It has now been over two years since the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, leaving the issue of abortion to the states. During this period, women’s rights in the United States have continued to backslide. While I agree with Kamala Harris’ recent promise to end the filibuster to codify Roe into law, the narrative of Harris as a staunch champion of women’s rights—and LGBTQIA+ rights —has, in my view, been used to obscure her unflinching support for Israel, even as Israel faces accusations of committing genocide in Palestine and Lebanon. This tactic, known as “purple-washing,” is not exclusive to Harris but extends across many Western governments and politicians.

According to the website Decolonize Palestine, purple-washing refers to the strategic use of women’s rights and feminism to deflect from a state’s harmful practices. Over the past year, since the October 7th terrorist attacks, American media and politicians—particularly the Biden-Harris administration—have been repeating discredited claims about Hamas fighters beheading babies, raping women, cutting off their breasts, and burning people alive. However, a forensic investigation by Al Jazeera revealed that while Hamas committed atrocious human rights abuses on October 7th, the widespread reports of beheaded babies, mass rapes, female mutilation, and immolation were proven false. Yet, Joe Biden and Kamala Harris have continued to perpetuate these false claims, using them as a justification for backing Israel during its ongoing war with Hamas and Hezbollah.

The only viable alternative to Kamala Harris is former President Donald Trump, with J.D. Vance as his running mate. Together, they have promised to deport millions of immigrants—both legal and illegal—endorsed various federal abortion bans in the past and made the outlandish claim that they could end the war in Ukraine in less than 24 hours (which likely means surrendering Ukraine to Putin). They’ve also pledged to reinstate Trump’s Muslim ban and have threatened war with Iran. Recently, Trump launched an Islamophobic tirade at one of his rallies, going so far as to threaten the execution of people who criticize Israel implicitly. This is no small matter for journalists like myself, who have previously published opinion pieces critical of Israel and Zionism, and such threats evoke images of actual dictatorships—Putin’s Russia, Xi’s China, Khamenei’s Iran, Kim Jong-Un’s North Korea, Mohammed bin Salman’s Saudi Arabia, and Bashar al-Assad’s Syria.

Donald Trump may be an unapologetic white supremacist, misogynist, and genocidal figure who threatens to irreparably destroy this country, and I fear his running mate, J.D. Vance, even more. But at least they are transparent about their destructive intentions. They don’t hide behind movements like #MeToo, LGBTQIA+ rights, Stop Asian Hate, or Black Lives Matter to mask genocidal policies aimed at the Islamic world. In contrast, Harris is not above co-opting these causes to deflect criticism, making her complicity in purple-washing all the more insidious.

Kamala Harris is hardly the first female politician to co-opt women’s rights for imperialistic purposes. After the September 11th terrorist attacks, First Lady Laura Bush famously claimed that the war in Afghanistan was a war for women’s rights—arguing that U.S. soldiers were fighting to ensure Afghan girls could attend school and dress as they wished. Yet the reality was that the U.S. military killed over a million people in Afghanistan, most of them women and children while operating notorious facilities like Bagram prison, where detainees were subjected to brutal sexual torture. Reports have even surfaced of U.S. soldiers dishonoring Muslim women in both Iraq and Afghanistan.

Ten years later, we saw similar rhetoric from Michelle Obama, who spoke of advancing LGBTQIA+ rights in Africa and the Islamic world, all while her husband’s administration bombed eight Muslim-majority countries, killing millions of innocent people, most of them women and children. These bombings helped create the conditions for extremist groups like ISIS and Boko Haram to flourish. In recent years, several African countries, such as Uganda, have passed laws making homosexuality punishable by death. As someone who has traveled extensively in the Islamic world, I can attest that many of the men I spoke with viewed efforts to broaden human rights as tools of American and Israeli imperialism. They believe these movements have no place in their societies, especially after Western governments justified their military actions in the name of advancing women’s and minority rights but left behind nothing but death and destruction.

The State of Israel has long been guilty of purple-washing, as well as pink-washing and green-washing. Israel claims to have the most gender-inclusive army in the world, boasts of its environmental technologies, and markets itself as the only LGBTQIA-friendly country in the Middle East. Yet, at the same time, both official Israeli government mouthpieces and their unofficial supporters frequently post images of scantily clad female soldiers toting AR-15s, often posing in bikinis and helmets. In contrast, Palestinian women are portrayed as oppressed figures, draped in black burqas, and in need of saving from their patriarchal families. In December 2023, a viral New York Times article depicted widespread sexual assault and mutilation by Palestinian fighters, but multiple credible news sources, including Al Jazeera, TRT World, The Intercept, The Electronic Intifada, and Mondoweiss, have debunked these claims. Nonetheless, Western politicians and media outlets continue to parrot these lies.

Yet, despite Kamala Harris’ clear engagement in purple-washing—following the footsteps of many female politicians before her—I will still vote for her. As problematic as her policies on Palestine and Lebanon may be, at least under her leadership, I won’t face legal or economic consequences for criticizing her actions. She supports reproductive rights and the separation of church and state and has even called out major corporations for price gouging at grocery stores and gas stations. Harris has a small business plan that even Fox News has begrudgingly praised. Meanwhile, Trump poses a far greater threat—his America would resemble the totalitarian, patriarchal dystopia of Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale.