Gaza Is the Defining Moral Issue of Our Time

As Democrats and reporters converge on Chicago for the Democratic National Convention, so too are thousands of demonstrators. Many will have a straightforward demand for the presidential ticket: a ceasefire and a U.S. arms embargo for Israel. By embracing such demands, Kamala Harris would have to break not only with the foreign-policy Establishment but with the Biden administration, which last week announced that it had approved $20 billion in arms sales to Israel, a figure that included “scores of fighter jets,” CBS News reported. The Biden administration may not be concerned by the humanitarian implications of their decision; Harris and her running mate, Tim Walz, cannot afford such cowardice.

The same week the U.S. sent billions in bombs and jets to Israel, a different story broke in Gaza. Mohammed Abu al-Qumsan told reporters that while he’d gone to collect birth certificates for his newborn twins, an Israeli airstrike destroyed his home — killing his wife and the twins. “I didn’t even have the time to celebrate them,” he said to the BBC. In a separate interview with CNN, he said that he had moved his then-pregnant wife to an apartment in another area of Gaza to protect his growing family from Israeli attacks. His efforts proved useless in the face of a relentless and genocidal assault on Gaza (more on that below), which has killed tens of thousands of people, according to the Palestinian health ministry, a figure that includes around 16,400 children. While another grieving father mourns, the assault continues, decimating the Gazan medical system. Israeli restrictions on aid mean that little help can enter the strip, and UNICEF has warned that there are around 17,000 separated or unaccompanied children who are trying to stay alive in Gaza now.

Every day the situation in Gaza degrades, and every day the American political class looks away, with few exceptions. The Biden administration’s relationship with Israel goes beyond mere complicity in genocide; under Biden’s leadership, America has become an active participant in horror. The situation is only getting worse. On Friday, days after the killing of Mohammed Abu al-Qumsan’s twin children, the Gaza Health Ministry reported a confirmed case of polio. The contagious disease could spread widely if there is no ceasefire; the United Nations wants to coordinate two mass-vaccination campaigns to protect Palestinians in Gaza from additional risk. Harris may not want to break with Biden publicly now, but from a moral perspective he has left her little choice.

Secretary of State Antony Blinken arrived in Tel Aviv on Monday, ostensibly to push for a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas that would include the release of the remaining hostages. But nothing Blinken does now can rectify the injustice that Israel has already inflicted on Gaza with direct support from the U.S. And while a ceasefire might allow the U.N. to conduct desperately needed polio-vaccination campaigns, it doesn’t resolve the issue at root: the Biden administration’s no-strings-attached policy of aiding Israel. Call it conditioning aid to Israel, if diplomacy is in order, or call it an arms embargo; either way, such a policy would go much further toward preventing future brutality in Gaza. Faced with the killing of Mohammed Abu al-Qumsan’s twins, or the killing of 6-year-old Hind Rajab, or the killings of so many others whose names that those of us who are strangers to them might never know, we cannot sustain the fiction that the IDF is the most moral army in the world, bent merely on the protection of the Israeli people.

In June, Aryeh Neier, the co-founder of Human Rights Watch, argued in the New York Review of Books that Israel is perpetrating a genocide in Gaza in part through its obstruction of humanitarian aid. Israel isn’t just killing Palestinian civilians; it’s starving them and locking others in prison camps plagued by reports of serious abuse. Dead and orphaned children are becoming commonplace, and safety is difficult if not impossible to find, as Israel repeatedly bombs civilians and blames the death toll on Hamas. Now that polio has reportedly appeared in Gaza, the crisis has become even more urgent. People are dying terrible and preventable deaths, and more are set to join them. In the months since October 7, Gaza has become the defining moral issue of the moment — a test that most of our political leaders are failing.

Gaza, of course, is not the only pressing issue facing Harris and her running mate. By framing it as the defining issue of our time, I don’t mean to dismiss the impact of abortion restrictions across the country, or the threat a second Trump administration poses to our multiracial democracy. But what’s happening in Gaza today is a moral outrage and an ongoing genocide, and our reaction to it will shape who we are as a nation. As Israel kills and allegedly tortures Palestinians, as it breaks up or even eliminates entire families, the U.S. can either continue to look away or do something meaningful to stop the violence. Harris cannot unilaterally end the Israeli war, even if she becomes president, but she can end U.S. support for it, and she should.

Over the weekend, the Uncommitted movement scored an important victory by securing the DNC’s first-ever panel on Palestinian human rights. Yet more must be done, and demonstrators haven’t asked much of the aspiring president. An arms embargo is a relatively moderate demand given the scale of the suffering in Gaza. This week’s crowds — and the voters they potentially represent — ask Harris to acknowledge, simply, that matters cannot continue as they are. Something has to give before Israel destroys Gaza and its people in their entirety. There will be pressure on Harris to dismiss the protests; to brand everyone with a sign antisemitic; to move on as if a genocide isn’t happening. I hope she doesn’t listen. Not only would it be electorally damaging for her to continue on Biden’s course, it would be a moral failure of the highest degree. If Harris wants to be president, she has to earn the privilege. She can start by pledging an end to U.S. support for mass murder.