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Democratic voters want Kamala Harris to stand up for Palestinians. Will she? | Judith Levine

Palestinians are used to being unheard. The 1917 Balfour Declaration committed Great Britain to creating a Jewish state in Palestine without mentioning the people who comprised the majority of the people living there. At least four United Nations resolutions of monumental consequence to Palestine – including the ones that established the borders of Israel in 1948 and expanded those borders after the 1967 war – were passed by a body that still does not recognize a sovereign Palestinian entity, much less a state, with voting-member status.

Numerous bilateral agreements between Israel and its neighbors spelled out the Palestinians’ fate but did not include them in the negotiations. Donald Trump’s 2020 “deal of the century” was a Hanukah gift to Benjamin Netanyahu that, among other things, opened the way for Israel’s annexation of the West Bank and canceled the Palestinians’ right of return.

Since the assault on Gaza began, Joe Biden has been unable to acknowledge the horrors on the ground without asserting his administration’s “rock-solid and unwavering” support of Israel. The US president’s rare expressions of sympathy for the people under the bombs elide cause or solution. A short passage about civilian death and displacement in his 2024 State of the Union address ended with: “It’s heartbreaking.” To the UN general assembly in September he declared: “Innocent civilians in Gaza are also going through hell ... Too many families displaced, crowding in tents, facing a dire humanitarian situation.” He named only one agent of the devastation. The Gazans, he said, “didn’t ask for this war that Hamas started”. Meanwhile, he evinces impotence to deliver what Gaza is asking for, in the voices of wailing mothers and the images of flattened cities: an end to it.

So the 2024 Democratic national convention was neither the first nor the worst time Palestinians had been erased by somebody claiming to be on their side. After months of negotiations with the people who organized 700,000 primary voters to withhold their endorsements of Biden until he vowed to force an Israeli withdrawal from Gaza by stopping arms shipments, the convention denied a five-minute speaking slot to one Palestinian. After welcoming such deplorables as Georgia’s mercilessly anti-abortion former Republican lieutenant and the chief legal officer of the union-busting Uber to the stage, there was no more room under the big tent.

When a definitive “no” reached the demonstrators camping in wait outside the arena, they were deflated if not surprised. For some, enough was enough. Muslim Women for Harris immediately disbanded. “Something kind of snapped,” said Georgia state representative Ruwa Romman, the slated speaker. Romman was not in Chicago for the convention, by the way. She was at a conference scheduled to coincide with it, on a panel called Voices You Will Not Hear at the Convention.

After Chicago, uncommitted movement activists huddled over what to do next. Despite the rebuff, the convention was hardly a bust. The movement sent 30 uncommitted delegates; 300 Harris delegates declared themselves ceasefire delegates. The panel on Palestinian human rights was among the best attended events. Some of the biggest applause followed condemnations of Israel’s assaults and support for Palestinian liberation. People were milling around in anti-war T-shirts and keffiyehs.

These activists may have been uncommitted primary voters and delegates, but they were committed enough Democrats to stump before the primary and run as delegates. The movement had “mobilized people of [conscience] previously apathetic to the democratic process to civically engage in this election”, the uncommitted website states. “We cannot afford to have this base permanently disillusioned or alienated in November.” They’re as scared shitless as every other sentient human about a second Trump presidency. The struggle continues.

Intense debate produced a plan. Uncommitted primary voters had sent a loud message through what they did not say. The strategy continues: turn around a history of being silenced by deploying the power of silence. To pressure the Harris-Walz campaign to signal that a new Democratic administration would assume a new stance toward Israel, uncommitted declined to endorse the ticket. Instead, it is urging people to vote “against Trump” and fascism, and not for a third party, a de facto vote for Trump. This will not be easy; canvassers on the streets are encountering reliable Democratic voters, especially the young, brown or Black, waffling about going to the polls at all. But any experienced anti-war activist knows how hard it is to end a war.

For the Democrats, the decision to censor the Palestinian voice was not just morally wrong. It was politically stupid. The Harris campaign must know that of those three-quarters of a million uncommitted ballots, 100,000 came from Michigan, the state that is home to the country’s largest Arab American community and that Biden won by 154,000 votes in 2020. Critical to Harris’s victory, Michigan is considered a toss-up.

Aside from stupid, it was unnecessary. In May, Data for Progress found that seven in 10 likely voters, including 83% of Democrats, supported a permanent ceasefire. A majority of Democrats believed Israel is committing genocide. More recently, a poll by the Arab American Institute showed “significant gain and very little risk for Harris” in demanding Israel agree to an immediate ceasefire or calling for a suspension of US arms shipments. Either stand would increase her support by at least five percentage points, pulling in reluctant and undecided voters, including a plurality of Jewish Democrats, AAI says.

As the Israel Defense Forces pummel Beirut and bulldoze shops, schools and sewer pipes in the West Bank – punishing unnumbered civilians in pursuit of unnamed terrorists – the US is shocked and confused when the Israeli prime minister raises a middle finger to another temporary truce, this one with Hezbollah. On the front page of Sunday’s New York Times, Paris bureau chief Roger Cohen rehearses the tautology behind this passivity. “The United States does have enduring leverage over Israel,” he explained. “But an ironclad alliance … built around strategic and domestic political considerations … means Washington will almost certainly never threaten to cut – let alone cut off – the flow of arms.” The world’s most powerful nation cannot use its leverage because it won’t use its leverage.

A President Kamala Harris could use it. But first she needs to get elected. And to get elected, she’d better open her ears to the silent din – and speak up fast.