Politics

What I tell my Palestinian son now that Trump is returning to the White House

Published

2 years ago

November 11, 2024

What I tell my Palestinian son now that Trump is returning to the White House

While Americans voted in their next president on Tuesday, the message to us Palestinians remained as clear as ever: America’s promises of freedom and justice don’t include us. But the election does have an outsize stake in our safety and survival.

For my family and millions of Palestinians, this moment is all too familiar: the fear, the helplessness, the resigned certainty that nothing ever really changes.

And still it hurts, because the stakes in this election couldn’t be more personal. For us, the election of Donald Trump isn’t just a blip on the political radar or a shift in foreign policy. It’s a challenge to sustain existence while the world seems intent on erasing us. It’s about surviving 77 years under occupation and over a year of ongoing genocide — the very genocide I barely survived last December, when my family and I, including my elderly parents and 3-year-old son, were buried under the rubble of what was once our home after it was struck by an Israeli-fired, U.S.-made missile.

The trauma of that night, in both its physical and emotional toll, of my son’s small, fragile hand clinging to mine, comes back to me now as Trump prepares to take power once more.

The date: Dec. 7, 2023. Our bones were crushed beneath layers of concrete and twisted metal as we spent hours in the dark, buried together and praying to be pulled out in one piece. The trauma of that night, in both its physical and emotional toll, of my son’s small, fragile hand clinging to mine, comes back to me now as Trump prepares to take power once more.

After surviving the strike and escaping the war, my son stopped asking when we could go home. He’s learned that “home” is just something we remember, something that crumbled with our walls that night. At 3 years old — or, per the language of Gaza, two wars old — he already knows to duck when he hears a rumble overhead, instinctively reaching for my hand.

Our suffering in light of this election isn’t some ambiguous concept. Every missile that reduces our homes to rubble, every sanction that chokes our economy, traces back to Washington. Policies that might seem like distant concerns of foreign affairs to many Americans have left millions of Palestinians trapped in unending trauma, where survival itself has become our only form of resistance.

The Palestinian people have spent generations waiting for an American president who would care enough to hold Israel accountable — to see our humanity and put an end to this constant brutality.

I’ve seen how American political leaders toy with the idea of change, how they dress up their campaigns with grand ideas about peace and justice. Yet each president brushes off our reality. Barack Obama promised hope and “change we could believe in,” yet we got more bombs. Joe Biden offered a different approach, pledging unyielding support for Israel, leaving us to live through even more horror. Vice President Kamala Harris’ niceties included no concrete promises to protect Palestinians, but she did pledge to continue financial support for Israel. And Trump’s bluntness, as he promises to come back swinging, reminds us not to hold out hope for change.

For decades, bipartisan U.S. policies have reinforced Israel’s impunity, from unconditional military aid packages to diplomatic shielding at the United Nations, allowing the erosion of Palestinian rights to go unchallenged. Trump’s brazen support for Israel isn’t a deviation but a natural progression of a legacy in which U.S. presidents have continually prioritized geopolitical alliances over Palestinian lives.

Israeli airstrikes continue on the 6th day in Gaza — Smoke rises over destroyed buildings as civil defense teams conduct a search-and-rescue operation in Rafah, Gaza, on Oct. 12, 2023.Abed Rahim Khatib / Anadolu via Getty Images file

But Trump’s comeback — and the Democratic Party’s own failure to champion any real justice for us — unveils a stark truth: America’s entrenched political system is built upon the erasure of our suffering. Every administration carries the same legacy of apathy, emboldening Israel’s destructive agenda and casting aside our pleas. It’s a bipartisan moral failure that reduces our lives to collateral damage, sacrificed to preserve strategic alliances. This isn’t about just one election or one president. It’s a policy anchored in decades of American complicity in our oppression.

America’s unwavering support for Israel reveals a deeper collapse of the ideals the country claims to stand for. Principles like freedom and justice now barely flicker, distorted into tools of control, hollowed out by years of hypocrisy. When those ideals ring hollow for people like us — oppressed and silenced — the democratic values America champions feel like just another weapon turned against us.

