The Democrats Fear a Left-Winger Who Governs Well

In January 2024, Tariq Habash, a top adviser in the Department of Education and a Palestinian American, resigned in protest of the Biden-Harris administration’s support of the ongoing genocide in Gaza. In May, Lily Greenberg Call, a former special assistant to the chief of staff at the Department of the Interior, became the first Jewish American political appointee to do the same. I spoke with Habash and Greenberg Call on Sept. 4. By then at least 12 officials had left the administration to protest its policy toward Israel.

 Let’s begin with a bit about your personal backgrounds. Tell me about your upbringings and how that set you on your current trajectories.

 I grew up in Middletown, Ohio, which people might also know as the home of JD Vance. We went to the same high school. He’s a few years older. I grew up in one of the only Arab families in the town. Education was always a priority for my family. My grandparents, who were forcibly displaced from Jaffa in 1948, lost everything. They were not educated; my grandfather was a shoemaker with a fifth- or sixth-grade education. My grandmother never learned to speak English, even after living in the States for decades, and couldn’t read or write. Education became a priority for my family. When you have everything stripped away from you — your home, your possessions, your land — you realize that anything can be taken from you at any time. The only exceptions to that are your family, the love in your heart, and the knowledge in your mind.

That was something that I always carried with me. I went to public school and then moved to Miami for college, and I studied political science and international relations with a focus on human rights. I took numerous classes on the Middle East, on Israel/Palestine. I wrote papers about the My Lai Massacre in Vietnam, about South African apartheid, about regime changes in Egypt, and comparative politics across Central America. I saw a lot of similarities across the global south and what my family had experienced in Palestine.

ou know what? You’re a really smart guy and could be successful. But your views on foreign policy don’t really have a place in American politics. If you want to work in policy, you should find another issue that you care about.

Eventually I started working on the affordability crisis in higher education and helped start one of the nation’s pre-eminent nonprofit organizations on student debt, the Student Borrower Protection Center. Because of the work we did investigating the many broken parts of the student loan system and the expertise I developed, the reports that I wrote, the research and advocacy I have done, I was given an opportunity to work in the Biden administration.

I worked in the Department of Education policy office for three years before I resigned. Ultimately it was very clear that my identity as a Palestinian American was not valued by the administration in a post–Oct. 7 world. Many of my Arab and Palestinian peers across the administration felt similarly. The administration refused to listen to our concerns and essentially said, 

This is the approach, and under no circumstances will we even consider enforcing U.S law on Israel

. There was just no way for me to stay on, and so in January 2024 I resigned.

 I grew up in Southern California, in affluent and conservative Orange County and San Diego. Even though I grew up in an interfaith family — my dad’s family is not Jewish — we were raised pretty much exclusively Jewish and went to Jewish day school. I grew up learning and speaking Hebrew. Many of my teachers were Israeli.

My family were kind of outliers in my community for being Democrats and liberals. I identified very much as pro-Israel and Israel was very important to me, but I also had these very progressive politics. I was looking at it from a very liberal Zionist mentality of, even though things were getting worse, it was Netanyahu or these factions within the society that we need to fight against, the extremists and the settlers. And I became very invested in the “peace process.”

It seems totally incongruous now, but at the time, it seemed that the way to do that was to get involved with AIPAC and with Israel. I did all these programs with Israeli and Palestinian teenagers and all these youth peace things. AIPAC is really what introduced me to the political process and to lobbying. I went to D.C. a bunch of times in high school for conferences.

I went to Berkeley for undergrad, and while I was in school I was the president of the AIPAC-affiliated pro-Israel club. Jewish students are taught that when you go to college, you’re going to have to be an advocate for Israel. You have to be fighting for the Jewish people on these campuses because they are so hostile and so anti-Israel, so “antisemitic.” But then I got corrupted, as people in my community would say.

