The Democratic National Convention hails “candidate of joy” amidst Gaza genocide

The Democratic National Convention this week is being held against the backdrop of one of the greatest war crimes of the modern era, the Israeli genocide in Gaza. From the proceedings this week, however, one would assume that it is not even happening.

Today, Palestinian medical officials reported that Israel slaughtered 47 people. Every day, there are new atrocities. The images and video of children incinerated by bombs, images that are never shown in the American media, are horrific beyond description.

A nurse in Gaza told the BBC that his entire family, his wife and six children—including a group of quadruplets—were murdered in an air strike on his home in Deir-al-Balah over the weekend. Such stories are a daily occurrence.

The official death toll from 321 days of ceaseless bombardment is approaching 40,300. The Gaza Health Ministry reports 93,144 injured. Last month, the esteemed medical journal The Lancet estimated the real death toll at 186,000—or approximately 8 percent of the Gaza Strip’s pre-genocide population.

During the anti-Vietnam War protests, a popular chant was “Hey, Hey, LBJ, how many kids did you kill today?” In the case of Biden-Harris and the genocide in Gaza, a definitive answer can be given: 17,000 (total since the genocide began), including 2,100 infants and toddlers. This according to a report earlier this month by the Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor.

Seventeen thousand children. This is equal to more than 50 every single day, for more than 10 months.

The perpetrators of this monumental war crime are in the Israeli state, which is composed of fascists who are calling for dropping nuclear bombs on Gaza and wiping out the entire population.

But those financing, directing and politically justifying these crimes are in London, Paris, Berlin and above all Washington, D.C. Biden, Harris and all the leaders of the Democratic and Republican parties are no less culpable than Netanyahu, Gallant and the rest.

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There is something unfathomably obscene and degrading about the Democratic Party hailing their “candidate of joy” Kamala Harris amidst the carnage in Gaza. It expresses the unbridled ruthlessness of imperialism and its representatives, singing and dancing as Gaza burns.

For the American ruling class, the genocide in Gaza has always been seen as a component part of a global war. In advance of the DNC, the Biden-Harris administration approved $20 billion in new weaponry for Israel, mainly to prepare for war against Iran. 

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The conflict with Iran in turn is seen as part of the escalating war against Russia in Ukraine and the developing conflict with China. The Biden administration, we learned this week, has approved a secret nuclear strategy that is aimed at preparing the American military for simultaneous nuclear war with Russia, China and North Korea. 

A particularly foul role is played by the pseudo-left promoters of the Democratic Party, including the Democratic Socialists of America and its congressional members like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. Ocasio-Cortez spoke at the convention, hailing Harris and giving her imprimatur to the fraud of the “ceasefire” negotiations—in fact ultimatums delivered by a genocidal regime and its imperialist backers to a besieged population.

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Under conditions of escalating imperialist war, the DSA is being elevated, with the task of trying somehow to maintain the fiction that the Democratic Party, a party of Wall Street and the military-intelligence agencies, a party of imperialism, is a “progressive” organization. They are the “left” face of genocide, with the understanding that there is nothing “left,” let alone socialist, about them.

The trade union apparatus is also being marshaled behind the war agenda. Shawn Fain, hailed by the DSA and its associates as a great progressive reformer, is offering the services of the well-heeled bureaucrats that populate the apparatus for American imperialism’s “arsenal of democracy,” in reality,  the arsenal of genocide.

This is inextricably connected to the UAW’s role as the enforcer of mass layoffs and poverty-level wages. The working class must be disciplined for war, must be forced to pay for and die in the American ruling class’s project of global plunder. Or so they will try.

As for the “Uncommitted” movement, organized by sections of the Democratic Party, it is pleading for the DNC to allow a Palestinian to speak at the convention. Their proposal was State Representative Ruwa Romman from Georgia, who has said her speech would have “urged us to unite behind Harris.” That is, it is another attempt to prop up the Democratic Party.

The protests outside of the convention have been organized by various middle-class groups that seek to pressure the Democratic Party, including the ANSWER Coalition, Code Pink, the DSA and others. Among their demands is that “elected officials from the Democratic Party follow through on progressive campaign promises.”

As Trotsky remarked, one might as well pray for rain.

Not surprisingly, the protests have been significantly smaller than organizers expected. The entire perspective of pressuring the Democratic Party and the political establishment has proven to be thoroughly bankrupt, and more and more people know it.

The Socialist Equality Party and our election campaign insist that it is not a matter of appealing to the Democrats or the Republicans. We are not pleading with the war criminals to cease their crimes. Rather, the road forward is to mobilize the working class, connecting the fight against the genocide with the fight against imperialist war, and the fight against war with the fight against inequality and the capitalist profit system.

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On July 24, the Socialist Equality Party held a rally in Washington, D.C. that outlined the necessary basis for a fight against the genocide in Gaza:

• The essential cause of war lies in the capitalist nation-state system, the global financial interests of the giant corporations, and the ruthless drive of the American ruling class for world hegemony.

• The struggle against war requires the mobilization of the immense power of the American working class and its political independence from the Democrats and Republicans, the ruling class parties of imperialist war.

• The movement against genocide and war must be international, uniting workers globally based on their common class interests.

There can be no fight against war without a fight for socialism. This basic truth emerges clearly out of the political spectacle that is the Democratic National Convention. 

We call on all workers and youth: Take forward the fight against the genocide and imperialism by building a socialist leadership! Join the Socialist Equality Party and its youth movement, the International Youth and Students for Social Equality! Support our election campaign, donate and vote for Joseph Kishore and Jerry White in November! 

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