Een beschaving die stand houdt

In the shadow of the Holocaust, Western powers supported designating parts of Palestine as a Jewish state—citing centuries-old religious claims and intending for it to provide safety for Jews fleeing persecution. But some scholars argue that Israel’s creation was a colonial endeavor—pointing to statements from early Zionist leaders, as well as the control Israel has maintained over the local population that remained in Palestine. Theodore Herzl, the founder of the political Zionist movement, believed Jews would provide “an outpost of civilization against barbarism.” In the years that followed, Israel took over large areas of Palestinian land and access to occupied territories. The blockade of Gaza has meant that Israel controls the flow of key resources like water and electricity; the strip’s hospitals, for example, routinely lack essential equipment and medicine. Israel has also served as a key ally for American and European interests—ideologically and in providing access to the region’s natural resources.  

The new state came at a cost, which is still being borne today. Many Palestinians became refugees and fled to other countries—creating a painful and lasting sense of loss. “That’s why the people in Gaza are dying on the spot. They know once they leave, they’re not coming back,” Giries said. Netanyahu has said Israel has no intention of resettling the Gaza Strip. It’s also unclear where Palestinians with destroyed homes would return. 

The past few months have felt unbearable for Giries, who has lived in California since 1958. The lines between past and present are blurring. She can’t bear to watch scenes of Palestinian families fleeing. “I cannot. When I see them, I close my eyes,” she said. “It brings back the memories … it’s reliving 1948 every single day when I see the bombing, when I see the people leaving.” Her kids don’t want her to obsess over the news, but sometimes she catches a glimpse. In those moments, she’s left in tears. Giries’s family left almost all their possessions behind when they fled Aiyn Karim, but they kept the key to their home. Today, it hangs in a frame in her living room.

In the lead-up to the formation of Israel, Zionist leaders described Palestine as “a land without a people for a people without a land.” Giries said the history of Palestine cannot be erased, nor can the scars from the Israeli occupation. In the decades that followed, the state expanded illegal settlements and demolished tens of thousands of Palestinian homes. Human rights groups, including Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, and B’Tselem, have for years accused Israel of enforcing a system of apartheid and Jewish supremacy against Palestinians. The Israeli government rejects those allegations. But on July 19, the ICJ declared that Israel is enforcing apartheid in occupied territories and called for Israel to withdraw its forces from Gaza, the West Bank, and East Jerusalem. 

About 1,200 people died in Israel during the October 7 attack, in which Hamas took at least 230 people hostage. The deaths included roughly 800 civilians, 70 foreigners, and more than 300 security forces. Israel said that its attacks on Gaza are in pursuit of Hamas, but rarely provides definitive proof of this—and has, at times, provided faulty evidence. (One video posted by Israel’s Defense Forces claimed to show a list of terrorist names in Arabic, but it was just a calendar of the days of the week.)
‍
Even before October 7, Palestinians faced the impact of occupation every day, in addition to deadly attacks. Between 2008 and 2021, violence in the region killed 5,739 Palestinians and 251 Israelis, according to the U.N. (twenty-three Palestinians for each Israeli.) That’s why many Palestinian Americans have been politically engaged since long before last October.

Thaer Ahmad, the doctor who walked out of the meeting with Biden, became more involved back in 2008. Israeli attacks during Operation Cast Lead killed more than 1,300 Palestinians, while rocket fire by Hamas killed thirteen Israelis. Human Rights Watch documented the Israeli army’s extensive use of white phosphorus against civilians. Israel denied that the use of munitions containing the toxic agent violated its legal obligations. A 2009 U.N. report on Israeli attacks noted that, similarly to its conduct now, the military often bombed “safe” cities they had told Palestinians to evacuate to. “I’m very familiar with when these wars happen and Gaza gets destroyed,” Ahmad said. After 2009, he returned to Gaza four times to help train physicians before his latest medical mission in January. 

Other Palestinian Americans have turned to courts in their pursuit of justice. In November, Monadel Herzallah, a sixty-three-year-old Palestinian American living in California, sued Biden. He accused the president of assisting a genocide that killed five members of his family. Other plaintiffs in the case include three Palestinians living in Gaza and five American citizens with family in the strip. In January, a lower court dismissed the case on jurisdictional grounds; the judge still urged the White House to examine their support of Israel’s military siege, noting that “it is plausible that Israel’s conduct amounts to genocide.” A federal appeals court affirmed the dismissal in July.

This wasn’t the first time that Herzallah lost relatives to Israeli bombs. Fifteen years earlier, Israeli attacks killed Herzallah’s nephew, so he protested outside the Israeli consulate in San Francisco. He returned to that same spot to protest earlier this year. Israeli air strikes killed Herzallah’s nephew’s two brothers in November and more of his loved ones. Among them was his four-year-old niece, Ward, whose name means “flower” in Arabic. 

