Bonus Post: Not Far Enough

Reacting to Harris's comments on Gaza in Chicago last night

Welcome to a special bonus post of Willoughby Hills!

I have been feeling the tinge of addiction to social media more acutely lately, while at the same time, feeling discouraged that Meta has so much control over what messages get sent and received. The instant nature of social media combined with the seemingly anonymity of the screen seems to immediately escalate all discussion to an argument that lacks any nuance.

I have been rethinking what my own approach to social media should look like in 2024, and have felt for a long time that maybe part of the antidote is working harder to build community around Willoughby Hills (and some of the other amazing Substacks that I also read).

As such, I’m trying something a little different today- a quick post for paying subscribers that might have been a social media post, but instead felt like it was worth exploring in a little more depth and hopefully with more nuance and thought.

I’m going to make most of this post available to free members as well, but as always, if you’d like to support my work and help keep this newsletter and podcast going, please consider upgrading to a paying membership. It will give you access to this full post, early access to the podcast, and more.

With that said, let’s dive into some reactions to Vice President Kamala Harris’s comments around Israel and Gaza at last night’s DNC.

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I have not been watching the DNC this week, nor did I watch the RNC a few weeks ago. But of course, the clips have a way of seeping out of the convention hall and into our greater cultural consciousness.

The discussion this morning is all about the two minute section of Vice President Kamala Harris’s speech where she addressed her thoughts on Israel and Palestine. Here’s the video clip:

And here’s the full transcript of that section:

“With respect to the war in Gaza. President Biden and I are working around the clock. Because now is the time to get a hostage deal and ceasefire done.

Let me be clear: I will always stand up for Israel’s right to defend itself and I will always ensure Israel has the ability to defend itself. Because the people of Israel must never again face the horror that the terrorist organization Hamas caused on October 7th. Including unspeakable sexual violence and the massacre of young people at a music festival.

At the same time, what has happened in Gaza over the past 10 months is devastating. So many innocent lives lost. Desperate, hungry people fleeing for safety, over and over again. The scale of suffering is heartbreaking.

President Biden and I are working to end this war such that Israel is secure, the hostages are released, the suffering in Gaza ends, and the Palestinian people can realize their right to dignity. Security. Freedom. And self-determination.”

While trying to limit my social media intake, I couldn’t help but get fed a bunch of hot takes on Threads. These are literally just a random sampling, but it’s pretty representative of the overall sentiment I’ve been reading:

Threads users react to Kamala’s speech

As I read these reactions, I am seriously questioning if we were all watching the same speech. For many mainstream Democrats, the pro-Palestine movement has been a distraction, and they have used the replacing of Biden with Harris on the ticket as a chance to “move on” from this issue. The fact that Harris even said “Palestinian people” in her speech is supposedly proof that she is working to end the genocide.

But let’s look at what she actually said a little closer.

“With respect to the war in Gaza. President Biden and I are working around the clock. Because now is the time to get a hostage deal and ceasefire done.”

She fails to mention that just last week, Biden approved another $20 billion worth of weapons sales to Israel.

“Let me be clear: I will always stand up for Israel’s right to defend itself and I will always ensure Israel has the ability to defend itself. Because the people of Israel must never again face the horror that the terrorist organization Hamas caused on October 7th. Including unspeakable sexual violence and the massacre of young people at a music festival.”

There’s a lot to dissect here, including the fact that Israel has also been accused of sexually assaulting Palestinian hostages (something that Harris doesn’t touch on), choosing instead to only focus on Hamas’s sexual assault of Israeli hostages, at least some of which has been debunked.

But my bigger issue is that she is framing this entire conflict through the lens of October 7 and only October 7.

On October 15, I published a newsletter issue where I admitted that I was still learning about the history of Israel and Palestine, but found a quote from Trevor Noah from a 2021 episode of The Daily Show to be especially helpful:

“The paradox is that because [the conflict between] Israel and Palestine has been ongoing for so long, people forget that it is ongoing, until there are flare-ups that the world cannot ignore… No matter how much you try to break it down, people will say you’re leaving out some crucial piece of context, and they’re probably right… What makes it even harder is the fact that who’s right and who’s wrong always seems to change, depending on when you start measuring from.”

This is a bit of an aside, but do you remember the moment in Back to the Future when George McFly punches Biff Tannen? It’s a joyous part of the film, one that elicits audience applause and a cathartic release.

Why? Because we’ve been watching Biff act like a bully for the preceding hour or so. He chases a skateboarding Marty McFly around Hill Valley Town Square in a massive hot rod. He beats up on George McFly, forcing McFly to complete Biff’s homework. And he sexually assaults Lorraine in a car.

In that context, the punch is fully justified.

But if you take the gif above of just that moment out of context, the meaning changes. If you’ve never seen this movie or didn’t know the events that preceded it, you’d think that George was being unnecessarily violent.

I’ve attempted to explore why the Palestinian resistance exists in podcast episodes with Jenan Matari and Amanda Gelender, while also hearing stories on the other podcast that I produce, Abolition, Liberation, Solidarity.

Palestinian lives are under the complete control of the Israeli occupation. People are given color coded IDs that determine where they can travel. A Gazan ID has the least privileges. Israel sets up checkpoints and can randomly stop and arrest any Palestinian. Israel continues to allow its people to build settlements in the West Bank, which the ICJ have ruled are illegal.

I don’t support the attacks on October 7, but I also see quite the parallel here to Palestinian life under Israel and George McFly under Biff Tannen.

Continuing with the speech:

At the same time, what has happened in Gaza over the past 10 months is devastating. So many innocent lives lost. Desperate, hungry people fleeing for safety, over and over again. The scale of suffering is heartbreaking.

The death toll in Gaza is hard to pinpoint, but it’s estimated somewhere between 40,000 and 186,000. Harris refers to this as “devastating,” yet the October 7 attack killed 1,189 people and is called a “massacre.” Using the larger estimates, the death toll on October 7 is less than 1% of the lives lost in the ensuing genocide of Palestinians, yet only one is a “massacre.” October 7 is also described as a “horror” with “unspeakable sexual violence.”

This is why the people who have opposed this genocide heard empty rhetoric coming out of Chicago yesterday. Yes, she acknowledged suffering on both sides, but she is not treating both sides as equivalent, nor is she recognizing the power she has to end this (again, just last week, her boss approved $20 billion in weapons sales).

I know many Americans are not following this conflict as closely as I have been, so let me try to put her rhetoric in a bit more context.

Imagine if you heard a speech like this from a politician: