The Gaza Freaks. You may know one. They're Americans who pretend to be concerned about the Palestinians. But they really aren't as their actions -- or inaction -- demonstrate over and over. Take the movement's self-proclaimed leader Dave Zirin. Dave writes for THE NATION and THE PROGRESSIVE and what he often lacks in intelligence or even basic skills, he often makes up for with passion that he channels into misguided avenues.
Dave's got a new piece at THE NATION. We're not linking to it. Search it if you want but THE NATION and their paywall nonsense gets on people's nerves. It's a paywall that Nation Builders do not agree with. (Nation Builders keep the magazine-website going by donating thousands each year and they're really not cool -- we did a polling -- with the idea that an election year finds THE NATION limiting the amount of articles someone can read.)
Dave's piece isn't worth anyone wasting a free click. If you feel it is, search for it, it's entitled "Behind the Harris Campaign's Quest for the Mythical 'Cheney Democrats'." If you're late to the party, former US House Rep Liz Cheney, a Republican, has endorsed Kamala Harris for president and has spoken with the Democratic Party's presidential candidate at campaign events. Dave is freaking out.
What's causing the meltdown? Realizing how ineffective he is and how ineffective his life has been.
Dave was one of those who jumped on the Occupy Wall Street craze. We call it a craze and not a movement because where is it now? Or take Camp Casey. Both started out with basics we could all agree on and support. And then they got co-opted by crazies before they could make any real difference. That's because we surf fads. People talk about Neo-liberalism shipping jobs overseas but who knew movement building was one of those jobs?
Movement building is hard work and it doesn't have overnight. There's no quick fix.
It's something that escaped The Gaza Freaks.
After decades of living under apartheid and being slaughtered, the Palestinian people truly captured the world's attention in the last 12 months. And sympathy for and identification with the Palestinian people had never been greater. There was talk of the need for a cease-fire to end the genocide the Israeli government is carrying out.
Longterm observes of the situation knew a cease-fire was little more than a needed band-aid. If that's all that took place, the slaughter would continue -- as it had in the many years before October 7, 2023 -- and it would do so in smaller numbers to avoid worldwide press coverage. Longterm observers knew there was a lot of work to do and were proceeding to roll up their sleeves and work for a truly better world for the Palestinian people.
And then there were the Daves. Surfers who hop onto a craze. You know, the way CODESTINK always does. They'll hitch a ride on a cause for a few months and then, when press attention moves elsewhere, they'll find a new cause that can gather attention for themselves because isn't getting press coverage much more important than working for -- and bringing about -- actual change?
2024 is an election year.
Since July, The Gaza Freaks have insisted they're not voting for Kamala Harris. They wrote her a letter detailing what they wanted for Christmas and then they threw their tantrum.
Using a questionable poll by CAIR, they convinced themselves that they had the numbers when they didn't. They trashed her. They used their outlets: COMMON DREAMS, THE PROGRESSIVE, DEMOCRACY NOW!, IN THESE TIMES, etc, etc -- to try to destroy enthusiasm for Kamala and her presidential campaign.
Donald Trump is not going to be a better choice for the Palestinian people and only a liar says he would be. If you actually cared about the Palestinian people, you wouldn't be urging people to vote for Jill Stein who is yet again running for president on the Green Party's ticket and is financed with Republican dollars and Republican attorneys working for her campaign for free. Why? Because they hope she can steal enough votes from Kamala to put Trump back in the White House.
Now the lying Greens (not all Greens are liars but the ones who pretended to care about Palestine are) are as frustrated as non-Democrat Dave Zirin. They're getting so frustrated that they're getting their lies mixed up. Take Building A New World who has been all over the internet in recent weeks insisting that if you care about the Palestinian people, you cannot vote for Kamala and must instead vote for Jill.
Building A New World let it slip on Sunday with this comment, "Getting Green to 5% is the most valuable thing you can do with your vote."
See, it was never about the Palestinian people.
No, it was about whoring and lying. And here's some truth for the dirty whores: The Green Party isn't getting 5% of the vote. They couldn't do that in 2000 when they had a real candidate (Ralph Nader). They got 2.7% -- and that was with the help of Patti Smith, Ani DiFranco, Ben Harper, The Indigo Girls, Phil Donahue, Paul Newman, Eddie Vedder and many more stumping for the campaign. Jill has previously gotten 0.4% of the vote (2012) and 1.1% (2016). So, yeah, they're lying when they pretend that they're within reach of 5%.
It's a dead party and that's why it's nominated Jill for the third time. They're unable to grow the party and they make clear that they have nothing new to offer.
When we looked at the CAIR poll and found all of its problems -- it's a junk poll -- we were surprised by the reaction. We expected condemnation but didn't get it. Instead, people who checked our findings (glaring imbalance in gender among those responding and sample size too small too represent everything CAIR insisted it did and much more) found that the poll was seriously questionable. Last week, more polls came out and they didn't back up the claim the CAIR poll had spread -- the false claim -- that Jill had all this support.
The CAIR poll didn't pass the sniff test when it originally got some press attention. But it was popularized by the Gaza Freaks. And they spread the lie hoping the lie would become truth. That didn't happen.
And now Dave and the rest of The Gaza Freaks are feeling powerless and impotent.
