Vice President Kamala Harris has described the loss of life and devastation in the Gaza Strip in the Hamas-Israel war as “devastating. So many innocent lives lost. The scale of suffering is heartbreaking.”

Harris – who succeeded President Joe Biden as the Democratic presidential nominee – gave no details but Al Jazeera, citing the Gaza Health Ministry, reported that the victims included members of 902 families: the Al-Najjars, 393; Al-Masrys, 226; Al-Astals, 225; Ashours, 166; Shaheens, 164; Hamdans, 151; Al-Madhoons, 146; Ahmeds, 145; Obeida, 144; and Hijazis, 141.

Also: 710 babies; 1,793 toddlers, 1,205 preschoolers, 4,205 primary schoolers, 3,442 high schoolers, 5,374 young adults and 13,837 adults. Also: 701 people aged 75 and over who had been among 750,000 expelled in the “Nakba” or “Catastrophe" during the 1948 Arab-Israeli war, and 3,077, aged 56-74, who had been among 430,000 displaced in the “Naksa” or “Relapse” during a war in 1967.

Some 10,000 victims may be buried under the rubble of bombed-out buildings, ABC News reported, citing the United Nations, and 96,700 others have been injured.

The Gaza Health Ministry reported that 43,000 have so far died and The Nation magazine put the overall death toll at about 180,000, “including indirect deaths caused by the war, such as the outbreak of disease and the destruction of hospitals.”

Nineteen of Gaza’s 36 hospitals were destroyed and the remaining 17 are only partly operational, ABC reported, citing the World Health Organization. "Our teams have been forced to perform surgeries without anesthesia, witness children die on hospital floors due to a lack of resources and even treat their own colleagues and family members," Dr. Amber Alayyan, a medical program manager for Médecins sans Frontières (Doctors without Borders) said. "Meanwhile, the health care system in Gaza has been systematically dismantled by Israeli forces."

Schools are among 163,778 structures bombed – 66 percent of all buildings – of which 78 percent have been destroyed or damaged, the United Nations Satellite Centre (UNOSAT) reported.

Food is so scarce that there is a nearfamine.

On the other hand, Israel put its death toll at 1,200, with 8,700 injured in the war sparked by Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, invasion, massacre of 1,955 soldiers and civilians, including women and children, and abduction of 251 hostages.

Harris has deemed the Hamas attack “unspeakable.” She reiterated Biden’s pledge to defend Israel’s security. Both support creating a Palestinian state so, Harris said, the “Palestinian people can realize their right to dignity, security, freedom and self-determination.”

All of that, however, has sounded as mere rhetoric because the first step to halting the bloodshed and destruction must be a ceasefire, which Biden has been unable to secure. Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has rejected it, along with the call for a Palestinian state. Still, Biden has provided $17.9 billion worth of arms and $20 billion in loans to Israel since the war began and more is being sent. Overall, the United States has given Israel $159 billion in weapons and other aid since its creation in 1948.

Netanyahu, on a stated mission to destroy Palestinian resistance, has widened his war, invading the sovereign nation of Lebanon, where Hezbollah, another armed Palestinian group is based. Substantial loss of life and devastation have been reported there also, along with mass displacement of people.

That is undoubtedly why Arab and Muslim Americans – staunch Palestinian supporters who traditionally vote Democratic – are outraged at Biden and formed the Uncommitted Movement. They are so distributed around the country that the tragedy taking place 7,000 miles away could affect the outcome of the presidential election.

Amer Ghalib, Democratic mayor of the Michigan city of Hamtramck, the first to elect an all-Muslim council, has endorsed former President Donald Trump, HuffPost reported, describing him as “a man of principles” and “the right choice for this critical time.” But Harris has support, also, including endorsement by Emgage (sic) Action, an advocacy group. She met recently with some Arab and Muslim leaders in Flint, Michigan, and she and Biden also met Netanyahu in Washington. But still no ceasefire.

“Biden has grown frustrated that Netanyahu appears to brush off his advice and recommendations and to publicly reject his attempts at lowering regional temperatures,” CNN reported. “Some American officials have privately speculated the Israeli leader is looking to boost Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump in the weeks ahead of November’s election.”

Indeed, a ceasefire will be seen as a Biden victory and, despite the president’s decades-long total support for Israel, Netanyahu is known to prefer Trump. As president, he endorsed Israel’s annexation of the Golan Heights, which it captured in war, and relocation of the capital to Jerusalem, which, until then, had been designated an international city administered by the United Nations.

But Trump has a long anti-Muslim record. MPower Change has cited data from Georgetown University’s Bridge Initiative accusing him of “displaying or promoting” anti-Muslim bias “86 times” between then and 2018. Muslim Advocates has made similar accusations, both focusing specially on Trump’s efforts to ban Muslims from entering the country.

After David Letterman asked him on “The Late Show” in 2010 whether “we are officially at war with Muslims,” Trump replied, “Well somebody knocked down the World Trade Center … somebody’s blowing us up. Somebody’s blowing up buildings, and somebody’s doing lots of bad stuff.” Trump insisted for years that there is a “Muslim problem” in the U.S. and that 27 percent of Muslims around the world are “militant.” He called for warrantless surveillance of Muslims and mosques and closing the houses of worship. He pushed for creating a database to track Muslims, whom he described as “a Trojan horse.” He claimed, falsely, on ABC’s “This Week” that Arabs in New Jersey “were cheering as the World Trade Center came down.” In a tweet, he cited as his source “all kinds of youtube videos” that also showed “militant Muslims burning our flag and burning George Bush photos and figures, right after 9/11!”

In a Fox News interview, Trump justified his call for a ban on Muslims by saying, “They’re sick people.” At a campaign rally in South Carolina in 2016, he claimed, falsely, that Gen. John Pershing executed 49 Muslim insurgents in the Philippines using bullets dipped in pig’s blood, letting a 50th go so he could “tell his people what happened.” As Time magazine pointed out, “For Muslims, ingesting pork is a sin and pig’s blood is considered unholy.” As president, Trump appointed a number of known anti-Muslim people to his administration. Katherine Gorka, named to his transition team, was involved in the anti-Muslim hate movement. Chief strategist Steve Bannon once claimed that “the Judeo-Christian west” is engaged in a “global war” against “jihadist Islamic fascism.” National Security Advisor Gen. Mike Flynn described Islam as a “cancer.” Flynn’s successor John Bolton and director of the Central Intelligence Agency and later secretary of state Mike Pompeo were described by The New York Times as having “ties to individuals and groups promoting a worldview that regards Islam not so much as a religion but as a political ideology that is infiltrating the United States and other Western countries with the goal of imposing Shariah law, the Muslim legal code.” Presidential Adviser Sebastian Gorka had been fired by the FBI for “over-the-top Islamophobic rhetoric.”

That is the background against which Arab and Muslim Americans must be weighing how they express their anger at Biden – and, by inference, Harris. They have to choose between the short-term and the long-term, aware that nothing can undo the killing field which Netanyahu has made of Gaza. Award-winning Gaza writer Musab Abu Toha, 31, who was born in a refugee camp, expressed the anguish over that reality in a poem, “Under The Rubble,” published in The New Yorker. Part of it reads:

“She slept on her bed,/never woke up again./Her bed has become her grave,/beneath the ceiling of her room,/the ceiling a cenotaph./No name, no year of birth,/no year of death, no epitaph./Only blood and a smashed/picture frame in ruin/next to her.”