The Democratic National Convention opens on Monday on what is also Day 318 of the U.S.-backed Israeli offensive in the Gaza Strip — with at least 40,000 Palestinians dead, and hopes fading for a cease-fire and the release of the eight Americans and more than 100 Israelis held hostage by Gaza-based militants.
For most of this time, President Joe Biden has cast American support for Israel’s campaign as a righteous response to the Oct. 7 attack by Hamas, the chief Palestinian armed group in Gaza, which began the current fighting and killed hundreds of civilians. But the administration’s policy of supporting Israel’s devastating operations while saying it seeks Israeli restraint and a truce-hostage release deal has become increasingly controversial, fueling months of activism by critics of the war.
For many of those skeptics, the convention is a unique moment to pressure both Biden and the candidate seeking to succeed him, Vice President Kamala Harris.
Opponents of the Biden administration’s Gaza policy, in which Harris is playing a growing role, say a course correction is crucial for Democrats. The party, they argue, needs to acknowledge dissatisfaction with the policy among registered Democrats and independent voters, pointing to intense outrage among blocs like young voters and Arab Americans. (They also cite moral, strategic and legal reasons for a shift.)
Specifically, many critics want Washington to end American military backing for the Israeli operation. Biden has approved billions of dollars’ worth of additional U.S. weaponry for the Israeli military, despite repeatedallegations that it has used American munitions to commit war crimes, while declining to sanction Israeli forces found guilty of human rights violations or heed calls from dozens of Democratic lawmakers to cut off particular equipment for the country over their use and Israel’s restrictions on humanitarian aid for Palestinians.
Should the U.S. stop the flow of arms, the move could spur the Israelis to reach a deal with Hamas and end the war, proponents of the idea say.
Attempts to reach such an agreement have faltered so far, and on Sunday, the current round of negotiations, which a senior administration official described to reporters on Friday as the “end game,” appeared to founder as Hamas claimed Israel was reneging on past concessions.
Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump is extremely unlikely to deliver a more humane policy, given his antipathy toward Palestinians, support for extreme violence and closeness with far-right Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, most of the anti-war voices acknowledge. Yet they say rather than fixating on losing votes to Trump, Democrats should worry about surrendering valuable voters to disillusionment.
Taking advantage of the national focus on the DNC, and the presence of Harris and other influential Democrats in Chicago, the loose national movement around Gaza is planning counter-programming, protests, press conferences and other actions during the convention, building on demonstrations in recent months in cities and on campuses.
To understand the hopes of groups challenging U.S. Gaza policy, HuffPost interviewed five members of various influential segments in the anti-war coalition, from activists in U.S. swing states to those advocating from within Gaza itself. Read excerpts from those conversations — edited for length and clarity — below.
Layla Elabed
Elabed is the co-chair of the “Uncommitted” movement, which earlier this year ralliedtens of thousands of voters in Michigan and other states to vote as “uncommitted” — denying their votes to Biden — during the Democratic presidential primaries, to signal dissatisfaction with the administration’s Gaza policy and indicate they will not back the Democratic ticket without a shift.
The movement has 30 Uncommitted delegates going to the DNC representing our anti-war coalition of almost 800,000 voters. These delegates are going to the DNC in the spirit of Fannie Lou Hamer and the Mississippi Freedom Party [who challenged the 1964 Democratic convention to replace the all-white delegation from their state].
We’ve made demands to the DNC besides our movement’s demands to Vice President Harris and the Biden administration on a policy shift … We’ve petitioned to have at least two speakers: Dr. Tanya Haj-Hassan, who has served on the frontlines in Gaza treating men, women and children who have been victims of Netanyahu’s assault on Palestinians, and also an Uncommitted leader who can speak to this dissent in the Democratic Party. The lines of communication have been open with the leadership within the Democratic Party but also with VP Harris’ team.
We hope that protesters are going to be allowed to practice their First Amendment right to peacefully protest on the outside of the DNC. These are folks that are advocating for human rights; these are folks that are frustrated and grieving … Some of those folks that are participating are trying to get their voices heard because it is literally their families being killed.
As folks on the inside of the DNC, we are going to respect the proceedings of the DNC, but we are also going to ensure we are heard. A policy change needs to happen now. VP Harris and the Democratic Party have an opportunity at this moment to unite this fractured party and give us a much-needed fighting chance in November against fascism and authoritarianism. If our stated value is to fight fascism, then we shouldn’t be funding the authoritarian and fascist Netanyahu, who leads one of the most far-right governments that Israel has ever had.
We should have a policy change because it is the right and moral thing to do, and war is not a popular policy. We are sending an unconditional check to the state of Israel while so many of us here at home can’t even afford basic necessities. This is not just a one-issue vote for many folks — this is a multi-issue vote, as we are watching over the last 10-15 years [as] our communities, especially our communities of color, deteriorate. It’s harder for families and everyday Americans to survive and thrive in dignity while our tax dollars are continuously being sent to fund the mass killing of men, women and children.
Ghada Alhaddad
Alhaddad is a Gaza native who works as a communications officer with the charity Oxfam. She has been forced to leave her home in the region’s central town of Deir al-Balah to escape Israeli attacks twice since the war began but has since returned; she and her family are now hosting Palestinians displaced from elsewhere in Gaza.
