Both parties following anti-Palestinian policies

 Michael F.Brown, Electronic Intifada - The Republican Party has made clear this month its absolute support for Israel and its de facto annexation of the West Bank. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo’s in-your-face land-grabbing convention speech from Jerusalem with the occupied Old City as a backdrop is one smug signal from the top, but Republican voters have also sent the same message with strong backing from Islamophobes such as Marjorie Taylor Greene in Georgia and Laura Loomer in Florida. Both are staunch supporters of Donald Trump’s moves in Jerusalem that seek to diminish the rights of Palestinians. The QAnon, reactionary wing of the Republican Party is overjoyed at its success in making life as miserable and painful as possible for Palestinians. Four more years of depraved anti-Palestinian policies will serve only to entrench the Israeli occupation and apartheid and make more certain that the Palestinian struggle is transformed into one for equal rights in one state as in South Africa and the Jim Crow American South.

Yet the Democrats are only marginally better. And in some ways worse because expectations for Democrats to stand up to racism are higher. But Democratic leaders consistently indulge Israel’s anti-Palestinian racism. Their platform fails to name the occupation. It criticizes the Palestinian-led boycott, divestment and sanctions movement for Palestinian rights and freedom while deigning only to accept it as a free speech right, saying nothing about the many U.S. states limiting BDS [Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions] free speech rights. The platform rejects Israeli annexation of the West Bank, but delegates voted against taking any meaningful action against future annexation or illegal settlements through limiting or altogether stopping the annual $3.8 billion in U.S. military aid to Israel. Democrats also openly accept Israel as a Jewish state, disregarding the presence and rights of Palestinians there. People who would never accept the U.S. as a white, Christian state are encouraging Joe Biden to promote Israel as a discriminatory ethnonationalist state. There is, however, a disconnect between Democratic leaders and pressures emanating up from a grassroots increasingly aware of the injustices pervading U.S. policies against Palestinian rights and freedom.