Earlier this year, as genocide was unfolding in Gaza, I began volunteering with various medical organisations helping Palestinians. I went on a mission to the occupied West Bank and supported remotely medical professionals in Gaza. I taught and mentored Palestinian children, supported groups providing medical care to paediatric and geriatric patients with cancer, chronic disease and dementia, and led research collaborations on disease and injury patterns in Gaza and the West Bank.
What I write below is based solely on my views and my experiences and does not reflect the position of any organisation I have been involved in.
My work in Palestine and with Palestinians has profoundly affected how I view American domestic politics and how I will vote in the upcoming presidential election.
If there is one main takeaway from my work and recent mission to Palestine this summer, it is that the Israeli crimes reported are only a small fraction of what actually occurs. Many are not documented because cameras and phones are taken or destroyed or the victims fear reprisals in the form of direct violence or collective punishment if they speak up.
It is truly close to impossible to conceptualise the scale of the structural and physical violence imposed on this population on a daily basis, and the ingenuity of the crimes committed against them.
Palestinian life is disrupted and sequestered by hundreds of permanent and temporary checkpoints that litter the occupied West Bank. They can prevent Palestinians from going to school or work, stop trucks with goods, including perishable food, from reaching their destinations, and impede the transport of people in urgent need of medical help. The Palestinian economy is fully dependent on the Israeli authorities, which often make decisions that suppress or bankrupt Palestinian businesses.
Israeli soldiers regularly raid Palestinian towns and villages in the occupied West Bank, breaking into homes, arresting Palestinians and sometimes killing civilians. In addition, Palestinian homes, lands and other property are attacked, destroyed, and seized by Jewish settlers protected by the Israeli army.
Violence against children is also a daily occurrence. Israeli troops have targeted Palestinian children during their regular assaults on the occupied West Bank, killing 165 over the past year. Many are also detained and abused, including sexually, by Israeli soldiers or detention centre staff. Palestinian children I met have told me of Israeli soldiers putting out their cigarettes onto their arms, cheeks and other parts of their bodies.
In Gaza, the horrors are even more unspeakable. The current official death toll of more than 43,000 does not in any way reflect the true scale of human suffering and demise. What this number does not capture are the deaths and life-altering injuries or conditions that Palestinians now are susceptible to because of Israel’s restriction of food, basic medical supplies like sterile materials and antibiotics, as well as much-needed medicines for the chronically ill. This environment of uncontrollable infection and malnutrition is also a death sentence for many pregnant women and their babies. This is effectively equivalent to the prevention of births, which constitutes a crime of genocide.
Amid the utter dehumanisation of Palestinians by Israel, but also by its allies in US politics and media, many Americans feel detached from what is going on in Gaza and Palestine as a whole. But the truth is that Americans are also victims of the American-backed Israeli genocidal campaign.
Scores of Americans of Palestinian descent have been killed in Gaza and the West Bank. The Israeli authorities have harassed, arbitrarily arrested, and beaten Americans, and routinely denied entry to American medical missions to Gaza and the West Bank.
Even Americans with no Palestinian background have been harassed (including myself), shot at, and killed. Most recently, 26-year-old Ayşenur Ezgi Eygi was shot dead by an Israeli sniper near Beita, Nablus.
In the West Bank, I observed Americans and other foreign nationals being yelled at by Israeli soldiers, had their passports rubbed against the genitalia of one soldier before being thrown at their faces, and denied entry at checkpoints.
On one occasion, while waiting to pass a checkpoint, I struck up a conversation with an Israeli soldier, who told me he participated in joint exercises with a police department in Ohio, where he and his fellow soldiers taught population control and military occupation checkpoint procedures to American police officers.
It was jarring to hear that but it reminded me that it is not just the United States exporting technologies of violence and death to Israel, but also the other way around. Violent policing in the US, which disproportionately affects marginalised communities, has been shaped by the Israeli experience of colonial subjugation of the Palestinian people.
Indeed, the exchange of knowledge, ideas, weapons, and intelligence upholds the domination of the US imperial structure and the exertion of racial, cultural, economic, and military supremacy in the US, in Israel, and elsewhere in the world.
Palestinians recognise this symbiosis and see the US as an equal partner in their colonial oppression. One American doctor relayed to me how a patient in Gaza went hysterical when she saw the US flag on his scrubs, and her family had to restrain her so he could operate on her without anaesthesia due to the unavailability of such medication.
It is time for Americans to also recognise that unconditional US support for Israel is not only hurting and killing Palestinians, but is also detrimental for the American population as well. The Joe Biden-Kamala Harris administration has gone out of its way to suppress opposition to the genocide at home, demonising the pro-Palestinian movement and showing disregard for the horrific spike in hate crimes against Arab and Muslim Americans.
Through its actions against international courts and the United Nations, as well as coercion of other states, it is actively undermining the international legal order, which threatens to erase the codified concept of human rights. Its endorsement of racist, colonial brutality and crimes against humanity normalises these atrocities and will inevitably encourage such violence against minorities and vulnerable groups here in the US.
I was involved with and was an active supporter of voting “uncommitted” in the Democratic primaries, hoping that this could push the current administration to change course on Israel.
But the US president and the vice president ignored the message that hundreds of thousands of their voters sent them earlier this year. As the new Democratic candidate, Harris has gone out of her way to articulate her unwavering commitment to Israel. She has allowed the ridicule and mockery of voters and Democratic Party organisers attempting to raise awareness about Gaza, shut anti-genocide protesters up at rallies, and had Muslim Democrats kicked out of her events.
During a town hall event in October, Harris said there are people who care about “this issue” but also care about “bringing down the price of groceries”. I am one of those who cares much more about the real possibility of Palestinian life being erased from Gaza altogether than the price of food in the US.
On November 5, I will vote against genocide, and I will do so not only with the plight of the Palestinian people in mind but also with the fate of my fellow Americans in mind. It is an act of love and care, and I am quite committed to it.
The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera’s editorial stance.
