The Cost of Protest Votes
How political purity enabled Trump’s Gaza takeover plan.
by Julie Roginsky
In what can only be described as a jaw-dropping press conference, the president of the United States stood next to the prime minister of Israel yesterday and pledged to “take over” the Gaza Strip. “We’ll own it,” Trump added.
In the fifteen days since his inauguration, Trump has sworn to seize the Panama Canal. “We’re taking it back, or something very powerful is going to happen,” the president said earlier this week.
He has vowed to seize Greenland too. “Asked in January if he would rule out using military or economic force in order to take over the autonomous Danish territory or the Panama canal, he responded: ‘No, I can't assure you on either of those two. But I can say this, we need them for economic security.’”
"I think we're going to have it," he added.
He has insisted that Canada forgo its sovereignty and become “"our Cherished 51st State.”
Gaza, the new Riviera
Not content with expansion in North America and the Arctic, Trump has now set his sights on beachfront property in the Middle East.
‘I see a longterm ownership position for the United States” in the Gaza Strip, Trump said on Tuesday. In Trump’s worldview, this would include forcibly displacing approximately 2 million Palestinians currently living in Gaza and sending them… somewhere. (Trump’s first choice is Egypt and Jordan, both of which equate absorbing Palestinians into their territories with ritual suicide.)
At the press conference, Trump also took a not-so-oblique swipe at both George HW Bush and George W. Bush for getting the United States involved Middle Eastern wars. But how does he think the United States would take over the Gaza Strip? He did not rule out military force, if necessary.
“I see it bringing great stability to that part of the Middle East, and maybe the entire Middle East, and everybody I've spoken to — this was not a decision made lightly — loves the idea of the United States owning that piece of land, developing it and creating thousands of jobs with something that will be magnificent," he said yesterday. The Gaza Strip, whose decimated coastline looks vaguely like Palm Beach’s if you squint really hard, could be the “Riviera of the Middle East,” he added.
With Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu standing next to him, Trump also did not commit to allowing self-governance for the West Bank, which is home to nearly 3 million Palestinians.
“We can't let history keep repeating itself,” Trump said, who has never been one for knowing world history (even history that took place in his own lifetime).
History is, of course, repeating itself. Those of us old enough to remember Outkast topping the charts have been here before. “We will, in fact, be greeted as liberators,” said then-Vice President Dick Cheney several days in advance of the invasion of Iraq in 2003.
Predictably, the same cast of MAGA characters who have preached about America First and against foreign wars were the first to applaud Trump for his expansionist rhetoric. “Let’s turn Gaza into Mar-a-Lago,” tweeted Citadel graduate Rep. Nancy Mace. Let’s hope she is among the first to deploy there in support of turning this prime Mediterranean real estate into the newest Trump country club.
Where are the campus protests?
Notably, college campuses have not erupted in protest over Trump’s plan to ethnically cleanse the Gaza Strip. Rep. Rashida Tlaib, who never missed an opportunity to slam President Biden for arming Israel, remained strangely silent in the wake of Trump’s press conference (though she did find time on Sunday night to tweet about the Grammys). Dearborn and Dearborn Heights, Michigan, two heavily Muslim-American towns that she represents, voted for Trump over Kamala Harris in November.
Times Square was eerily silent too. No spontaneous marches erupted with protesters screaming, “There is only one solution — Intifada revolution,” as they did during the Biden years.
Were they all shocked into silence? They should not be. Trump’s behavior is so predictable that it is a miracle he waited fifteen days after his inauguration to announce his plans for Gaza. And yet, in a fit of pique, Tlaib, many of her constituents, college protesters and others decided to send Democrats a message last November over the Israeli-Palestinian conflict by refusing to endorse the one candidate who unequivocally supported a two-state solution. Now, the very people they claimed to defend with their protest votes and their chanting are going to pay the price.
The lesson
And herein lies the lesson for how to get through the Trump years. Politics is not an episode of the West Wing. It is a zero-sum game — except it is not a game. It is real life, with real consequences. Sometimes the choices are easy. Sometimes, you have to swallow hard, hold your nose and accept the slightly better of two bad choices.
But the choice is always — always — binary. You don’t even have the option of refusing to choose, because by boycotting and disconnecting in defense of a cause, you risk others making a choice for you. That’s what so many of these voters ensured when they voted for Trump to send a message to Harris over the Middle East. That’s what they did when they cast a protest vote for Jill Stein or did not vote at all.
This is what Rep. Tlaib owned when she refused to endorse Harris.
How, you might ask, can these people be responsible for Trump’s unhinged Gaza plan? The ones who voted for him own it, hook, line and sinker. But the ones who stood on principle, who declined to support Harris, own it just as much. Standing on principle might have made them feel good but if Trump has his way, it will lead to suffering — both Palestinian and American — that is unprecedented.
“Our trauma and pain feel unseen and ignored by both parties,” Tlaib said several days before the election. “One party uses our identity as a slur, and the other refuses to hear from us. Where is the shared humanity? Ignoring us won’t stop the genocide.” In a tweet, she added, “Trump is a proud Islamophobe + serial liar who doesn't stand for peace. The reality is that the Biden admin’s unconditional support for genocide is what got us here. This should be a wake-up call for those who continue to support genocide. This election didn't have to be close.”
No, it didn’t. Tlaib could have used her influence to remind pro-Palestinian voters of the choice before them — as awful as that choice might have been. She did not need to be the happy warrior on behalf of Harris, with whose Middle East policies she vehemently disagreed. But a mature politician would have understood that her community would have been deeply harmed by a second Trump term, both at home and abroad. And so it has come to pass.
Realism vs idealism
I don’t write this merely to castigate Tlaib or the people who spent last year undermining the Harris campaign on behalf of a cause in which they deeply believe. I appreciate that they feel strongly about Israel’s actions in the Gaza Strip and believe that Biden, despite the finger-wagging, enabled Netanyahu every step of the way. But if there is one plea I have, it is to be more realistic than idealistic, no matter how painful that may be.
There is no time for this anymore. There is only Trump and everything he stands for and against. If you support him, go all in. But if you oppose him, there is no equivocation, no parsing, no collaboration. There is only opposition — to him and to every single thing for which he stands. That is the binary choice that should have been obvious before November 5th. Today, it should be crystal clear.
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There are two reasons why Talib and all those smug, ignorant, campus protesters are dead silent. Snow and Shame. It was convenient to "party up" all summer and romp in the fall foliage with their made for tik tok signage. But I was on a highway that they shut down for hours and was terrified (I have a medical condition that makes long car drives unbearable). And now, these domestic terrorists must OWN the fact that when millions of "their people" are marched into deportation, disease, and death that this part of the genocide is completely at their hands. We'll never forget the "none of the above" voting campaigns they led. I especially seethe at all the LGBTQ protesters, oblivious to how LGBTQ people and women were treated in Palestine before 10/7. Try asking a domestic Gaza protester any of these questions. Do you agree with honor killings? What's the reasoning behind strict dress codes for women? What rights do women have to reproduction, sexual agency, employment and education? Why are there so many children in Gaza? They can't even process these thoughts because they see Gaza as an exotic transference of US race issues -- white oppressors versus dark victims. But ask how many people in Israel have darker skin? All you'll get is an F and a U. Let's hope such a colossal tragedy in Gaza reminds people of what you write about here today Julie -- you can't protest vote. You must pick a side and stick with it.
This is what happened when Bush ran against Gore and 3rd party Nader ran. He got that protest vote and Bush won. Americans are so stupid.
Btw Biden held up weapons to Israel. He didn’t just finger wag.