I was studying political science and working in the Human Rights Investigations Lab at the law school. I worked in a refugee camp in Greece and met displaced people in Greece whose families had fled the Nakba in ’48 to Syria and then were fleeing Syria. I was studying Arabic and getting all this exposure to people who had a very different perspective on Israel/Palestine. I got to know Palestinian students and Palestinian professors. I had the opportunity to go to the West Bank and was exposed to the reality of the daily dehumanization that Palestinians experience.

All that was happening at the same time as Trump was elected. My sophomore year I started to see people that I had been in coalition with in the pro-Israel world in a different light.

I remember being at the AIPAC policy conference where Trump spoke as a candidate. I joined a walkout and naïvely thought half the stadium would stand up in protest. Instead there’s thunderous applause. As I was scooting past this giant man with a giant cross to leave, he said, “That’s not very polite of y’all.” It shook me. This place had felt like a safe space dedicated to this idea of Jewish safety and preservation of Jewish life and culture. When Trump was in power, the hard right in Israel was emboldened. All of these things together formed a perfect storm for me to unlearn what I had been taught — to realize that Israel was not embodying the values that I was taught to embody as a Jewish person in the world.

That plus getting real exposure to what Israel means to the Palestinians, and has meant for years and years and years, eventually completely demolished the idea that any of this is about Jewish safety. It was a huge grieving process. When you are a Jewish person and you divest from Zionism, you lose a lot, including people you care about. Today it’s a lot better; there’s much more active community to support people through this transition. But in the moment, you don’t really know what’s on the other side of that distancing process, and it’s scary.

Fortunately, I got organized by a good friend of mine who is Israeli American. I got involved with IfNotNow. It was really, really important for me to talk to other people who had been through the same thing. I realized it wasn’t enough for me to just step back and have my own personal change. We are obligated to do something to change things. The first thing I did was write an op-ed about AIPAC.

 How did you come to work in the Biden administration?

 I started knocking on doors for Democratic campaigns when I was 10. I was a fellow in the Hillary campaign. I interned for Kamala when she was a senator. When I graduated, I worked on Kamala’s presidential primary campaign. I drove to Iowa in August 2019 and was an organizer there. When she left the race, I went to Arizona to join the coordinated campaign that would eventually become the Biden-Harris campaign, and that’s how my résumé was in the bank. A few years later, in the fall of 2022, I got an email about an appointee role working for the secretary of the interior.

By that point, I’d grown a lot politically. But I think, of all the people in the administration, Deb Haaland is probably the one person who seemed really worth working for. I had a long conversation with some of my movement friends about the fact that there aren’t a lot of young people in the movement world who have any experience with government or any experience with the establishment. I had a chance to work for the White House. There was just a part of me that couldn’t say no.

 I’m curious to hear more about the decision to resign. There’s this assumption that working on the inside is the pinnacle. It’s what people who want to change the world should aim for: access to the White House, to power. Do you think that’s true? How has your thinking about power and how to wield it evolved?

Tariq Habash at Palestine House of Freedom in Washington, D.C., Oct. 18, 2024.


 I did a lot of advocacy work organizing around student debt, and in college I realized the disconnect I felt from many of my peers who didn’t have to take on debt, who didn’t have to work throughout their educational experience to keep their heads above water. My family supported me, and I am extremely fortunate, but given the inequities I experienced, it didn’t compute that some people could live in million-dollar apartments, party on the beach multiple nights a week, and drive luxury cars while others lived with family and had multiple jobs to have a chance at the American dream. I knew that I wanted to do policy work, and I think my growing understanding of activism helped me realize the different ways that people can make a difference. Too often you have people on the inside who don’t take activists seriously. When I went into the administration, I felt it was part of my role to normalize ideas from people with lived experiences, who are doing grassroots work, and help tell the stories of real Americans so that our policies reflect the solutions we want to see.

On my first day as part of the administration, I took an oath to work in the interests of the American people. And I felt like I was doing that. I felt like I was bringing a perspective to policy that reflected what people were experiencing. I read comments from thousands of people on a range of issues on education and consumer finance related to student debt. I talked to people; I met with constituency groups. Reflecting those insights in policy, reflecting what Americans need and trying to make the government work in their interests, is a really noble and difficult job.

