“Forgive me, mother because I chose this way, the way of helping people… Accept my martyrdom, God, and forgive me.” — Rifaat Radwan, a Red Crescent Medic, martyred in Gaza by the IOF on March 23rd, 2025. 

Just hours before millions around the United States gathered to demand the Trump-Elon administration keep their “hands off” their rights and democracy, video footage was released from Radwan’s phone, capturing the moments right before he and fourteen others were murdered in cold blood by the US-Israeli war machine while on duty with the Red Crescent last month. This video footage exposes the Israeli claim that the medics’ caravan was attacked due to “suspicious activity” as yet another Israeli lie.  Radwan and dozens of others were on duty as medics, providing lifesaving care in the south of Gaza, before the IDF pulled up and unleashed rounds and rounds of gunfire. On the newly released video, Radwan can be heard pleading for forgiveness from his mother; he had an acute understanding of how the dedication to saving people during the genocide would cost him his life and break his mother’s heart. 

The audio is chilling, heartbreaking, and infuriating. For those who stand with Palestine, it is impossible to listen and not feel some sort of drive to fight back for Radwan. It’s bitterly ironic that an end to US-sponsored genocide was not among the demands of the nearly 1400 “Hands Off” protests this weekend, where people rallied to say “hands off democracy.” Not “stop bombing families celebrating Ramadan in Yemen”, not “stop sending the bombs that fall on schools, shelters, and medics in Gaza,” just “hands off the privileges of this empire that benefit me.”

These liberal, Make America Great Again rallies demanded protections for Social Security, Medicaid, NATO, government workers, abortion access, and veterans, among other Americans-first demands. What we saw on Saturday were masses of liberals, some leftists, and opportunist politicians taking to the streets to defend democracy. While taken individually, some of those demands are just, taken as a package, the “hands off” framing ignores the heart of the matter: that to defend U.S. democracy is to defend the very system that greenlights and funds genocide in Palestine, that murdered a million people in Iraq, and waged the Vietnam War. Even when not actively waging war, this country sits at the top of a hierarchy of extraction and labor exploitation, and the money that goes towards social services is by and large stolen wealth, keeping the majority of the world’s people immisserated. The democracy that people want to defend is an empire with its talons dug deep into the people of the world. US-Israel munitions being pumped into medic Rifaat Radwan. That is what democracy looks like. 

Now, as Trump’s reshuffling threatens some of the comforts of empire, people reach for protest signs, dust off the old pussy hats, and American flags, but how do they think these luxuries were ever afforded? “Money for education, not bombs” ignores the fact that those bombs built the US’s wealth in the first place. Invasions, coups, resource extraction, structural adjustment programs, and global arms sales are what fund the very programs people rallied to protect. Money for jobs and education because of war and occupation. 

This protest comes at a time when the US-Israeli war machine has ramped up its horrors in Gaza, with the head of UNRWA reporting that at least 100 Palestinian children have been killed or injured each day in Gaza since Israel broke the ceasefire on March 18. All the while, the current administration, the one liberals love to hate, is targeting pro-Palestine international students and workers, detaining them, threatening deportation, and criminalizing the simple act of speaking out against the US-Israel war machine. While many people in the anti-Trump crowd are concerned about the kidnapping of Mahmoud Khalil and other students, they have by and large failed to deal with the fact that Trump’s wave of repression is simply picking up where Biden left off. It was Genocide Joe who greenlit the police attacks on the student encampments, which were carried by Democratic Party mayors, from Brandon Johnson to Karen Bass. It was Genocide Joe who banned Samidoun. Viewing repression of the Palestine movement as a uniquely Trumpian phenomena leads to demanding that the clock move backwards to Biden’s slightly more polite version of repression. 

So, for those who are serious about anti-imperialist resistance, for those who were enraged at the audio recording of Rifaat Radwan, who heard his final plea to his mother and felt the weight of what the US- Israeli war machine is unleashing, who don’t want to demand a kinder face for the empire, it’s time to join us. Yes, we need millions of people to take to the streets, but not in permitted marches coordinated with cops, and sure as hell not at protests that are calling to defend the horrors of US democracy masked as defending healthcare. We’re not defending democracy. This democracy bombs children. What we need are for masses of people to reject their allegiance to this country, in name and in action, and choose to stand with the people of the world. We don’t want a seat at the table of empire. We want to flip the fucking table over—for Rifaat Radwan, for the children massacred in Gaza, for the billions of people who pay for our schools and healthcare with their hands, their blood and lives, and for every person who’s being attacked for daring to fight back against the genocide.