Green Party presidential candidate Jill Stein and independent candidate Cornel West are making a play for the Muslim vote at the Council on American-Islamic Relations’ (CAIR) March on Washington for Gaza Saturday as President Joe Biden’s administration is bombing Houthis in Yemen. 

As Israel’s response to Iran proxy Hamas’s October 7, 2023, terrorist attacks has divided the left, with some, including Biden, backing Israel and others calling for a cease-fire, the progressive candidates seem poised to capitalize politically on the fractured Democrat coalition by appearing at the pro-Gaza March in Washington, DC.

In her remarks, Stein called for a cease-fire and a halt to all aid to Israel – a position that contrasts starkly with Biden’s posture. 

“We have a power to be instructing our elected officials what they need to do – that they need to stop the flow of weapons and money to apartheid Israel,” Stein told demonstrators. “We need to withdraw our advisors, our troops, our warships, our ammunition, and our weapons from the scene of the crime.”

Conversely, Biden said on the day of the attacks that his administration’s support for Israel’s security is rock solid and unwavering, and has requested $23.5 billion in humanitarian and military aid for Israel, though he wanted it be bundled with $61.5 billion for Ukraine and $7.4 billion for Taiwan. 

Stein called on voters to sign a pledge “to stop genocide through our votes” by refusing to back “any candidate who supports genocide.”

“But we won’t stop there because they would love for us to be silent and just disappear. We are also saying we will support, we pledge to support candidates who are fighting to stop genocide for a ceasefire now and for an end to occupation and apartheid,” she said.

Notably, in late December, after Biden approved an emergency weapons sale to Israel, CAIR National Deputy Director Edward Ahmed Mitchell contended the president was enabling genocide. 

“Sadly, it now appears that President Biden is intent on ignoring the American people and enabling Benjamin Netanyahu’s campaign of genocide, ethnic cleansing, and mass starvation in Gaza,” Mitchell said. 

West appears to be slated to speak later at the event, which comes as tensions have ramped up between the Biden administration and the Iranian-backed Houthis in Yemen. 

Harvard Professor Cornel West speaks at a campaign rally for Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., at the Whittemore Center Arena at the University of New Hampshire, Feb. 10, 2020, in Durham, N.H. West says he will run for president in 2024 as 3rd-party candidate. (/Andrew Harnik, File/AP)

United States and United Kingdom warships engaged in what has been dubbed a “massive retaliatory strike” on Houthi targets in the Yemen after “continued attacks on global trade in the Red Sea,” as Breitbart News London Bureau Chief Oliver Lane noted. The United States and the United Kingdom had warned for days of “consequences” before retaliating.