But there was a point where it was clear that the administration did not actually value the perspectives of a broad range of American people. That was particularly salient when it came to what was happening in schools and on college campuses, with the repression of student voices and student organizing related to antiwar, pro-peace, pro–human rights efforts to call out our government’s actions and the Israeli government’s actions in facilitating violence against civilians. It was extremely difficult to be in the government, to be someone who took an oath of office to work in the interests of Americans, and be fighting internally to uphold values that the administration had no intention of actually pursuing. That was when I realized that I could not both be in the administration and actually live up to the oath that I took back in February 2021.

It’s not about a paycheck. It’s not about job stability when people are losing their lives. It’s about making a difference in the world. And that’s why I left.

In terms of power, of course I wasn’t Senate confirmed. But I was in the room; I’m having conversations with the secretary of education and the under secretary and the chief of staff. I’m having conversations with people who are calling the shots. But even people who do technically have power don’t always feel empowered to use it. It was very clear that there were calls from the White House saying, 

This is what we will do and this is what we won’t do

, even if it undermined the Department of Education’s entire mission.

 At the Department of the Interior, I wasn’t in a policy role, but as special assistant to the chief of staff, I worked every day with the secretary and the chief of staff. I had a high-level view into the department and the operation of the administration.

I received support and empathy from people I worked with about my Israeli friends and family and loved ones who were harmed or killed on Oct. 7, which I appreciated and needed. But there was a lack of comprehension that I was just as worried, if not more worried, about my Palestinian friends and the Palestinian people and what was going to happen to Gaza. That was very jarring. I knew intellectually there’s this hierarchy of which people are cared about, but it’s one thing to know it and it’s another to see it.

I had this proximity to power, and it quickly became clear that there was this huge disconnect between staff and the administration. It felt like everyone was kind of on the same page that things were not being handled well, but that wasn’t translating to people at the top.

They had these listening sessions for appointees, and it became very clear that my perspective was not welcome.

I started to realize that there were people in power who were scared of someone like me, which was very interesting. I don’t know that I internalized it right away, because I was a little more scared of them at first.

At that point, I started to get involved with some organizing efforts. I had coworkers who are people of color or Muslim and who were really nervous and anxious about expressing how they were feeling, even just their grief and their fear and their sadness. It wasn’t necessarily naïve, but I felt like, 

O.K., not only am I Jewish, but I have the background. I know how this works. No one can tell me that I don’t know what I’m talking about. I lost people that I care about on Oct. 7. Of all people, you have to listen to me. They can’t say I’m antisemitic.

 I was also furious that people in leadership who were not even Jewish were talking about Jewish safety ad nauseam while contributing to something that is literally killing people and will continue to kill Jewish people. Because that’s what violence does: it perpetuates systems that are bad for everyone.

I think I realized the power that I would have in actually leaving probably back in December. I had to get to a point where I could accept some of the consequences. I remember having a conversation with Tariq about it. I knew it would be crazy — both what it would create within the administration and also what I would have to be willing to give up and to take on. But I came to a point around the spring where I was doing some organizing training for IfNotNow. We were having a strategy session about the pillars of U.S. support for Israel: Christian Zionism, the military-industrial complex, and the war machine. But it’s all covered by this idea of Jewish safety. As I was talking about how our job specifically as Jews is to rip that pretense away, it became clear: I am inside the belly of the beast and have no power. But by leaving, I could help rip away the curtain.

I think this whole idea of Jewish safety is much more palatable than the real reasons why the U.S. continues to support Israel in the way that it does. Supposed Jewish safety is a justification that people can live with and feel good about. If we take that away, we can break down the toxic allyship with Christian Zionists and Trumpists. What we need instead is real solidarity with Palestinians and other groups.

 What is your assessment of the situation within the Democratic Party at this moment? Should it still be the focus of our antiwar organizing? You were both at the Democratic National Convention but not as part of the rally inside the United Center.

