This story originally appeared in Prism on July 22, 2024.
President Joe Biden announced on Sunday, July 21, that he was ending his presidential reelection campaign after weeks of pressure from party officials, donors, Democratic Congress members, voters, and pro-Palestinian organizers and advocacy groups. In a social media post, Biden endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris to replace him as the Democratic party’s nominee.
The move comes months after organizers led a nationwide campaign to vote “uncommitted” during Democratic primary elections to push Biden to end his unconditional support for Israel during its genocide in Gaza or risk losing their vote in the general election. In several states, “uncommitted” or “no preference” received far more votes than other candidates challenging Biden.
“[Nine] months of saying genocide Joe has got to go, he finally got the message, but not before committing a heinous genocide against the Palestinian people,” Nerdeen Kiswani, an organizer with the Palestine advocacy group Within Our Lifetime, posted on X.
“Nothing will erase the fact that Biden’s legacy is—and always will be—genocide,” organizers with the U.S. Campaign for Palestinian Rights (USCPR Action) said in a statement Sunday. “It was not Biden’s failed debate that showed he is unfit to lead. It was the tens of thousands of bombs he sent to kill Palestinian families. It was his callous, dystopian disregard for Palestinian lives, as he ate an ice cream cone while speaking of a potential ceasefire that he took no action to make Israel agree to. It was his condemnation of thousands of student protesters on college campuses demanding an end to the genocide in Gaza.”
Biden’s withdrawal from the race follows a particularly deadly month of violence in Gaza. Two Israeli airstrikes killed more than 60 people last week, including in Israeli-designated “safe zones” and at a U.N. school where families were sheltering. Gaza health officials put the official death toll since Oct. 7 at more than 38,900. But, researchers suggested in a recent letter published in the renowned British medical journal The Lancet that the number could be as high as 186,000.
The U.N.’s top court ruled on Friday that Israel must end its illegal occupation of the West Bank, East Jerusalem, and Gaza, remove settlers from the Palestinian territories, and pay reparations to Palestinians. The court also found that Palestinians under occupation suffer “systemic discrimination based on, inter alia, race, religion or ethnic origin,” and it urged other states to stop supporting Israel in maintaining the current situation.
“The millions of people who have mobilized in the streets and the voting booth demanding a permanent ceasefire and an end to military funding to Israel have been clear—there is no going back to the status quo,” USCPR Action Executive Director Ahmad Abuznaid said in the group’s statement.
It remains unclear how differently the next Democratic nominee might approach Israel. Harris, for her part, has repeatedly asserted Israel’s “right to defend itself” while expressing sympathy for Palestinians and calling for at least a six-week ceasefire in March. She is expected to meet with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu during his visit to Washington, D.C., this week.
In comparison, Trump called Biden a “very bad Palestinian” during this election’s first presidential debate on June 27 for not helping Israel to “finish the job” in Gaza. During his presidency, he moved the U.S. embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem and recognized Israel’s sovereignty over the occupied Syrian region of Golan Heights, where Netanyahu named a Jewish-only settlement after Trump.
But as the genocide in Gaza continues, organizers are quick to point out the Democratic party’s complicity as a whole.
“We don’t think this is solely a Joe Biden problem. This is an institutional problem,” Hudhayfah Ahmad, spokesperson for the Abandon Biden campaign, said in a phone interview Sunday night. In an online statement, the group invited Harris to meet with its organizers.
The Abandon Biden campaign was one of the first coalitions to call for Democrats to replace Biden, Ahmad said.
“We were mocked, denigrated, spoken down to,” he said, but organizers stood firm in their principles as they gained momentum. And they will continue to do so as the “disastrous and criminal” approach to Gaza continues under Biden foreign policy officials Antony Blinken, Jake Sullivan, and Brett McGurk.
Ahmad said “Abandon Biden” means abandoning this legacy and the decisions Biden made surrounding Israel. Given the Democratic party “lionizing” the president since his exit from the race, “it’s becoming increasingly clear we may have to extend this to whoever becomes the next nominee,” he said, indicating they will continue to call on voters not to support any candidate who maintains Biden’s blanket support for Israel.
“It is clear that the DNC machinery pressured Joe Biden to step down only after losing confidence in his ability to lead due to his cognitive decline. This action came not when he was enthusiastically supporting and sponsoring the genocide in Gaza, but when his declining capabilities could no longer be concealed,” the Abandon Biden group said in its statement, referencing the June debate, during which Biden at times was incoherent. His performance was followed by a wave of calls, including from prominent Democratic Congress members, for Biden to step aside.
Biden’s departure from the race comes ahead of the party’s upcoming national convention slated for Aug. 19-22 in Chicago. Now, with just over three months before the general election, Harris, whom the Clintons and other Democratic leaders also endorsed, will need to gain the support of the majority of all the nearly 4,000 delegates to win the party’s nomination.
But for many voters pushing for an end to the Gaza genocide, the path forward remains the same. A coalition of more than 125 anti-oppression organizations said in a statement Monday morning that it is still preparing to gather tens of thousands to march on the Democratic National Convention on Aug. 19.
“When it comes to the genocide in Gaza there is no difference between Biden, Harris, or any of the likely candidates for the nomination. They are all complicit,” the Coalition to March on the DNC said. “This protest is about more than the name at the top of a ballot. It is about stopping the most horrific crime against humanity we have seen this century.”
The statement said the organizations that joined the coalition “recognize the links between the Palestinian liberation struggle and their own struggles” involving issues like police accountability, immigration, labor, reproductive, and LGBTQIA+ rights.
“They also recognize that Democratic Party higher-ups often neglect their communities in favor of serving the rich and powerful,” the statement said. “Those responsible for the genocide, and not just Biden, are often obstacles to progress in the same movements they paid lip service to in order to boost their campaigns.”
USCPR Action said, “The masses of millions of Americans protesting in the streets will certainly not wait for the next president while U.S.-made bombs paid for with our tax dollars are dropping in Gaza. Regardless of who the Democratic presidential nominee and candidate-elect is, the next steps are clear.”
The group called on all members of Congress to disrupt or protest Netanyahu’s planned address to Congress on Wednesday and urged lawmakers to pass an arms embargo against Israel.
“As Israel kills a Palestinian every four minutes and escalates regional war, justice cannot wait another day,” the group said.
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