Two Parties, One Genocide

The night before Election Day, a group of Palestinian women gathered in a Logan Square apartment to work on their tatreez, hand-stitched embroidery projects. They cursed Trump, Harris and the U.S. government for fueling genocide.

“Everyone who was there had the outlook of, ​‘Fuck this election,’ ​”said one of the attendees, who was embroidering the Arabic word for ​“Lebanon” on a shirt. She requested anonymity for fear of online harassment over her voting choice: the Green Party’s Jill Stein. Almost everyone there voted early, and not one voted Harris or Trump.

“I felt a little better about at least being able to control my own vote and not giving it to either party that supports our genocide,” she added.

Chicago is home to one of the United States’ largest Palestinian communities, which has been at the forefront of the city’s pro-Palestine movement since October 2023. For more than a year, there have been weekly protests and a steady stream of organized, nonviolent actions trying to push politicians — from President Joe Biden to Sen. Tammy Duckworth (D-Ill.) — to meaningfully act to end the genocide.

Palestinians in Chicago have been particularly vocal about the Biden administration, and many of those interviewed said they felt it was hypocritical for Democrats to support policies that fuel violence against Palestinians while asking for their votes.

“The first thing everyone wants to talk about when I knock on doors in this area is foreign policy,” says Yazan Badwan, a Palestinian fellow with the Illinois Coalition for Immigrant and Refugee Rights who canvassed the southwest suburbs for months ahead of the election. ​“The majority of people don’t know what to do, so most of them are voting for Jill Stein or uncommitted.”

Abla Abdelkader, president of Students for Justice in Palestine Chicago — which supported encampments at Northwestern, DePaul and the University of Chicago — believes Harris’ defeat was not only about Palestine, but her inability to energize her base, including students.

“The bottom line here is that the Democrats failed to run a good campaign,” Abdelkader says. Others, like Eyad Zeid, owner of Nabala Cafe in Chicago’s Uptown neighborhood, didn’t vote. ​“I’m not going to deny that Trump is going to be shitty, but I see that more as an opportunity for more people to be brought into movement spaces and to come together in solidarity than it is a reason to think, ​‘Oh, we should have voted for Kamala,’ ” he says. 

Zeid’s café has been vandalized twice since September. But, he adds, ​“We’ve had a lot more people come through the doors since Tuesday seeking community in different ways. I’ve had several people reach out to me and ask how they can get involved in organizing.

Nesreen Hassan, an organizer with U.S. Palestinian Community Network, which has organized at least 50 protests and 15 disruptions in Chicago since October 2023 — including at the Democratic National Convention in August — says a central theme in discussions with Palestinian voters about Harris was that calling for an arms embargo would have been enough. 

Nearly every person I spoke with said the same thing. 

“Even though we’re not a fan of the Democratic Party, if she would have said ​‘arms embargo,’ folks would have voted for her,” Hassan says.

One June poll from CBS News found 61% of Americans — 77%of Democrats and nearly 40% of Republicans— do not think the United States should send weapons to Israel. 

More Americans — 67% — support a cease-fire, according to a February survey from Data for Progress, including 56% of Republicans. A YouGov poll commissioned by the Institute for Middle East Understanding Policy Project in three swing states — Arizona, Georgia and Pennsylvania — found an overwhelming majority of voters supported a cease-fire and an arms embargo. Meanwhile, in September, Sen.Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) introduced legislation to block $20 billion in U.S. weapons sales to Israel, which didn’t get far — the Senate rejected this at-tempt in November.

The Palestinian organizers I spoke with say they are recommitted to the fight for Palestinian liberation. 

“I think many of us are simultaneously glad she lost and sad he won,” says Eman Abdelhadi, an In These Times columnist and organizer with Faculty for Justice in Palestine.

“I think, as Palestinians, we always knew that, on Wednesday, we would find out who our next enemy was. It was never that we were going to have a friend in the White House.”

After the polls closed, The Qahwa— a Palestinian-owned coffee shop in the Chicago suburb of Bridgeview — hosted an open mic dedicated to Palestine. Across the street from the courthouse where voters had lined up earlier, the event drew community members eager to share their thoughts and vent their frustrations. ​“The Arab and Palestinian people know that, no matter who the president is, the bombardment will not end until there is a complete arms embargo,” one of the performers said. ​“Elections are really used as a suppressant for radical movement and organization.”