Opinion | I Voted for Harris but Gaza’s Horrors Weigh on My Conscience

I voted for Kamala Harris, even though I think that places me on the wrong side of history.

Given Ms. Harris’s competition, I calculated that voting for her was the least harmful thing I could do. But that doesn’t mean I feel good about it. I can’t relate to Democrats and liberals who describe voting for Ms. Harris as an unadulterated act of virtue. I’ll never forget that the Biden administration — in which Ms. Harris was second in command, and whose Middle East policies she promises to carry on unchanged — bears responsibility for the mass murder and starvation of trapped Palestinian civilians in the Gaza Strip.

The Hamas-led attacks of Oct. 7 were a hideous war crime but the ruthless violence that Israel has visited upon Gaza’s men, women and children ever since cannot be justified. And we are complicit: U.S. weapons, U.S. money and U.S. political protection have enabled Israel to keep killing.

Americans should realize that it is entirely possible — probable, according to many legal scholars — that our grandchildren’s history books will describe the Biden administration’s indispensable role in Palestinian genocide. The International Court of Justice has already found this definition of what Israel is doing in Gaza “plausible.”

This is not an ordinary political problem for the American conscience. This is not about trepidation about which judges may be appointed or policy differences about trade and tariffs. Gaza is something else entirely — a stain that will cling to our country.

“Generations of Israelis will have to live with what we have done in Gaza over the last year,” an Israeli lawyer, Michael Sfard, wrote in Haaretz last week. “Generations of Israelis will have to explain to their children and grandchildren why we behaved that way. Some will have to explain why they didn’t refuse to bomb. And some will have to explain why they didn’t do more to stop the horror.”

His warnings could apply to Americans, too.

I know that if Donald Trump wins, the Democrats and leftists who withheld their vote from Ms. Harris in revulsion and anger over Gaza will be shamed and blamed for his victory. When Palestinians are persecuted in the West Bank or Gaza while the Trumps parade around Jerusalem swapping fundamental political rights for real estate deals, those same voters will be harangued anew.

But it is not unreasonable — in fact, it’s cleareyed — to regard a vote for Ms. Harris as an endorsement of the horrific violence on Gaza, as much as it is a stand against Mr. Trump.

American voters are faced with those two problems not just simultaneously, but in relation to one another. Confronting this dilemma won’t be easy for everyone, and it shouldn’t be. The problem of individual agency within a malign system is as old as organized society. Choosing conscience over convenience is fundamental to the stories we Americans tell about ourselves.

We are carefully taught — in religious settings, but also social — that we must refuse, however uncomfortable this refusal may be, to go along with something we know to be wrong. That human beings are most noble — indeed, most human — when they assert individual morality against the evils of a depersonalized system. “It is neither safe nor right to go against conscience,” wrote Martin Luther. “Here I stand. I cannot do otherwise.”

A few centuries later, looking out over a roiling United States, one of that German priest’s namesakes picked up this line of thought: “And there comes a time when one must take a position that is neither safe, nor politic, nor popular, but he must take it because conscience tells him it is right,” said Martin Luther King Jr.

In a voter on the street interview making the rounds on social media, a woman tells the reporter Don Lemon that she voted early for Jill Stein. “Are you serious?” he exclaims. She’ll help elect Trump, he tells her.

“I’m not voting for genocide,” she replies. “When is the time for us to stand up and say, enough is enough? Like, what is your red line?”

Mr. Lemon responds with a condescending lecture in which he compares politics to public transportation. In this metaphor, he says, the woman wants a limousine to whisk her from door to door. She should, presumably, shut up and get on a bus.

He never engages with the conundrum she’d presented: When do we say enough is enough? What is your red line?

I see the nightmare Mr. Trump presents to many Americans. That’s why, in the end, I voted for Kamala Harris. Because of Jan. 6. Because of women’s rights. For a lot of reasons, but mostly because I concede that the mass death of Palestinians in Gaza and the failure to find a political resolution will, almost certainly, worsen under Mr. Trump.

But what about the nightmare we’re already living, nearly 13 months of anguish in Gaza? Last week the United Nations called the situation in northern Gaza “apocalyptic,” and warned that the entire population is now at “imminent risk” of death. The United States has not only, for excruciating months, failed to use its considerable leverage to pressure Israel to allow more food to reach starving Palestinians, but also defunded the United Nations refugee relief agency that is the top distributor of food aid to Palestinians. The Biden administration has also reportedly ignored or defied its own internal assessments that weapons shipments to Israel should legally be suspended because of international humanitarian law violations in their use.

We should be glad that we still live in a country where people examine their own relationship to these faraway events. Imagine if nobody thought 40,000 dead was worth a protest vote (or non-vote). Imagine if all of our students simply shrugged off the bleeding children filling their TikTok feeds and went back to playing video games.

Maybe the right side of history just isn’t on the ballot. Maybe we should get ready to live with the consequences.

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