LET ME be clear. I have never had a love affair with Joe Biden. Not that kind of love affair. But politically, like many on the left, I’ve been willing to check his name at the ballot box while overlooking a few of his political shortcomings because, so we told ourselves, Biden is at heart a decent human being.

At first, as Israel’s genocidal retaliation for the October 7 Hamas attacks continued, I remained reluctantly in the camp willing to vote for Biden in November. However tightly one might have to hold one’s nose, it was imperative to preserve our democracy and keep Donald Trump out of the White House. In the meantime, surely Biden would step up and stop the bloodshed in Gaza.

That was then. This is now.

For months we rallied and lobbied, voted “uncommitted” in the primaries and called for a ceasefire. President Biden ignored all of it. He has now fully earned the nickname given to him by the thousands of students occupying their campuses across the country: “Genocide Joe.”

I cannot vote for Biden in November.

I had already written this column last week but democratic socialist, Senator Bernie Sanders, kept insisting a vote for Biden was essential to keep fascism from our door. So I hesitated. Then I read Biden’s response to the International Criminal Court’s announcement on Monday that it would seek arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Minister of Defence Yoav Gallant. 

I hit “Send.”

Biden called the ICC announcement “outrageous” and said unambiguously, “there is no equivalence — none — between Israel and Hamas. We will always stand with Israel against threats to its security.” 

That’s the true love affair: Butcher Bibi and Genocide Joe. We’ve learned too late that it’s an unbreakable bond and that Joe Biden is not, in fact, a “decent human being.”

To be unmoved by a genocide is incomprehensible. To be unmoved when you could stop it, is unforgivable. To actively aid and abet it by supplying the arms that do the killing, is abhorrent. The Biden administration is guilty on all three counts.

And entirely unrepentant. The White House has played a craven game of deception for months, purely for political ends. There have been many low points but one of the worst was the recent announcement that the US would withhold transfer of certain larger, more destructive weapons to Israel. This seemed, on the surface, a step in the right direction, and was initially welcomed as such.

However, it was followed two days later by the release of a likely deliberately delayed White House report that said there was “insufficient information” to be sure that US-supplied weapons were being used by Israel in violation of human rights law. The green light was back on to keep US arms to Israel flowing.

Worse, the report actually stated that Israel “has had to confront an extraordinary military challenge.” Fewer than 300 Israeli soldiers have been killed so far since Israel’s assault on Gaza began. More than 35,000 Palestinians have died, almost all civilians and mostly women and children. 

Who, exactly, is facing “an extraordinary military challenge” here? But Biden says there is “no equivalence.” Incredible.

Not voting for Biden in November will be a choice made under the threat of a massive campaign of blame shifting. Should Donald Trump win back the White House, those of us who could not vote for Biden will be told it was our fault. 

But the responsibility for preventing what would be an unarguable catastrophe should Trump prevail lies with Biden, not us. To stave off fascism, Biden needs to give us an actual choice and win the White House on merit, not by default.

Linda Pentz Gunter is a writer based in Takoma Park, Maryland.