Warning: this post contains descriptions of extreme violence.

On Saturday, while the world was riveted to the news about the assassination attempt on Donald Trump, Israel unleashed airstrikes on Al-Mawasi in Central Gaza – in an area previously designated as a “humanitarian safe zone.” Gazan health officials reported that approximately 90 people were killed and at least 300 injured in this attack. Eyewitness testimonies attested to unspeakable carnage. According to 16 year old Gazan Shaima Farwameh:

A leg hit me, and I saw dismembered bodies a few meters away. I saw a young child screaming. He lost his lower limbs and was crawling on his hands and screaming. The bombs didn’t stop, and suddenly the boy disappeared. I saw how he vanished before me while we ran and lowered our eyes to the ground, unable to do anything but run…What a life we ​​live in these tents that we have to see the dismembered bodies of our siblings and families fly over our heads.

Yesterday, Israel bombed Southern and Central Gaza once again, killing more than 60 Palestinians. Among the targets was a UN school in Nuseirat where families were sheltering. Other strikes in Khan Younis and Rafah killed 12 people, according to medical officials and AP journalists. According to AP, “footage showed the school’s yard covered in rubble and twisted metal from a structure that was hit. Workers carried bodies wrapped in blankets, as women and children watched from the classrooms where they have been living.”

Given the reality of such hideous violence, it was difficult to ignore the irony in the rhetoric following the attempted assassination attempt last Saturday. For me, the most egregious example occurred when Biden said, In his speech to the nation, “There is no place in America for this kind of violence or for any violence ever.  Period.  No exceptions.  We can’t allow this violence to be normalized” (emphasis mine).

This statement is truly breathtaking in its hypocrisy. The genocidal violence Israel has been unleashing on Gazans for the past ten months has long been been normalized for most, save the Palestinian people and their allies. Even as the death toll has now reached nearly 40,000. Even as a new report in the British medical journal Lancet estimates that the actual death toll in Gaza could eventually reach 186,000 or even higher — roughly 8% of Gaza’s population.

It truly takes a special kind of moral gall for Biden to say “we can’t allow violence to be normalized” when it is his very administration that is unconditionally providing Israel with the very bombs that have killing and maiming Gazans on a daily basis. In terms of sheer numbers, President Biden is enabling the deadliest political violence in the world at this very moment.

There has been a chorus of condemnation of “political violence” from across the political spectrum over the past several days. As I’ve listened to the robotic sameness of these responses, it’s occurred to me that they are all unified over one common assumption: political violence is worthy of condemnation when Americans kill other Americans for political purposes – but when the US government commits or enables political violence around the world, it amounts to mere background noise.

Of course, the US itself was created by means of political violence – through the genocide of indigenous inhabitants and the stolen labor of black slaves. This country engages in political violence every day through deadly systems of mass incarceration and policing. And of course, the US has historically expanded its imperial power and influence throughout the world by fomenting the political violence of regime change. MLK famously made this point in his speech A Time to Break Silence when he excoriated “the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today – my own government.”

So please don’t stop raising your voice about Gaza. Please don’t allow this political violence be normalized. Please heed the words of my friend and colleague Jehad Abusalim (who comes from Deir Al-Balah in Gaza):

This is annihilation. There are no words left to capture the horror. Gaza is being obliterated—people are being murdered, starved, and displaced for months on end. Repeating these words feels like a hollow echo and a useless endeavor. But we have no choice but to persevere and keep pushing for an end to the genocide, for accountability, for justice, for healing, for rebuilding, and for liberation. We on the outside have no excuse. As long as Gaza’s defenders, doctors, nurses, first responders, and volunteers keep working and pushing, we have no choice but to keep working and pushing. Gaza needs your activism, your courage, your dedication, your boycott, your presence on the streets, and your donations now more than ever. This is a battle for hope, and hope is the last thing we’ve got. Let’s not let them take it away from us.