Israelis and Palestinians Found Common Ground at the DNC. Is That Enough?
Rachel Goldberg and Jon Polin came to the Democratic National Convention on Wednesday with a message they said was “not a political issue.” The Israeli-American couple’s son, Hersh Goldberg-Polin, was at a music festival during the October 7, 2023, attacks on Israel. A grenade blew his arm off, and Hamas fighters took him hostage.
“In a competition of pain, there are no winners,” Polin said. “In an inflamed Middle East, we know the one thing that can most immediately release pressure and bring calm to the entire region: A deal that brings this diverse group of 109 hostages home and ends the suffering of the innocent civilians in Gaza. The time is now.”
He added that kol adam olam umlo’o, a Hebrew saying meaning “every human being is an entire world” that is paraphrased from the Talmud.
Outside the convention center that night, former congressional staffer and convention delegate Abbas Alawieh was leading a livestreamed protest. Uncommitted delegates like Alawieh, representing those who had declined to vote for President Joe Biden in the primary, were demanding that the Democratic Party also allow a Palestinian American speaker on stage to share their people’s story.
Alawieh himself had lived that story. As an American teenager visiting his family in southern Lebanon, he witnessed the Israeli invasion of 2006.
“I thought that 100 percent I would be killed using bombs that my government was sending over there,” he said. “I remember what those bombs feel like when they drop. I remember how your bones shake within your body. I remember what they smell like. I remember what the dust feels like when it fills the room after a bomb drops and I can’t even see my own hand in front of my face.”
He added that he was “privileged” to hear the humanistic message of Polin and Goldberg at the convention, and echoed Polin’s reference to the Talmud. “I was thinking about how in the Muslim tradition, we know that if you harm or if you kill any one person, it’s as if you harmed or killed all of humanity,” Alawieh said, paraphrasing a verse from the Quran.
The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is probably the most intense foreign policy issue in U.S. politics, threatening to break apart the Democratic coalition. At stake are hundreds of thousands of Muslim, Jewish, Arab Christian, and other voters in swing states, including over 100,000 people in Michigan and 88,000 people in North Carolina who voted uncommitted in the Democratic primaries.
In theory, all the major Democratic factions have the same goal. Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris say that they want a ceasefire. So do many of the Israeli hostage families invited to speak at Democratic events and the Palestinian-American voters protesting against the party. When a heckler chanted “Free the hostages” at Alawieh’s protest, uncommitted supporters reportedly chanted back, “We agree!”
“President Biden and I are working to end this war such that Israel is secure, the hostages are released, the suffering in Gaza ends, and the Palestinian people can realize their right to dignity, security, freedom and self determination,” Harris said on Thursday night.
But move from the realm of rhetoric to the realm of action, and the fault lines become clearer.
While calling for diplomacy, the Biden administration has also rushed weapons to Israel at the American taxpayer’s expense. (Harris also promised on Thursday that she “will always ensure that Israel has the ability to defend itself.”) Some hostage families, including the Goldberg-Polin family, have asked the U.S. government to push harder on the Israeli leadership to accept a ceasefire. The Uncommitted movement believes that nothing short of a total weapons cutoff can move Israel.
This question—whether the Biden administration is seriously working towards a ceasefire—has also divided the progressive wing of the party. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D–N.Y.) said in her Tuesday convention speech that Harris “is working tirelessly to secure a ceasefire in Gaza and bring the hostages home.”
Rep. Ilhan Omar (D–Minn.) rebuked her in a speech outside the convention hall. “It’s been unconscionable for me the last ten months to witness my colleagues in this administration refusing to recognize the genocidal war that is taking place in Gaza,” Omar said. “‘Working tirelessly’ for a ceasefire is really not a thing, and they should be ashamed of themselves.”
The Uncommitted movement had publicly hoped that replacing Biden with Harris would also mean a shift in administration policy. Harris’ foreign policy team includes figures like Philip Gordon, a skeptic of U.S. wars in the Middle East, and Ilan Goldenberg, an Israeli-American peace negotiator who has called for recognizing the State of Palestine. Recent polling shows that an arms embargo would win more votes than it would lose in swing states.
The Democratic National Convention would put those hopes to the test. Unlike the outside protesters who threatened to disrupt the convention, the Uncommitted movement played the inside track, negotiating with Democratic leadership and playing up the movement
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