(RNS) — Arab Americans, Muslim Americans and their interfaith allies spent much of Thursday (Aug. 22) pushing Democratic officials to allow a Palestinian American to speak from the party convention’s main stage, to convey a message of solidarity despite the party’s so-far consistent support for Israel in its prosecution of the war in Gaza.
The push was accompanied by an all-night sit-in outside Chicago’s United Center at which members of the “uncommitted” movement also made speeches pressing the Democratic National Convention to feature a Palestinian speaker.
The uncommitted — so-called because members of the movement wrote in “uncommitted” on their ballots rather than vote for President Joe Biden in this year’s Democratic primaries — want the DNC to recognize the suffering of Palestinians, 40,000 of whom have been killed by Israel’s massive Gaza assault of the past 10 months, an assault backed by U.S. bombs and munitions that has flattened the Gaza Strip and left tens of thousands homeless.
In an emotional speech from the stage of the convention on Wednesday, Israeli Americans Rachel Goldberg-Polin and her husband, Jon, spoke about their 23-year-old son Hersh, who is among the dozens of hostages kidnapped by Hamas militants on Oct. 7.
The Polins, modern Orthodox Jews who grew up in Chicago, have made their case to every major news outlet and met personally with Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris numerous times.
Jon Polin and Rachel Goldberg-Polin, parents of hostage Hersh Goldberg-Polin, speak during the Democratic National Convention, Aug. 21, 2024, in Chicago. (AP Photo/Erin Hooley)
But the DNC has so far denied a request to allow Americans to hear the stories of Palestinian people in Gaza, many of whose lives have been destroyed by Israel’s massive military retaliation for the Hamas attack that left 1,200 mostly Israelis dead.
Harris has adopted a somewhat different tone on the war from Biden. In March, she became the first administration official to call for an immediate cease-fire, which she has repeated since becoming the Democratic front-runner. But at a campaign stop in Detroit, the vice president admonished protesters calling for a cease-fire by barking, “If you want Donald Trump to win, then say that. Otherwise, I’m speaking.”
On Thursday, the United Auto Workers, a powerful labor union, threw its support behind the effort to feature a Palestinian speaker. So too did several progressive Jewish groups.
“Our colleagues and friends are in deep pain over this decision and it felt like an important moment to offer a show of support,” said Jamie Beran, who leads Bend the Arc: Jewish Action and participated in the sit-in. “It’s just been such a low-bar ask that would only be good for the campaign by and large.”
Abbas Alawieh, an uncommitted delegate from Michigan who had been negotiating with the Harris campaign to get a Palestinian speaker, left the United Center on Wednesday night after being told the DNC would not allow a speaker.
“Tell the vice president that I’m sitting outside, I’m not going anywhere, I hope she changes her mind — the Palestinian children need to be heard,” he was quoted as saying.
Alawieh is co-founder of the uncommitted movement that succeeded in getting as many as 700,000 people to vote “uncommitted” in protest of Biden’s unconditional support for Israel in the war. About 30 delegates to the convention have declared themselves uncommitted, citing the U.S. government’s complicity in what they regard as a genocide in Gaza. Those delegates are demanding not only a commitment to an immediate cease-fire but an arms embargo against Israel, which both the Biden and Harris campaigns have opposed.
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An interfaith vigil organized by a group called Not Another Bomb drew dozens of Muslims, Jews and Christians to the Hyatt Regency McCormick Place Thursday morning.
The war in Gaza has galvanized public opinion among Arab Americans, both Christian and Muslim, as well as younger voters more generally.
“We’ve been polling Arab Americans since the 1990s,” said James Zogby, the Arab American pollster, “and when we ask about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, how important it is, like other Americans, they’d say the No. 1 issue was jobs. Foreign policy was not in that top tier.”
But not this year. The scale of the war, Zogby said, made an unprecedented impression on Arab voters. “The devastation was so enormous, the genocide was so real and the frustration with the administration for not recognizing it was so profound, that it had an impact that we hadn’t seen before.”
Zogby, along with Keith Ellison, the Minnesota attorney general, co-led a DNC-approved panel on the war in Gaza on Monday. It drew a standing-room-only crowd of more than 300 people.
Progressive House Democrats, including Reps. Ilhan Omar of Minnesota, Cori Bush of Missouri, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York and Summer Lee of Pennsylvania, have supported the uncommitted delegates’ call for a Palestinian speaker.
Meanwhile, marches and protests outside the DNC organized as part of the Coalition to March on the DNC, an umbrella organization, continued.
Tarek Khalil, a member of the Chicago chapter of American Muslims for Palestine, said he’s not surprised by the DNC’s intransigence.
“To say that this is unexpected, to say that this is surprising would not be entirely truthful,” he said. “It’s shameful. It’s disappointing, but it’s not unexpected.”
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