The Wild Reed: A Day of Shame at the U.S. Capitol

Above: Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu receives a standing ovation from the majority of lawmakers while speaking to a joint meeting of Congress at the U.S. Capitol yesterday, July 24, 2024. (Photo: Saul Loeb/AFP via Getty Images)

Palestinian human rights attorney and Rutgers University professor Noura Erakat says it best . . .

[The number of times members of Congress broke into enthusiastic applause for Netanyahu] was probably the most disturbing [aspect of events yesterday] because for those of us who have followed this for 292 days now, we have understood the blatant lies that Israel has said, that all of its apologists have made, [and we watch now as] U.S. Congress jubilantly, jubilantly cheer on, scramble over one another in order to cheer for, essentially, what is a war on children. When Netanyahu says they want to finish the job, the job is annihilation. It is extermination. It is genocide. . . . And the U.S. Congress is applauding this jubilantly, at one point breaking out into a chant of “U.S.A.! U.S.A.!” Right now those chants at home echo an entitlement to kill, echo an entitlement to plunder, to destroy lives that are not seen or deemed worthy, and where racism and colonialism is not a dog whistle but is on full display.

So, for those who are concerned about saving their democracy at home, I want to tell them that there is no democracy to save that manifests itself in ongoing genocide in this way.

. . . Shame, shame, shame on the Democratic Party for allowing a president, [one] they didn’t trust to enter into a debate or to make a comment without misnaming world leaders, to make policy on the lives of Palestinians and their futures for 292 days. They are more worried about the optics in this election than they are about the lives of Palestinians, which indicates very well that they are deriving their power from the slaughter of Palestinians, that this machine is functioning on those campaign donations, on those weapons manufacturers, on those Islamophobic institutions who are fomenting this, so that 67% of the Democratic base cannot be represented adequately by their leadership.

My second reaction to [the events in Washington, D.C. yesterday] is salute, salute to the protesters who continue to risk their bodies, who risk their reputation, who risked time and being attacked by police and police brutality. They are the kernels. They are the seed now that can grow, that can ripen into something worth living for in the future. This does not bode well for our future. This is what’s on offer for the rest of the world as we see climate catastrophe being imposed upon us, where the only thing on offer is that only a few shall live. And the model that Israel is creating here is that the racist supremacists, that the colonialists, that they will live and that others must die. And we see in these protesters an alternate future, one that screams we have safety in solidarity, one that says that it is all of us or none of us.

– Noura Erakat
Democracy Now!
July 25, 2024

The Wild Reed

Thursday, July 25, 2024

A Day of Shame at the U.S. Capitol

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