America’s unwavering support for Israel reveals a deeper collapse of the ideals the country claims to stand for.

With Trump in the White House again, the weight of it all feels crushing, with even more to fear in the years ahead. His stance on Palestine is as entrenched and dismissive as ever. His first term, from 2017 to 2021, left a bitter legacy by empowering Israel’s illegal occupation and writing blank checks for its military arsenal.

By moving the U.S. Embassy to Jerusalem, he treated our lives as bargaining chips. Trump slashed U.S. support for Palestinian refugees, effectively pushing millions into greater poverty and reducing our access to even the barest necessities. (Biden in 2021 reinstated $200 million in aid to Palestinians that Trump had cut.) Actions like these serve as solid proof, as elections come and go, that U.S. support for Israel is more ironclad than any candidate’s promise of “peace.”

Trump killed the two-state solution that was already hanging by a thread. And Biden? He’s talked about peace and rights but in ways that mean little when he continues to green-light the horrors unfolding in Gaza. Under his watch, Israel’s bombardments have only intensified. He provided billions of taxpayer dollars’ worth of military aid to Israel. His empty promises of peace sounded cruel when our hospitals and schools were flattened. During his recent presidential campaign, Trump hasn’t just promised unwavering support for Israel, he stated outright that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu hadn’t gone far enough — a chilling endorsement of more destruction.

Civil defense teams and locals carry out search and rescue operations after an Israeli attack hits Shaqwra family apartment in Khan Yunis, Gaza on Nov. 6, 2023. — Civil defense teams and locals carry out search-and-rescue operations after an Israeli attack hit the Shaqwra family apartment in Khan Younis, Gaza, on Nov. 6, 2023.Mustafa Hassona / Anadolu via Getty Images file

Whether red or blue, Democrat or Republican, as Palestinians, we know we have to fasten our seatbelts and brace for yet another four years of survival — for a life of terror and deprivation, of invisibility, of being told, through silence, that our suffering doesn’t matter, by whoever takes office.

This is our world, created and forgotten by the U.S. The billions of dollars in military aid, the weapons, the diplomatic shielding, it all has translated to fear, to lifelong traumas, to endless nights bracing for another missile, to telling my son that the bombardments outside the house were fireworks as I try to comfort him during the night. I can’t help but wonder: Will he see his next birthday? Will we see peace in our homeland? Will the homes of hundreds of others in Gaza be standing when morning comes? Will we ever feel the safety that so many American presidents have long promised us?

There is no reason to believe Trump will stop the destruction in Gaza, nor the devastation for those in the West Bank trying to stand up against settler violence and the illegal seizure of their lands. The war in Gaza has raged for over a year now, and we aren’t expecting a man who openly disregards our lives to bring an end to it.

Frankly, Trump’s comeback means more unquestioned support for Israel’s war machine. And Palestinians will be there to pick up the pieces, over and over again, as we have for generations.

Mohammed R. Mhawish

Mohammed R. Mhawish is a Palestinian award-winning journalist and writer from Gaza City.

Politics

Trump-backed Jay Feely wins GOP primary in Arizona’s battleground 1st District

Published

18 minutes ago

July 22, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

Former Arizona Cardinals kicker Jay Feely cruised to victory in Arizona’s 1st District on Tuesday, one of the nation’s most competitive battlegrounds.

Feely, a close ally of President Donald Trump, leveraged Trump’s endorsement to topple former state Rep. Joseph Chaplik.

He’ll face a steep challenge defeating the Democratic nominee in November: The 1st District, which spans the affluent suburbs north of Phoenix, is one of House Democrats’ top targets after Trump won it by just three points in 2024. Feely is looking to keep the seat under GOP control amid a midterm year that presents major headwinds for the party.

