How we’ll keep fighting genocide after Election Day.

https://www.jewishvoiceforpeace.org/2024/10/30/how-well-keep-fighting-genocide-after-election-day/

Every level of the Israeli government is currently pushing to intensify the genocide of Palestinians and expand its spiraling violence into the entire region. The Israeli military is bombing Iran and Lebanon, massacring Palestinians in North Gaza, starving the entire population, and just invaded the last hospital in Gaza. Meanwhile, the Israeli parliament just voted to ban UNRWA, the largest aid agency in Palestine. 

For over a year, this genocidal plan has been armed and enabled by the Biden administration and both parties in Congress. 

At the same time, we know that the outcomes of Election Day on Tuesday could have major consequences for our movements, communities, and our organizing terrain, including a new wave of rapidly escalating far-right attacks and censorship. While we don’t know what will happen, we know that our commitments don’t change: the only choice is to keep up the fight for an immediate end to U.S. weapons to Israel.

This is our strategy, regardless of who wins the election:

1. Demand and force a shift in U.S. government policy

The movement for Palestinian liberation lives in a space filled with contradictions.

The U.S. government is the main enabler of Israeli impunity, allowing the Israeli regime to continue the genocide. This makes U.S. policy an urgent target for our movement.

However, the U.S. government ultimately sees the Israeli regime as a guardian of its own interests in the region — a view encouraged with billions of dollars spent enriching military and weapons contractors, and lobbying by far-right, pro-genocide groups like AIPAC. So even as our fight for a real, permanent end to Israeli oppression of Palestinians gains power, we know that the U.S. government will be the last domino to fall.

This doesn’t mean there aren’t cracks in the consensus. A year of unending horrors and mass protest changed many people’s minds about U.S. support for Israel, and we’re not the only ones who want a change in federal policy. Recent polling shows that 77% of Democratic voters don’t want to send more weapons to Israel — neither do 62% of Independents, or 61% of everyone polled. 

Right now, the Joint Resolution of Disapproval for Israeli arms sales introduced by Senator Sanders is the most immediate opportunity we have to push our demand to stop arming Israel — and that’s why our sibling organization JVP Action has been all out to support this legislation since it was introduced.

2.  Build financial pressure on the genocide economy

While the U.S. government’s military aid to Israel continues to funnel billions right back to weapons manufacturers in the U.S., the apartheid and genocide economy of the Israeli regime is tanking. 

This is a major opportunity for our movement — and makes it all the more critical for us to escalate our ongoing strategy of boycott and divestment campaigns.

JVP’s new campaign to divest from Israel Bonds, direct investments in the Israeli government, is one example of how we can capitalize on this faltering by cutting the flow of funds to the apartheid regime. Across the country, students and people of conscience are pushing their institutions to divest from Israeli genocide and the U.S. war economy. 

Financial pressure works two ways: both materially weakening the institutions complicit in genocide, and demonstrating the growing international opposition to Israel’s oppression of Palestinians.

3. Plan and organize strategic mobilizations

We’ve been fighting for a year to end this horrific genocide. Over that year, our institutions have made it remarkably clear how resistant they are to democratic pressure. 

But we’ve also had smaller wins across the country, passing ceasefire and divestment resolutions, that teach us important lessons about how we can mobilize the most effectively right now.

1.   We need to create material impact within specific campaigns. In this context, we’re most likely to make an impact through mobilizations that escalate pressure on existing targets, whether these are politicians, institutions invested in the Israeli government and the U.S. war economy, or other key pressure points. Escalating effectively will require bringing in and mobilizing new constituencies that matter to decision-makers, and demonstrate the growing mass demand to stop arming Israel.

2.   We must continue to shift the narrative in ways that expose what’s really happening. The U.S. keeps sending bombs to the Israeli military because of its financial and imperial interests — not because of Jewish safety. Actions that accessibly intervene in the mainstream narratives here build crucial pressure on elected decision-makers.

Our fight continues.

We’ll move forward with these strategic filters, regardless of who wins the election.It’s never been more important for our movement to work on multiple levels, targeting key political and financial pressure points, to advance our demand for an arms embargo.

Time won’t stop next Tuesday. Both candidates have made it clear that they intend to continue the Biden administration policy of arming Israel’s genocide. For all of us devastated and enraged by everything we’ve seen in the past year, our only choice is recommitment to the fight.