Topher McDougal is a Professor of Economic Development and Peacebuilding at the University of San Diego's Kroc School of Peace Studies, and is the faculty advisor for the MA in Peace & Justice program, and the MS in Humanitarian Action program. His research focuses on the intersection of economics, violence, and peacebuilding.
As Americans enter the final two weeks before Election Day, we once again find ourselves – unbelievably, for those of us who cling, even halfheartedly, to the quaint notion that preferences for truth over falsehoods, logic over hysteria, or expertise over sheer buffoonery should figure into the calculus of the electorate – just about evenly split.
In some crucial swing states, the outcome may hinge on the Biden Administration’s staunch support for Israel in the wake of over 40,000 Palestinians – mostly women and children – killed over the past year. Segments of pro-Palestine voters have lined up behind Jill Stein’s Green Party, swelling them to around 1% of the electorate – possibly enough to sway the result toward Trump in swing states with larger Muslim populations like Michigan.
It is not the purpose of this note to wade into the Israel-Palestine debate. I do have my decently informed opinion, though, and it allows me to sympathize with those who grieve with Gaza. Even without the benefit of a direct cultural or linguistic connection, I can divine the vast well of collective sorrow for Palestinians caught up in this waking nightmare. I can understand the desire to punish a presidential candidate whose own administration has put strict limits on weapons use in the case of an oppressed country under existential, imperial assault (Ukraine), but has entirely failed to enforce even the vaguest adherence to international humanitarian law when providing vast quantities of weapons of mass destruction to Israel. I get that this hypocrisy is more than infuriating.
I can understand – because I share – the desire to force upon the United States a more complete reckoning with its own history of indigenous genocide so that it can more readily identify the pattern elsewhere. I was disappointed to hear President Biden liken the October 7 attacks to September 11, 2001, though I understood the emotional logic of doing so. The 1622 Jamestown Massacre in Virginia, the 1675 King Philip’s War in Connecticut, the 1836 Creek War in Alabama, or the 1876 Battle of the Little Bighorn in Montana would all have been better historical analogies, though. All of these were instances of horrible and bloody uprisings on the part of displaced indigenous peoples faced with irresistible territorial expansion, finally coming to grips with the inevitability of diplomacy’s failure-by-design. All of them were later paid back with a ruthless, overwhelming, and disproportionate force unleashed by cynical demagogues with pretensions to righteous indignation. Sound familiar?
The births of Israel and the US had the same hallmarks, but different landmarks: Jaffa, Deir Yassin, Balad al-Sheikh, and Saasaa instead of Pequot, Paspahegh, Narragansett, Wiyot, or Ahwahnee. They featured the same characters, played by different actors: instead of the Mariposa Battalion, the Texas Rangers, or the Georgia Militia, they had the Irgun, Haganah, Lehi.
Most nations’ bloody histories of conquest are conveniently shrouded in the intermingled mists of time and mythology. Perhaps for this reason, it is said that time legitimizes. The United States is fairly young, but perhaps old enough for the episodes mentioned above to recede behind more recent events, fuzzed to a faltering public education system and retouched by an almost fanatical patriotism that limns bloody bayonets with a heavenly glow. It is perhaps old enough to claim legitimacy now: even among Native Americans, there is no widely popular movement calling for the wholesale dismantlement of the country. But Israel is so new that many of the individual Palestinians who survived its murderous birthing still live.
This is how nation-states are born and grow. They define who is on the inside, and who is not. They give permission for those on the inside to predate, oppress, or exploit those on the outside, as long as the latter have no nation-state of their own to stand up for them. Those seeking to govern a nation-state cannot pretend that all that is required is a single leader’s strong, folksy moral rectitude, after the fashion of Kevin Kline’s “Dave.” Maybe this is the kind of argument that bends the necks of good, God-fearing Christians into supportive postures meant to bear aloft the litter of a convicted felon who has proudly declared his proclivity for sexual assault, is accused of defrauding his investors, and positively courts conflicts of interest by conflating his political and personal fortunes.
Trump simultaneously welcomes Jill Stein’s protest voters as siphoning off votes from Vice President Harris, while also courting those whose stomachs turn at the miseries of Gaza more than at his own profanities. He asserts that the Gaza War would never have started if he had been president, using the issue as a wedge to drive into the heart of the Democratic electorate. He contends that his administration’s economic sanctions against Iran would have throttled Iran’s ability to support the “ring of fire” jihadist movements around Israel.
Let us grant Trump his assertion. It may well be true that Hamas would not have attacked Israel on October 7 under a hypothetical Trump presidency, but probably not for the reasons he states. The more likely reason is that Hamas acted on October 7 to scuttle the multilateral Abraham Accords, brokered by the diplomatic efforts of the Biden Administration, to encourage several Arab states to recognize Israel officially. Such a deal – like the 1949 Armistice Agreements, 1967 UN-brokered ceasefire, and 1994 Israel-Jordan Peace Treaty before it – would not have recognized the Palestinian people as a valid party to talks that deeply affected their wellbeing. “Nothing about us without us,” as the saying goes.
But let’s be clear: Trump is not a proponent of solutions in this conflict, two-state or otherwise. At best, Trump was cynically equivocal about a two-state solution during his presidency. He said he would support whatever both parties preferred, while knowing that without concerted diplomatic efforts (which he scorns), there would be no agreement and therefore a continuation of the slow pulverization of Palestine. He discontinued all American aid to Palestine, spurning both UNRWA and the Palestinian Authority. He moved the US embassy to Jerusalem even as Netanyahu accelerated West Bank settlement construction under his approving eye. Trump’s son-in-law now eyes coastal real estate in Gaza. Everyone can see where this leads; it is a grisly game of musical lands that ends with the same fate as befell the Circassian people. Moreover, we know from rally slogans of “mass deportation now!” that displaced Palestinians won’t find collective asylum in a Trump-led US.
It feels sacrilegious to think that the horrors we now witness might have a silver lining. But the fact that a regional war threatens to spiral out of control, potentially even implicating three oppositional nuclear powers, should and must focus the attention and resources of the international community on some solution. And if anything is clear from his first term in office, it is that Trump cares not a jot for the sorts of cooperation, multilateralism, creativity, and moral fiber that will be required bring that solution about.
Democratic politics is – has always been – about finding compromises that the tyrannical majority of us can live with. Those Americans looking to “vote their conscience” on this issue know that it does not achieve the “greater good” they seek. If we had a parliamentary system of government it might, but we don’t. If we could afford to lose another four years on climate progress it might, but we can’t. If we could have confidence that future elections would still be meaningful forms of democracy in a post-Trump II world it might, but that’s alarmingly unclear. In the absence of those boundary conditions, it only constitutes support for Trump’s campaign.
Israel-Palestine is a horrible, tragic, swampy, wicked problem of a mess for any objecting American voter implicated in, and culpable for, a shameful war partly funded by the taxes they pay. There is no moral high ground to be found here. Just a false sense of one if you choose to step on someone else’s back.