As the case made its way through the legal system, Herzallah said more than two hundred of the plaintiffs’ family members have been killed. And he’s not hopeful about Harris’s run for president. He said he’s turned off by her repeated statements that Israel has the right to defend itself. “That by itself is really an indication for me about what the presidency of Harris would look like.” 

Some Palestinian Americans have lived under Israeli military occupation. Tariq Haddad’s early childhood was spent in his grandmother’s home in southern Gaza. Even playing outside could be dangerous. During a game of chess in 1987, soldiers shot rubber bullets at him and his cousins. He escaped and hid in a chicken coop for hours. 

His cousins were sometimes arrested and beaten by police. “Many of my cousins were jailed for years for nothing—for essentially protesting the occupation.” So much was out of his family’s control. Sometimes, they couldn’t shower or do the laundry because of Israel’s tight control over the water supply. They stumbled through checkpoints, which made their journeys hours longer. His grandma once woke up to Israeli soldiers eating in his family’s kitchen because they were using it to scope out the area. “Every aspect of your life is controlled by military occupation,” he said. “That was very formative as a teenager: seeing the unfairness of it all, seeing the dehumanization.”

Haddad moved to the U.S. in 1989, but most of his family remained in Palestine. He always worried about their safety. That concern was warranted. About ten years ago, Haddad couldn’t bring himself to celebrate his son’s birth because it fell on the same day as an Israeli attack on northeastern Gaza. A few days later, an Israeli air strike killed fourteen of Haddad’s family members. Grieving and angry about Washington’s support of Israel, he wrote a letter to then President Barack Obama. It said that generic calls for ending violence would not be enough, and that the U.S. must confront the system of occupation and apartheid instead. “Somebody from his administration sent me a cookie-cutter response,” Haddad said. “Nothing that was personal, nothing that meant anything.” 

Fast-forward to 2024, and Haddad, a forty-nine-year-old cardiologist in Virginia, has lost more than 130 relatives to Israel’s assault on Gaza since October 7. The U.S. State Department reached out for a conversation in January, but Haddad refused to meet with Secretary of State Antony Blinken. “I feel 150 percent vindicated in that decision. I feel that it was absolutely the right thing because I did not allow them to use my voice for political grandstanding.”

Haddad is still hopeful that progress will come. He believes that any transformation will require people to change how they vote. “When it starts to hurt people in Congress … that’s when this will change,” he said. “The reason [Muslim and Arab voters] are taken for granted is the prevailing thought of Democrats that they’re less bad than the other side and therefore they really don’t have to do anything.” For Haddad, the Uncommitted campaign has helped send a message to the Democratic Party that it can’t take voters for granted.

That’s a vision that some older Palestinian Americans share, too. May Seikaly was looking forward to representing the Uncommitted movement as a delegate at this year’s Democratic National Convention. But the seventy-nine-year-old Palestinian American’s health is failing her. The blood clot in her heart makes it hard to be active. She had to pull out. “I wish I was twenty years younger,” she said. “I get tired very, very fast. … I’m so passionately committed to my people that seeing what is happening is draining me and making me feel the incompetence of my situation.” Though her condition has deteriorated in recent months, she visited the University of Michigan’s encampment in May. Amid tents sprawled on the lawn, she shared stories with students about her collection of Palestinian oral histories. She has interviewed hundreds of displaced Palestinians over the decades; that work is now publicly available at Stanford University. 

Seikaly earned a Ph.D. from Oxford University and was a Wayne State University professor before retiring. She dedicated her life to studying Palestine because she worried her lived experience might not be taken seriously. Her family fled during the Nakba, when she was three years old. But remnants of that life are all over her Ann Arbor home. Palestinian embroidery, called tatreez, peeks out everywhere, in pillow covers and artwork framed on the wall. Some pieces were made by her mother, others by Palestinian refugees she met in Lebanon’s camps. Seikaly doesn’t yet know how she will vote in the election.

She believes what Israel is doing is a continuation of the Nakba. “What I see today is them trying to complete the story. The story is to annihilate us,” she said. 

Other Palestinian American Nakba survivors agree. Giries, in California, feels that the Nakba never stopped. “Now it’s more bloody because they have more sophisticated weapons,” she said. “Now it’s even worse. It’s much worse.”

Both elderly women feel they have done their part and are looking to younger generations to carry on pro-Palestinian advocacy. “My grandkids, they are carrying the torch,” Giries said. Seikaly never married or had children, but she views her students as her legacy.