 A lot of people were hoping for more than a shift in tone or a shift in message, for a shift in policy from Vice President Harris on the DNC stage. But we didn’t get that, and I think that was a missed opportunity by the DNC, by the campaign, to assure Americans who feel like genocide should be an absolute red line that no one should ever cross.

I feel like it was a failure, and I think it is going to create real dangers. Harris hasn’t indicated that she wants to shift the policy, and that’s enabling the continued destruction of Gaza and now the West Bank. It creates a risk here domestically that she can’t shore up her own base because she refuses to do what is necessary, and that is going to create space for a Trump second term. And I think that is unforgivable of the Democratic Party. Millions of Americans feel like they may not have an option and may choose to vote only down ballot in the election in November because no one at the top of the ticket is trying to get their vote.

Lily Greenberg Call at Palestine House of Freedom in Washington, D.C., Oct. 18, 2024.

 Chicago was incredibly surreal for me. Five years ago, I uprooted my entire life to go work for Kamala, and what should have been the best week in my life, seeing her get the nomination, was overshadowed by my frustration. I could barely even access any of that joy. I did go to the DNC panel about Palestinian rights, which in a lot of ways was the most tangible win that we had that week.

I think most of the people at the DNC, and the majority of my friends who are former Kamala people and Democratic staffers, agree with the demands of the uncommitted movement. They agree with the demands for a cease-fire or even an arms embargo, and some of them had reached out to me after I resigned expressing support and agreement. But the uncommitted delegates were not treated very well by a lot of their delegate peers. What the uncommitted folks are trying to do was interpreted as an attempt to sow division instead of an acknowledgment of the division that already exists. They were seen as outside instigators, people who are trying to get Trump elected or sabotage the election. The cognitive dissonance was really on display, and it was very hard for me to be in these group chats where people were talking about meeting up and sitting together inside the convention center while I’m on the pavement outside the DNC at the sit-in.

But on that pavement, I had this really beautiful experience of solidarity between Jewish people and Palestinian people and getting to know and getting to meet in person some folks I had only met on Zoom or interacted with online. This cohort of people, who are really diverse, are trying to push the Democratic Party to be better. They’re actually not outsiders. They’re longtime Democratic Party organizers, people who are really dedicated to the party and are trying to bring something back to their communities to show that Kamala Harris and the Democratic Party care about their families who are being killed.

And to experience all of that and then to have this complete glossing over it from the establishment and from the people on the inside — “Oh, we can’t acknowledge the truth of what’s happening here because it takes away from the joy” — was really devastating. My sense is that the campaign is shifting to the right to try and get the voters they think they can count on. In my opinion, they’re underestimating the people who care about Palestine — not just Palestinian and Arab Americans but also the people who care about them.

I don’t know that I want to vote for Harris after this. And that’s crazy as someone who very much understands that voting is not about picking your best friend and understands what we’re up against with a second Trump term. There are people on the right who would very much like to lock up probably every single Jewish anti-Zionist organizer who has been in the streets every day since Oct. 7, not to mention what they want to do to our Palestinian comrades. I understand the threat people face. It’s so devastating to be in solidarity with people who are just begging for their humanity to be recognized by their peers and to be told so blatantly to eff off. It really feels like 

 Because the Democratic Party base agrees that the suffering needs to end. And I think her chances of winning the election would improve if she were more honest about what’s going on right now, the United States’ role in it, and how we actually have the leverage to change things.

There’s also the fact of what the vast majority of Israelis want. Supposedly this is about them, though of course it’s really not. But look at what’s happening right now in Israel. There are constant protests and even a general strike! It really begs the question 

 Because it’s really not for any of us clearly.

 I was hoping you would mention that general strike. I see that action as one part of a complex and not always totally harmonious international coalition that can work toward ending this genocide and getting us closer to a free Palestine. I want to ask you about expanding the base of people who are part of this effort. What can we do to grow our numbers and create the kinds of organizations and alliances we need to win?

