated or destroyed or victims fear reprisals in the form of direct violence or collective punishment if they speak out.

It is truly almost impossible to imagine the extent of the structural and physical violence inflicted on this population on a daily basis, and the ingenuity of the crimes committed against them.

Palestinian life is disrupted and segregated by hundreds of permanent and temporary checkpoints spread across the occupied West Bank. They can prevent Palestinians from going to school or work, stop trucks carrying goods, including perishable food, from reaching their destinations, and hinder the transportation of people in need of urgent medical attention. The Palestinian economy is completely dependent on Israeli authorities, who often make decisions that suppress or bankrupt Palestinian businesses.

Israeli soldiers regularly raid Palestinian towns and villages in the occupied West Bank, entering homes, arresting Palestinians and sometimes killing civilians. In addition, Palestinian homes, lands and other properties are being attacked, destroyed and seized by Jewish settlers protected by the Israeli army.

Violence against children is also a daily phenomenon. Israeli forces have targeted Palestinian children in their regular attacks in the occupied West Bank, killing 165 in the past year. Many are also held and abused, including sexually, by Israeli soldiers or detention center staff. Palestinian children I met told me about Israeli soldiers putting out cigarettes on their arms, cheeks and other parts of their bodies.

In Gaza the horrors are even more unspeakable. The current official death toll of over 43,000 in no way reflects the true extent of human suffering and ruin. What this number does not reflect are the deaths and life-altering injuries or conditions that Palestinians are now susceptible to due to Israeli restrictions on food, basic medical supplies such as sterile supplies and antibiotics, as well as much-needed medicine for the chronically ill. This environment of uncontrollable infections and malnutrition is also a death sentence for many pregnant women and their babies. This essentially amounts to preventing births, which is a crime of genocide.

Amid the utter dehumanization of Palestinians by Israel, as well as by its allies in American politics and media, many Americans feel disconnected from what is happening in Gaza and Palestine as a whole. But the truth is that Americans are also victims of the American-backed Israeli genocidal campaign.

Dozens of Americans of Palestinian descent have been killed in Gaza and the West Bank. Israeli authorities have harassed, arbitrarily arrested and beaten Americans, and routinely denied access to American medical missions to Gaza and the West Bank.

Even Americans without Palestinian backgrounds have been harassed (myself included), shot at, and killed. Recently, 26-year-old Ayşenur Ezgi Eygi was shot dead by an Israeli sniper near Beita, Nablus.

In the West Bank, I have seen Americans and other foreigners being verbally abused by Israeli soldiers, having their passports rubbed against a soldier’s genitals before being thrown in their faces, and being denied entry at checkpoints.

Once, while waiting to pass through a checkpoint, I struck up a conversation with an Israeli soldier, who told me that he had participated in joint exercises with a police department in Ohio, where he and his fellow soldiers were conducting checkpoint procedures for population control and military occupation taught. to American police officers.

It was shocking to hear that, but it reminded me that it is not just the United States that is exporting technologies of violence and death to Israel, but also the other way around. Violent policing in the US, which disproportionately affects marginalized communities, has been shaped by the Israeli experience of colonial subjugation of the Palestinian people.

The exchange of knowledge, ideas, weapons and intelligence maintains the dominance of the US imperial structure and the exercise of racial, cultural, economic and military supremacy in the US, Israel and elsewhere in the world.

The Palestinians recognize this symbiosis and see the US as an equal partner in their colonial oppression. An American doctor told me how a patient in Gaza became hysterical when she saw the American flag on his scrubs, and her family had to restrain her so he could operate on her without anesthesia because no such drugs were available.

It is time for Americans to also recognize that unconditional American support for Israel not only hurts and kills Palestinians, but is also harmful to the American people. The Joe Biden-Kamala Harris administration has gone out of its way to suppress opposition to the genocide at home, demonize the pro-Palestinian movement and show contempt for the horrific spike in hate crimes against Arab and Muslim Americans.

Through its actions against international courts and the United Nations, and through coercion of other states, it actively undermines the international legal order, threatening to erase the codified concept of human rights. The condoning of racist, colonial violence and crimes against humanity normalizes these atrocities and will inevitably encourage such violence against minorities and vulnerable groups here in the US.

I was involved in and actively supported “unfettered” voting during the Democratic primaries in the hope that it might prompt the current administration to change course toward Israel.

But the US president and vice president ignored the message sent to them by hundreds of thousands of their voters earlier this year. As the new Democratic candidate, Harris has gone out of her way to articulate her unwavering commitment to Israel. She has allowed ridicule and ridicule from Democratic Party voters and organizers who have tried to raise awareness about Gaza, locked up anti-genocide protesters at rallies and expelled Muslim Democrats from her events.

At a town hall event in October, Harris said there are people who care about “this issue,” but also about “lowering the price of groceries.” I am one of those who cares far more about the real possibility of Palestinian lives being completely erased from Gaza than about the price of food in the US.

On November 5, I will vote against genocide, and I will do so not only with the fate of the Palestinian people in mind, but also with the fate of my fellow Americans in mind. It is an act of love and care, and I am deeply committed to it.

The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial position of Al Jazeera.