He's having a hissy fit that Kamala's not catered her campaign to him and that she's not going to because he doesn't have a lot of support. The CAIR poll being exposed as a lie -- and no other polling backing it up -- left the Gaza Freaks out in the cold -- as though Carole King was singing to them when she sang, "Now, girl, take a tip from one who knows, If you open a new door, You may find the old one's closed" ("Out In The Cold").
That's certainly what happened to Dave. Now, mere weeks out from the election, he and the Gaza Freaks realize that they have no input. So he comes along to lie again -- this time insisting that 'the base' has more voters than there are Cheney-types who might vote for Kamala.
He doesn't even have a CAIR survey to back up his lies this time.
And facts don't work for him. All you have to do is look at the numbers that Nikki Hayley got in the GOP primaries this year. That's a significant number. Bringing some of those over to Kamala could swing the election.
By contrast, nothing she has done has been good enough for The Gaza Freaks. Nothing. A nuanced speech at the DNC was either ignored or attacked by stupid people who honestly thought a viable candidate for president is going to give a speech in the midst of a campaign proclaiming that they will terminate a long standing alliance with another country.
If Kamala's elected president, there's a chance we can pressure her on the Palestinian issue. Donald Trump? Not a chance.
The smart thing to do would have been for Dave and his fellow unwashed freaks to have made clear that they were giving Kamala conditional support to get her into the White House and then would be pressuring her seriously on this issue.
The Gaza Freaks -- who make us such a large part of independent media and such a very small part of the actual left (and none of the center-left) -- have done nothing week after week but try to defeat Kamala Harris. They've done everything to destroy enthusiasm about this historic run. Pick up any issue of THE NATION this year and compare it with 2020 if you're not getting just how poorly they treat Kamala. And if you're White, you probably need to stop a moment to think about because Black people get it. Black people are very clear that Kamala's been spat on.
The Gaza Freaks, in their tiny bubbles where everyone echoes everyone -- even the token person of color who only got into the bubble by echoing the others -- you don't encounter reality. But we do. Speaking around the country, we do. Crowds around the country are outraged over the way Kamala's been (mis)treated by so-called 'independent' media (THE PROGRESSIVE, COMMON DREAMS, DEMOCRACY NOW!, IN THESE TIMES, THE NATION, etc). They have every right to be outraged. Joe Lieberman wasn't treated this poorly in 2006 by this media (that's when he lost to challenger Ned Lamont and Joe left the Democratic Party).
And, honestly, what has been the point?
The Gaza Freaks never really cared about the Palestinian people.
'Ava and C.I., that is your claim!'
Yes, it is. But the facts back us up. Kamala is not the president of the United States. Joe Biden is. He'll be president until January 20th. What have the Gaza Freaks done since July? We're not seeing any demands made to Joe. We're not seeing any protests of Joe. We're not seeing any action at all.
But they do flap their gums and work their keyboards to tear apart Kamala.
And their actions bother us. They used to also worry us. But then we started going around the country speaking to groups on Kamala's behalf and what we found didn't match CAIR's poll or the claims of the Gaza Freaks. They tried to impose fantasy on reality. But their lies are lies and there lies are being exposed.
Case in point, Alex Seitz-Wald (NBC NEWS) reports:
A group of imams endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris in an open letter shared first with NBC News on Sunday, a critical boost as she steps up her efforts to win back disaffected Muslim voters amid the Israel-Hamas war.
[. . .]
The 25 Islamic religious leaders who signed the letter, which comes a year after the Oct. 7 terrorist attack that sparked the war, argue that Muslim voters have a duty to think logically about their voting decisions and that backing Harris “far outweighs the harms of the other options."
“She is a committed ceasefire candidate too and is the best option for ending the bloodshed in Gaza and now Lebanon,” they wrote.
The imams argued that former President Donald Trump is a threat to their community.
“Knowingly enabling someone like Donald Trump to return to office, whether by voting directly for him or for a third-party candidate, is both a moral and a strategic failure. Particularly in swing states, a vote for a third party could enable Trump to win that state and therefore the elections,” they wrote.
“Given
[Trump’s] well-documented history of harming our communities and
country, as well as what he has promised he will do to Muslims and
Palestinians should he return, it is incumbent upon us not to allow our
high emotions to dictate our actions to our detriment,” the letter
reads.
Sorry, Dave and The Gaza Freaks, the imams are going to have a lot more impact on voters than you're deluded fantasies.
Dave was born in New York City as was Carole King. And we bring her up not because she endorsed Kamala -- though she did -- but due to a track on her albums SPEEDING TIME
Oh, whatcha gonna do when time runs out on you
Run down, ghost town
Barren pastures all around
How y'gonna explain it to your grandkids
Where did the mountain go
How y'gonna tell them you sold it
Where did the mountain go
Didn't turn out quite the way y'wanted
How were you to know
Boom town broke down--what a let down
Where did the mountain go
Yeah, Dave and The Gaza Freaks, what are you going to do? So much is at stake in this election -- reproductive rights, education, overtime pay, workers rights, federal regulations, equality, even our very planet -- and you chose to spend two months leading up to a presidential election slamming the candidate that could address these issues. Lao Tzu is thought to have originated the phrase, "A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step." All Dave Zirin and The Gaza Freaks wanted to do was to take that single step. They're not made for a journey, certainly not one of a thousand miles. They need instant gratification and they lack historical context. As a result, they've done a lot of damage this election cycle. A lot.