******Two Emailed Messages on US Politics and Palestine******
Owing to the dying of my mobile phone, and associated problems, I may be inactive on Facebook and other social media for a while.
Meanwhile, here below are two emailed messages I sent recently to a few relatives and friends here in the USA who have been upset with me for stating that I cannot vote for Biden or his associates.
I have lightly edited the emails and have added some starred (***...) separators, along with section-labels within the second email. The (mainly labeled) sections that are explicitly about Palestine in the second email are towards its end, after the final separator with 15 or so asterisks.
I had not gone, in these two emails, into the historical context of the issues in Palestine. That is, of course, crucial and may be well known to many here--though generally not known within the USA until very recently, with a lot still left unknown. However, it would take too long to go into these historical matters, spanning most of the last century as well as this century to the present time.
Some of the written submittals by 53 countries and three international organizations in the ICJ case regarding, firstly, the legality of Israel's long occupation of Palestinian territories and, secondly, its responsibilities as an occupying power, have gone into this historical context in detail, with parts of this summarized and emphasized in the spoken presentations during the court hearings of 2024 February 19-26.
Suffice it to say that the moving images that have been projected onto (and to a good measure imprinted into) the public consciousness in this country over the course of the last 75 years have generally been the photographic negatives of the horrific and worsening realities on the ground in Palestine over that period.
This misrepresentation has hardly been confined to the USA, but this is one of the places where it has been worst. This has been aggravated by the general distancing between this country and the rest of the human world.
Paradoxical as this may sound, this distancing had been a unidirectional one. While decisions made in the USA profoundly affected the lives of people across the planet, including very adversely, people within the USA remained relatively well shielded from being adversely affected by events in other countries.
Part of that unidirectionality ended abruptly (in a horrific way for several thousands of us in my main place of work and residence) over 22 years ago. It was also changed more gradually but perhaps more profoundly by the large flows of firstly manufacturing and then remote-service industries to what is now called the "Global South", and by the industrial and economic rise of China, especially, along with other countries of that very large and populous group.
Many here will be aware of all that I have written below and may decry my focus on the internal politics of the USA. Having lived and worked here for the past half century, having noted the virtues and failings of its people and its systems and seeing also its very active role in events all over the planet over my lifetime, including what is occuring currrently in Palestine, I might perhaps be excused or at least understood.
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***Email of 2024-02-24 Sat.***
We have reached a breaking point in this country and in the global system. Trump was a warning symptom of that breakdown and Biden is part of it.
Those like me in this country who had been forced to choose the lesser evil repeatedly in past elections, have had enough. We cannot and will not vote for active supporters and enablers of genocides.
The world continues to be beset with problems of human origin, locally, nationally, regionally and globally. It is time for those aware of this, within each country's population, to rise up and say, "Enough!".
This country has played an outsize role in world affairs. It is time for its government to either step aside in these matters or else not continue to make these worse.
Let us remember past genocides and other catastrophes of human origin.
Let us be fully and painfully aware of the current, ongoing one and our role in it, including through our votes and the taxes we pay.
Never again. Enough!
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****Email of 2024-02-26 Mon****
I read the responses to my earlier enail, for which thanks. Here below are some detailed remarks regarding certain aspects of the political situation within the USA and how this situation is currently being affected, for a change, by events in Palestine.
**The Populist and Anti-Establishment Surge in the USA**
I am acutely aware of the danger to us (especially those of us who are "colored" immigrants) and others, here in the USA, from many of the Republicans and especially from their extreme wing.
Trump tapped into this extremism, as part of his strategy, during his presidential primary and general election campaigns leading to the general election of 2016 November.
However, in that general election, one should note that Trump also drew in many Independents (a very large group in this country) as well as a substantial number of Democrats.
These included many lifelong, working class Democrats, such as those in fairly liberal NYC. This was a phenomenon that I observed with alarm and initial puzzlement during the presidential campaign leading to 2016.
Over time, having seen also how Bernie Sanders had risen up from nowhere in the Democratic primaries, without the huge big-donor funding and without the media and party-establishment support that Hillary Clinton had enjoyed and utilized, and seeing also how Trump had roundly beaten, in the Republican prinaries, the very well funded and strongly supported Republican contenders, I began to better understand at least parts of the phenomenon of so many voters abandoning the "political center". But that is another discussion.
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**Rebellion**
One should note in passing that while the labor union leaders in NYC, Detroit, Chicago, etc., along with the African American politicians in the South and the urban centers had pushed hard for Hillary Clinton, much of the rank and file of even the unions rebelled, along with a significant fraction of the urban African American working class. African Americans in the South were a major exception.
**Historical Context**
As we know, the Democrats in the South were the party of Jim Crow and segregation right through the 1960s, but that began to change with Johnson and more so with Nixon, with the black-white flip in the South being completed by Reagan. African Americans in the South have been among the most loyal Democrats ever since, with the majority of the Whites and others being loyal Republicans, joining in this with the old traditional Republican-heartland states.
The same loyalty towards Democrats has not been that evident among Indian Americans, except perhaps in the West Coast, parts of the Northeast, Chicago, etc. As soon as we gain in income level, and at times even earlier, we tend to migrate into the Republican camp, with exceptions as noted.
We see this reflected at the highest levels in those like Bobby Jindal, former governor of one of the Carolinas, Nikki Haley, yet another such, and <senior moment> that young, abrasive guy with hair rising high who dropped out of the presidential race.
Vivek Ramaswamy.
