What the Hell Is Wrong With You People
If your first reaction to a plan for ethnic cleansing is "LOL, perfect chance for a 2024 dunk," maybe examine your conscience.
On Tuesday, Donald Trump announced that he wants to seize and ethnically cleanse the Gaza Strip, permanently removing all Palestinians and having the United States take the territory for itself.
This is, very obviously, a monstrous proposal from a monstrous person. It’s also complete madness. Palestinians are not simply going to pack up and leave just because Donald Trump floats a stupid plan to turn Gaza into a “Riviera of the Middle East.” Trump’s scheme could only be carried out with mass bloodshed, a lengthy American military presence, and the consent of a string of Arab countries who have no reason to implicate themselves in a world-historical crime against humanity of this nature. I’m not one to say something could never happen, but the odds are firmly against this thing. Even so, the mere idea of it is a despicable insult to the people of Gaza, who are still reeling from the effects of the Israeli-American genocide.
There were lots of different reactions to Trump’s comments. Most decent people were horrified. A long list of foreign governments took pains to distance themselves. And, of course, a coterie of nitwits emerged to praise Trump for his outside-the-box thinking.
But I don’t want to focus on those people today. Instead, I want to look at a group of people whose first thought upon hearing Trump’s announcement was not “what will this mean for Palestine” or “what the hell is Trump on about,” but rather, “How can I use this piece of news to try and score points about the 2024 election?” I’m fixated on them because there is something particularly grotesque about that, and because, in their rush to crack smug jokes about Gaza’s current plight, they reveal their utter contempt for the actual Palestinian people whose lives and futures are at stake.
There were lots and lots of people doing this, but I’m picking two representative examples, because they both, astonishingly, revel in the fact that the United States has been participating in genocide.
First, we have Puck reporter Julia Ioffe, who went viral with this charming intervention.
Then, there’s Washington Post writer Dana Milbank, whose latest column contains this headline:
Fun! Here’s how the piece starts:
“Genocide Joe” never looked so good.
Gaza peace protesters rallied Americans by the hundreds of thousands to oppose President Joe Biden and vote “uncommitted” in Democratic primaries. They heckled Vice President Kamala Harris and disrupted her events. On Election Day, Donald Trump prevailed in the majority-Arab town of Dearborn, Michigan. And across the country, many young voters stayed home or even voted for Trump — likely because, in part, they were disenchanted that the Biden administration had been insufficiently tough on Israel.
How’s that working out now?
OK. Lots to discuss here.
First, can I just gently suggest that when your big mic-drop moment consists of telling people “Bet you wished you had someone I am agreeing with you can be called Genocide Joe back!” you may have missed the mark? Normally, I would have thought that successful dunks don’t immediately concede the exact point that your opponents are making.
Second, the reason people were opposed to Joe Biden is right there in the nickname. They opposed him because he was helping Israel commit genocide—y’know, the worst of all possible crimes. They were very clear that Biden and Kamala Harris’ refusal to change their policy of abetting genocide was putting their re-election in serious danger, due to the fact that many voters take a dim view of genocide and the people who commit it. A recent poll found that nearly 30 percent—30 percent!—of Biden 2020 voters passed on voting for Harris because of the genocide. When a red light is flashing telling you “stop supporting genocide or you could easily lose this election” and you say, “fuck you, I will do everything in my power to both continue supporting the genocide and make it clear that I think people who are mad about that are worthless pieces of filth,” that’s kind of on you, sorry.
Third, the Biden-Harris policy on Gaza was not “we will do the right thing by the Palestinian people, unlike Donald Trump.” It was “We’ll let Israel continue doing genocide.” Not only that, it was “we’ll continue handing Israel the bombs it needs to keep the genocide going.” Biden sent $8 billion worth of weapons to Israel less than two weeks before he left office. Saying “LOL, you must be wishing Israel was still wiping Gaza’s whole population off the face of the earth rather than moving them out of their homeland” is not the flex you think it is.
Fourth, part of Trump’s justification for clearing Gaza out was that the territory is currently a wasteland. “They live like hell,” he told reporters, after also calling Gaza “a big pile of rubble.” He’s right—people in Gaza do live like hell right now, and Gaza is a big pile of rubble. Why is that? Because Joe Biden, with the support of Kamala Harris and the Democratic Party, sent Israel tens of billions of dollars worth of bombs to reduce Gaza to a big, hellish pile of rubble! Biden and Harris directly created the conditions for Trump to push this disgusting concept, and now these pundits want to turn around and take shots at people who had a problem with that. No!
Fifth—when your first instinct in a moment like this is to say “told you so hahahaha,” all you’re doing is showing that you don’t actually give a shit about anybody in Palestine. Nobody who cared one iota for people in Gaza would use their potential suffering in such a callous and cynical way. Gaza is not a political cudgel to be smugly wielded as part of some abstract debate. It’s a real place, with real people, that has been put through hell by the real choices of the United States. But Ioffe, Milbank, and the rest aren’t bothered by any of that—not when there’s pain to throw back in anguished voters’ faces. It’s appalling.
Last, but certainly not least: Imagine writing the phrase “‘Genocide Joe’ never looked so good,” and saying to yourself, “Damn, that’s a keeper.” How do you sleep at night? Please go directly to hell.
Deeply grateful for this read amid a storm of smug reactions to further genocide. While I did hold my nose and vote for Harris, I have absolutely no ire for anyone who couldn't bring themselves to do it. I'm saving my anger for Harris herself and the DNC, who chose to ignore EXTREMELY CLEAR polling that even the smallest kind of pushback against the genocide in Palestine would have been overwhelmingly popular.
These people are so horse-race-politics-brained that they can't wrap their minds around the concept that BOTH CHOICES WERE BAD. Anyone who gave a shit about Gaza had zero good choices in this election (unless Cornel West had some peace plan that I ignored because I can't be bothered with Cornel West). Blaming people with zero good choices for picking one of the bad choices is some kind of idiocy.
I can't imagine the wailing and gnashing of teeth that will commence when these fools finally understand that a two-party system doesn't automatically mean that one party is a "good" choice. The tears will render entire farming towns in Nebraska useless.