Politics

Rep. Andy Biggs wins GOP primary for Arizona governor

Published

18 minutes ago

July 22, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

Trump-endorsed Rep. Andy Biggs has won the GOP primary to face Democratic Gov. Katie Hobbs in November, setting up a marquee governor’s race in one of America’s most competitive states.

Biggs, a former chair of the hardline House Freedom Caucus and a close ally of President Donald Trump, easily dealt with his only serious challenger, Rep. David Schweikert, on Tuesday. Before the primary results were official, he had already begun pivoting to the general election against Hobbs, who is seen as one of the most vulnerable Democratic governors this fall.

Republicans feel bullish about their odds of flipping the governorship, after Trump carried the state by five points in 2024. But even though Trump won last time, the state has gradually shifted to pure tossup territory over the past few years, electing Democrats to both Senate seats, as well as the attorney general and secretary of state’s offices.

Hobbs had already shifted her focus to Biggs as well. Her campaign has amassed a significant warchest for the race and has already started running ads. Biggs, given his lack of a significant primary challenge, has been able to hold onto more cash than his GOP rivals, but is still behind Hobbs.

The race will test whether Republicans, who are starting down a potentially bruising midterm cycle, can reclaim the top office of a state that has long been a place of success for the party.

During the Republican primary debate, Biggs spent more time talking about his working relationship with House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries and Arizona Democratic Sen. Mark Kelly than he did flexing his endorsement from Trump or highlighting his House record, including his time atop the Freedom Caucus. Instead, he tried to refocus on his bipartisanship in Congress and his leadership in the state legislature.

“I know how to reach across the aisle,” Biggs said during the debate.

But he will still have to contend with many of his past stances, including his role in trying to overturn the 2020 election.

And Hobbs is already working to ensure voters know where Biggs stands on key issues as a longtime member of the House, including his anti-abortion positions and his role in 2020. Her campaign has repeatedly attacked him as “too extreme” for the state and has dubbed him “basement Biggs” for keeping a relatively low profile throughout the GOP primary.

Politics

Trump-backed Mark Lamb wins Arizona House primary despite sex scandals

Published

18 minutes ago

July 22, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

A scandal-plagued House candidate powered by President Donald Trump’s endorsement won a messy primary Tuesday.

Mark Lamb, the former Pinal County sheriff, overcame a late push from self-funding candidate Daniel Keenan in Arizona’s 5th District. Lamb will enter November as the heavy frontrunner in the deep-red Phoenix-area district to replace Rep. Andy Biggs (R-Ariz.), who is running for governor.

Keenan had poured nearly $2 million of his own cash into the campaign and attempted to make Lamb’s alleged sexual misconduct and abuse of power central to the race. Lamb has denied the allegations.

But Lamb — bolstered by Trump and Arizona-based Turning Point USA — managed to ward off the attacks.

The race’s outcome reveals the strength of Trump’s endorsement, and it’s the latest example of how willing GOP primary voters have been to accept scandal-ridden candidates favored by the president.

Lamb, who served as sheriff until 2024, earned national notoriety as a gun-toting critic of the Biden administration’s immigration and border policy. He secured Trump’s backing for the 5th District contest last year.

Then in May, the Arizona Republic launched a multi-part investigation alleging that Lamb engaged in a yearslong pattern of sending sexual images and instigating intimate encounters between him, his wife and others. One woman involved, Jillian Stannard, accused Lamb of encouraging her husband to have sex with other women, including Lamb’s wife. She also alleged that Lamb threatened her, saying there would be consequences, when Stannard raised concerns to religious leaders.

Screenshots the Republic obtained of messages with another woman, Tammy Peacock, suggest Lamb — then a sitting county sheriff — threatened to leverage Arizona’s revenge porn law against her.

In a statement last week, Lamb spokesperson Ed Morabito told Blue Light News that “these allegations are false and come from long-discredited political opponents.”

Lamb did not lose any significant endorsements in the wake of the scandals — Trump reinforced his endorsement in mid-July — even as Keenan made the allegations central to his campaign.