One sees this also at the highest levels among the Tories (Conservatives) in Britain, with the current prime minister Rishi Sunak and the former Home Secretary, Suella Braverman, being examples.
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**Donald Trump**
Trump is a wild card, in a category by himself. He is a New Yorker, and likes to have his name splashed all over the city and his face and antics all over TV, including entertainment and news.
So I had the most unpleasant fortune of being well acquainted with both his clowning and his nastiness, for a very long time, beginning long before he ran for President and won. He represents some of the worst aspects of USAn, New Yorker, and perhaps human character, while displaying very few of the positive, redeeming features in any of these.
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**The Questionable Political Strategy of the Democrats**
Be that as it may, no matter who runs on the Democratic side, unless he/she breaks the usual mold, Trump has a very good chance of being elected again--unless he is assassinated or jailed, both of which cannot be ruled out, with both probably leading to something akin to a civil war in this country. Trump and the Republicans need to be challenged and defeated politically, fair and square. The Democrats have shown no sign of being up to that challenge.
They have focused instead mainly on demonizing Trump and his allies and relying on fear to motivate voters. What they have not been able to inspire in the general electorate is hope and passion.
This is not to demean or downplay whatever has been done to reduce the damage caused by Trump and the Republicans during Trump's term in office. This simply represents the reality on the ground in the perceptions, justified or not, among much of the historically Democratic electorate.
******************
**The Gazza Massacres and Palestine**
Recent events have also caused a very crucial segment of voters--the younger, more liberal ones, to become completely disgusted with the establishment in both parties, with this revulsion clearly hurting the Democrats far more than the Republicans.
Every new Security Council veto of a permanent ceasfire by the USA (with even its closest ally, the UK, typically abstaining, and all the other 13 voting yes), every vote in Congress to send tens of billions of dollars to Israel, every bypass of the Congress by the Biden administration to send more bombs, missiles and bullets to kill yet more tens of thousands of Palestinians, mostly women and children, every lack of condemnation and concrete action to stop the systematic bombings of residential buildings, schools, hospitals, refugee camps, UN refugee shelters, mosques and churches, every child or other civilian killed by sniper fire, burned alive or blasted into bits by weaponry from the USA drives yet another nail into the political coffins of Biden and his associates.
Each of these repeated actions also further isolates the USA from the public and even the governments across the world, with India being perhaps the major exception in the "Global South"--not unexpectedly, given the changed situation in India.
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**How U.S. Involvement in the Genocide in Palestine is Bringing Down the Democrats in the USA**
It is not those like me (who see all of this and are revolted to the core) who are the problem.
What is bringing down Biden (and with him much of the Democratic party) are the Democratic politicians, both in the executive and in Congress, who are carrying out these actions and voting as they have been doing. They have been going against what has been, for a while now, a 2/3 majority of the electorate and an even greater majority of both registered Democrats and of the younger voters. They are cutting their own throats in this regard.
Why are they doing this is the question that should be asked.
What is driving these executive actions and these votes in Congress and in the UN?
Do the government officials and legislators not know that this is making us actively complicit in a relentless genocide, ongoing now for five months, against a trapped, defenceless and increasingly physically and psychologically terminal population?
Why is the US itself increasingly isolated from even many of its closest allies?
I humbly submit these simple questions to you. I request that you seek the answers, including through queries made to the offices of these politicians, whose staff can be reached by phone, which is best, or else by emails, including via their governmental, campaign or other websites.
******
**Unacceptable Choices**
One can argue, on solid grounds, that the Republicans and Trump would make matters even worse. But this is like having to choose, in effect, between Hitler and Goebbels.
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**US Complicity in the Gazza Genocide Leading to its Global Isolation**
Even the Indian government has finally found it fit to vote with the overwhelming majority in UN General Assembly resolutions calling for a permanent ceasefire in Palestine.
Out of the 193 member states of the UN, only a handful have persisted in voting with the US against these UNGA resolutions, mostly some Pacific Island states and some of the former members of the Nazi Axis in the Europe--such as Hungary and Austria (which had been absorbed into Germany at the time).
The ICJ provisional ruling declaring that there were plausible grounds for an ongoing genocide in Palestine did not come as a surprise to those of us who had been following the case closely.
However, even many of us who had been following the case closely were surprised at the near unanimity of the five directives issued, corresponding to the five major charges brought against Israel by South Africa. The vote was 15-2 in favor in three of the five rulings, and 16-1 in the remaining two.
See below, although you may be familiar with some or all of what I have written.
The US judge who presided over the hearings was a state department official during Hillary Clinton's time as Secretary of State. She voted, in each of the five counts, with the majority, choosing not to exercise her right to add her personal notes or cautions to each ruling.
The temporary Israeli judge appointed to the bench (along with a temporary South African judge, to hear this case brought by South Africa against Israel) was known to be a very strong hardliner in his judgements in Israel against the Palestinians, and had almost surely been selected by the Israeli government for this reason.
Even he voted yes, agreeing with the majority, on two of the directives.
Only the judge from Uganda voted no, against the majority, on all five counts. The Ugandan government has distanced itself from her judgments.
**Continuing Disappointment**
What disappointed us bitterly, though not unexpectedly, was the lack of the most crucial things:
1) a directive to bring about an immediate ceasefire;
2) a follow-up security council resolution demanding the same, not watered down or vetoed by the USA;
3) actions (not just words) to stop the ongoing mayhem and suffering;
4) real movement on the ground towards a truly just and lasting settlement of the issues in Palestine.
