The Ballot Box and Gaza

I don’t check any box.  I am neither Arab-American, Black, and pushing 70, certainly not young. Nor do I grieve family members killed in Gaza where entire neighborhoods have been razed, hospitals shuttered, and humanitarian aid blocked. I am fortunate not to bear that deep sorrow.

 Yet I joined 100,000 Michigan voters in marking my ballot uncommitted in our state’s primary on Tuesday. Like so many others appalled by the suffering in this tiny strip of land, I wanted to send a clear message to our president that the indiscriminate slaughter of men, women, children and babies must end. And end now.

My taxes are buying bombs that are funding this killing. As a woman of faith, I must do what I can to end this unimaginable suffering.  We’ve all seen the horrific images of bodies swathed in white, smallish mummy-like figures cradled by sobbing parents.    As I write this, newborns are dying at Al-Shifa hospital in Gaza City because their mothers are malnourished.

 For one young man, it was too much to bear. Wearing his Air Force uniform, 25-year-old Aaron Bushnell, set himself on fire outside of the Israeli embassy in Washington and died several hours later. Was this the final  act of a mentally unstable individual, or someone so desperate to have the world take notice of human suffering that he took his own life?

 This week, Biden predicted that a temporary cease fire was imminent-allowing food and medical supplies to reach a starving population. Progress yes, but   we need a permanent ceasefire and ultimately two-state solution, however improbable that seems now.

I pray that my heart is big enough to have compassion for the people of Gaza who have buried 30,000 of their own since the war began and for Israelis who suffered barbaric acts perpetrated by Hamas on October 7.

 There are some hard truths here. We know that Biden cannot win the November election without Michigan. And our country cannot endure four more years of an immoral and cruel narcissist whose first act as president was to enact a ban on Muslims to this country and later tried to overthrow the government he was elected to lead.  

Come November, I will come back to the fold.  But I am hoping that my protest vote, along with thousands of others, will move the needle toward a policy that mourns the loss of all human life equally, and leverages its power with the Israeli government to let humanitarian aid resume.

So often we feel powerless in the face of the world’s great suffering.   But this time, I take comfort that my small action at a polling place in Detroit might help a  desperate people  6,000 miles away.