‘America’s Fingerprints are All Over This Crisis’

Layla Elabed grew up in a blue-collar union family in Detroit. She encouraged her relatives, community members, and friends to vote for Biden in 2020. That included her fiancé, who had never voted before. He always reminds Elabed that he voted for Biden because of her. “Never again,” he says today. If policies on Gaza don’t change soon, she fears that the Democratic Party has “agreed that they’re going to alienate their core constituents.” 

Elabed is one of many Palestinian Americans who cling to their belief in democratic institutions, even if they’re shaken by the White House’s Gaza policy. She is one of the main activists behind the Uncommitted campaign, and her sister is U.S. Rep. Rashida Tlaib. “We are building something that is beyond the November election,” she said. 

For some community leaders, electoral politics can only go so far—partly because of the influence of powerful lobbying groups. The American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) spent more than $20 million to unseat U.S. Reps. Cori Bush and Jamaal Bowman. Both lost their races.

Hannah Shraim, a law student, applauds the work of Uncommitted activists, but is wary of how much even progressive lawmakers can accomplish. She’s critical of politicians who said they were fighting for the Palestinian cause but still endorsed Biden—even after concerns about his age and competency emerged. That includes Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Ilhan Omar, and Senator Bernie Sanders, who called to restrict military aid to Israel, but later rallied behind Biden and Harris. She took particular issue with Ocasio-Cortez’s comments at the Democratic National Convention that Harris was “working tirelessly for a ceasefire” even as the State Department approved $20 billion in arms sales to Israel in August. 

“I personally don’t believe in these forms of compromise,” said Shraim. “I feel fully comfortable calling out politicians who engage in that decision-making, because politicians should not be placed on a pedestal.” For her, the focus on who will be president is misguided. “Any person in the position of the presidency is compromised because they need to bend—regardless of what their personal views are. They need to bend in order to conform to the American establishment,” she said. Shraim’s skepticism of electoral politics is shared by larger pro-Palestinian activist groups, such as Within Our Lifetime (WOL) and the Palestinian Youth Movement (PYM). WOL disrupted a rally that included Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Sen. Bernie Sanders in June, taking issue with their endorsement of Biden—even though they referred to the bombing of Gaza as a genocide. “Endorsing Biden is endorsing the ongoing genocide in Gaza,” WOL wrote on social media.

For her part, Shraim is focused on organizing in the greater Washington D.C. area. She grew up attending protests for Palestine with her family. Al Jazeera always played on the television at their home in Maryland, and she used to be a lot more careful about disclosing her Palestinian identity. She feared being doxxed. 

It wasn’t until college that Shraim became more vocal. She gave a speech supporting a resolution calling for the university’s divestment from companies that benefit from the Israeli occupation. Wearing a keffiyeh, she spoke about how the Nakba and the creation of Israel affected her family. Her grandfather, who was seven at the time, became a refugee. “Not only does my grandfather not have a right to return to his land today, but he never saw a land that he could call his home that is free,” she said. 

Weeks later, Shraim was doxxed on Canary Mission—a website that hosts a blacklist of pro-Palestinian activists. “That experience radicalized me, in the sense that it didn’t matter what I tried not to do, or how I tried to protect myself. My identity as a Palestinian inherently is a threat,” she said. “I realized, what is the point of self-preservation as my people end up being extinguished as a result of my silence?” 

For Shraim, Harris’s tougher rhetoric on Israel isn’t enough. “For Harris to come out with flowery statements, it does nothing for me. What we want is principled decision-making,” she said. Shraim takes particular issue with Harris meeting Netanyahu. She points out that the International Criminal Court has requested an arrest warrant for the Israeli prime minister. And she’s also outraged by Washington’s continued military assistance. “If America decided to stop funding Israel, the genocide would not be able to continue. It’s not a hard equation to follow,” she said. 

That’s a concern shared even by those who work in the Biden Administration. Dozens made that clear in anonymous letters and dissent memos. Back in January, Tariq Habash, a Palestinian American, left his job as an adviser at the Education Department because of what he saw as the U.S. facilitating violence against Palestinians.

Habash is a lifelong Democrat who has volunteered for numerous campaigns, including Biden’s. He describes himself as a firm believer in creating change through governance, even if “some people might scoff at that.” At first, Habash thought Biden would realize unconditional military support for Israel is immoral—not just because of the high civilian casualties, but also because it could destabilize the region. “I was very wrong,” he said.“I was not able to do anything to make the situation better … and as soon as that became clear to me, I had to leave.” 