 I think the left could get better at this. We have these purity tests, and it feels like we are not always willing to work with people who we need to be our allies. I believe the movement for Palestinian liberation needs anti-occupation Israelis: the young people who are going to jail for not serving in the military and people who are in the streets fighting against Netanyahu and fighting for a hostage deal and cease-fire. We need those people right now. We need those people to try to change the government, to keep pushing for a cease-fire and more. It is not my place to tell Palestinians how to organize or who to be willing to organize with or what to fight for and what to compromise on. But I feel like putting people down for pushing for a hostage release or mourning hostages killed, when a group like IfNotNow — which has been organizing for Palestinian liberation and doing the work within the Jewish community to end our own community’s support for the occupation — is given a ton of flak for posting about the hostage deaths, that is not productive. That is not how we’re going to build the type of radical solidarity we need to get free.

We do have to hold that we are allowed to radically mourn for everyone. I think that is the most important thing. We also can’t be that picky. We’re up against some really horrible forces with a lot of money and power who are not picky about who they ally with. We do have to have our principles and our goalposts, but we also have to be strategic about what is achievable. We can’t totally check out, especially those of us in America. We cannot check out of American politics. We do not have the luxury of doing that.

 Obviously, we need broad coalitions to affect policy and leverage political power. I don’t think it’s purity politics to stand against genocide unequivocally, though. I think it’s important to differentiate the two. I understand that there are people who organize in different ways and who maybe don’t want to support elected officials currently in office who have largely enabled what has happened. We do have to engage with people who can be strategic partners, but I don’t think that it’s completely wrong also to want people who are actually consistent and good on issues that are moral red lines.

In terms of everyday Americans, education is key. The more people learn about the horror of everything that’s happening on the ground day to day, the more likely they will become radicalized about the reality and the more likely they will be to go through an awakening.

 As I see it, part of organizing is being open to people learning, changing their minds, and evolving. As Lily said, this can be hard — people can lose a lot, including family and friends, when they embrace new perspectives, and we have to support folks in that process. We need to be inviting and supportive, not just judgmental, even as we hold moral lines. And this education and awakening you mention, Tariq, appears to be happening for lots of folks. I don’t want to just put a positive spin on things, but I do feel like it’s important to acknowledge progress. When I talk to longtime Israeli peaceniks and Palestinian activists, they tend to emphasize how much less marginal their views are today than even a decade ago. Do you think the movement’s having an impact despite the ferocious backlash and setbacks?

 the week before the DNC of three major battleground states, Arizona, Georgia, and Pennsylvania. And it showed how much more support Vice President Harris could have if she were able to help facilitate a cease-fire before the election. That support was not going to dissipate if she were willing to encourage President Biden to use all levers, including an arms embargo.

There’s a lot of support across American constituencies for better policy. The thing that’s inspiring to me is that there are people who want to politically engage on this now, who aren’t saying, “I’m done with politics.” People are literally dying. People we know, both me and Lily, their lives are in danger. Their lives are in the balance. And it’s because of our money. It’s because of our tax dollars. It’s because our elected officials are failing the entire world. We have to own that, and we have to take it on ourselves to do better.

But we don’t have the luxury of unplugging from electoral politics. This is how our country’s decisions get made. This is how politics get decided, and we have to engage with it if we ever want to see progress. We have to be more heightened in our approach. We have to try and have an influence over our elected officials, who work for us. It’s their job to listen to us. And right now, they’re not listening. I don’t think that we have to blindly support any one party. I sure as shit won’t. No one deserves my vote. They have to earn it. And that includes Kamala Harris; that includes every single Democrat. I refuse to blindly support people who continue to facilitate the mass slaughter of my own people. And I will never feel guilty saying that. And who knows what I’m going to do come November? I really don’t know. But we are not in a place where we can just not engage.

Tariq Habash and Lily Greenberg Call at Palestine House of Freedom in Washington, D.C., Oct. 18, 2024. Photographs by Candace Dame Chambers for Hammer & Hope.

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Astra Taylor

@astradisastra

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Astra Taylor

@astradisastra

Contributions

Forum

The Democrats Fear a Left-Winger Who Governs Well

Issue

5

“Our Elected Officials Are Failing the Entire World”

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