In the months since Habash quit, the war is spreading across borders. On September 18 and 19, thousands of pagers blew up in Lebanon in an attack that has widely been attributed to Israel; the detonating devices killed at least 30 people and injured almost 3000, according to Lebanese authorities. Days later, on Sept. 23, Israel launched a full-scale assault on Lebanon; officials reported that the attacks killed more than 490 people, including at least 90 women and children.  The continued bombing across Lebanon, including in Beirut, has killed hundreds more and displaced more than one million people, and the Israeli army has declared preparations for a possible ground invasion. Later in September, Israeli airstrikes hit power plant and sea port facilities in Yemen, a day after the Houthis said they fired a ballistic missile at Ben Gurion International Airport. 

Israel has also claimed responsibility for the assassinations of several high-profile Hezbollah members, including its leader Hassan Nasrallah, on September 26, and the group’s senior commander Fuad Shukr, on July 30; the attacks injured a total of more than 160 people and killed at least two children, according to the Lebanese Health Ministry. A day after Shukr’s death, Hamas’s political leader and chief ceasefire negotiator, Ismail Haniyeh, was killed in Iran by an air strike. Iranian officials and Hamas blame Israel for the attack, although Israel has not publicly claimed responsibility. 

Habash’s relatives were all supportive; some said they were proud of his decision to quit, while others urged him to think carefully about sacrificing his career. Habash still considers himself a Democrat, but hopes that the party realizes it’s “losing people who really believe in democratic ideals.”

Foreign policy is rarely the most important issue for American voters, but Washington’s support of Israel has permeated American discourse in unprecedented ways. It’s similar to the Vietnam War, said Youssef Chouhoud, an associate professor of political science at Christopher Newport University and an expert on Muslim minorities in the West. In 1968, President Lyndon B. Johnson announced that he would not run for reelection—partly because the Vietnam War was so unpopular. A 1968 Gallup poll, conducted three years into the war, found that 53 percent of Americans said sending troops to Vietnam was a mistake. This time around, it’s taxpayer money and not soldiers that has raised concerns. “Americans aren’t on the ground, but America’s fingerprints are all over this crisis,” Chouhoud said.

There are signs that the Democratic Party’s support for Israel is wavering. “Simply taking for granted the aid that we send to Israel is not the default position across the board for politicians anymore,” said Chouhoud. “More politicians are questioning both the amount and conditionality of aid we send over to Israel.” A growing number of congressional Democrats, including allies of the president, have suggested they are open to limiting military aid. In September, Sen. Bernie Sanders introduced resolutions to try and block the sale of more than $20 billion in offensive weapons to Israel—arguing that sending more weapons is immoral and illegal. Democratic Party chapters in Washington State and New Mexico have passed resolutions calling for a ceasefire and restricting military aid. 

In the meantime, many Palestinian Americans are politically organizing as they grieve—and fearing for the safety of family members in Gaza. The American government has been of little help.

Dr. Yamaan Saadeh couldn’t eat or sleep properly for months, thinking about relatives stuck in Gaza. Lawmakers ignored him until his case got media attention. He eventually met members of the Biden Administration. “They were not helpful at all for my family or anybody’s family unless they were American citizens,” he said. He was able to get his family out on his own. But the guilt of knowing other Palestinian American families still have countless loved ones in Gaza weighs heavily on him. He later listened to the community’s call to boycott the White House meeting during Ramadan. “I wasn’t sure what to do. … Part of me is like, I don’t trust these institutions and I don’t trust these people,” Saadeh said. “But on the other hand, you recognize that these are also levers that we can push on a little bit.”

In Texas, Shifa Abuzaid, the twenty-nine-year-old Palestinian American organizer, tried her best to use those levers to help her family in Gaza. But it didn’t pay off. Government officials refused to help her after she testified at Houston’s City Council, wrote to the mayor, and reached out to the State Department, she said.

Abuzaid has lost several relatives to Israeli attacks since October 7. She and her family started GoFundMe pages that raised tens of thousands of dollars, which was enough to evacuate about a dozen family members to Egypt. The family prioritized those who could work to raise money for more evacuations. “We quite literally had to make a list and be like, OK: who do we save first? That is the position I don’t wish upon any family ever,” she said. “They’re gut-wrenching decisions.”

Her testimonies at the City Council were typically met with a brief “thanks for coming.” “Nobody says sorry for your loss, what can I do,” she said. Houston Mayor John Whitmire often says the city doesn’t get involved in international affairs. But she pushed back: “This is not an international issue. It’s a local issue. There are families here that are being impacted.” In June, Whitmire spoke at a Jewish community center, saying, “When some of your enemies challenged me to do a proclamation for a ceasefire, I would not respond.”