Everybody’s wish and dream right now is to have a cease-fire. Even if you go and sit with children and ask them, “What do you want?” My nephew had his birthday and said, “I don’t want birthday candles, I don’t want cake, I don’t want anything — I want this war to end.”
Everybody says the word cease-fire in his own words: some people say, “I want this war to end because I want to go back to my home” or “I want to go back to my school” or “I want to go back to see my parents and grandparents who are in north Gaza.”
We’ve lived through many wars before. This war is totally different: the loss of family members, colleagues … People have been displaced and have evacuated multiple times with no clear destination, traveling on unpaved roads. This war means starvation. We’ve seen food deprivation due to the closure of our borders, and our relatives in north Gaza are telling us there is nothing in the market except for a few bags of flour.
Almost every family I know has somebody who has contracted Hepatitis A – an avoidable disease — and this is exacerbated with the crowdedness in most places and the lack of clean water.
Children walk next to garbage and raw sewage at a camp for displaced Palestinians in Deir al-Balah in the central Gaza Strip on Aug. 19.
This war has meant the deprivation of human rights, for example that children were not able to go to school and have missed an academic year. Many people do not have homes now; many people lost their sources of income because most of the industries were shut down and some were bombed. This war means the deprivation of every single basic right anyone should have.
My city is known to be the city of palm trees … You usually see the sea. Now I don’t see the sea because of the camps of tents that this city has turned into. Everything has become very crowded and you barely find any open space.
There’s been no electricity since the onset of the war; we depend on charging our phones and our laptops through people who have solar [panels], which were salvaged from destroyed homes. The situation is not tragic because we do injustice to the word tragic if we use it.
I don’t want my nephew who’s now 4 years old to recognize if a strike comes from an Apache [attack helicopter, made by Boeing] or a drone.
A couple of days ago, two airstrikes happened next to my home: one killed five people, another killed a mother and her twin children.
Many people are asking, “Is there any improvement?” I always give the same answer: It’s getting worse and worse by the minute … everybody now has only one thought: Am I going to make it till the end of the day?
Celia Nimz
A 2021 graduate of the University of Minnesota, Nimz is an organizer with the group Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) who is helping bring hundreds of students to Monday’s “March on the DNC” protest and also protested the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee in July.
We’re ready to get within sight and sound of the Democratic National Convention and demand that the U.S. ends aid to Israel and that they stop arming and funding a genocide in Palestine.
I found a lot of hope in the student encampment movement because it showed we can do a lot more than vote … The Democrats have shown that working within the Democratic Party is not going to end U.S. aid to Israel — we’re going to have to build a movement, a people’s movement, that’s ready to force them to take up our demands.
The goal for the March on the DNC is we want this to be a family-friendly protest, the type of place where people can bring their grandchildren, attend regardless of their immigration status and go and protest without fear of arrest … We don’t view it that the police keep us safe — we keep us safe.
We’re ready to have protests the first week that students are back on campus and that’s what we’re encouraging our chapters to do … We saw what happened at the end of the last [school] year; we want to have something at that level if not larger.
Harvard out of Occupied Palestine wrote: “Just a few days ago, the U.S. approved a $20 billion weapons package to the apartheid state as the death count in Gaza surpassed 40,000. Our organizers and youth voters refuse to fall for rhetorical promises while Democrats empower genocide and will not be satisfied until action with divestment and an arms embargo.”
And National Students for Justice in Palestine wrote: “Both political parties have enabled this genocide, and they are both guilty. Since announcing her run for presidency, Harris has dodged every question about an arms embargo and has affirmed her support for Israel. To date, Harris has given no indication of changing the Biden administration’s policy that fuels this genocide. This is why on August 19-22 [the dates of the D.N.C.], Students for Justice in Palestine, alongside thousands from across the country, will stand large and proud as we confront the Biden administration, Harris [and] Walz and the Democratic Party to let them know that genocide supporters are not welcome in our cities. Until we achieve an arms embargo, an end to unconditional aid to Israel, a permanent ceasefire, and a liberated Palestine, we will remain in the streets.”
Bushra Khalidi
Khalidi is a policy lead for Oxfam who is based in the occupied West Bank. Violence against Palestinian civilians there, a long-running problem that observers see as enabled by the Israeli government, has dramatically increased during the war in Gaza.
I’m speaking to any U.S. leader, really: We cannot [continue to] see the same pattern of weapons transfers that we have seen in the last 10 months from the U.S. to Israel.
Our “Water War Crimes” report analyzes the amount of destruction that these weapons have on something as basic as water, and the reverberating effect that is fatal in many ways: You might be hit directly by weapons or you might die because you contracted a water-borne disease because the wastewater treatment plant near your community was bombed.
It’s only impunity that allows Israel to violate human rights and international law over and over again — before the 7th of October, after the 7th of October.
Military occupation dictates every part of me and Ghada [Alhaddad]’s lives, even though she’s in Gaza and I’m in the West Bank. I can stand on the top of a hill in Ramallah and see Gaza from here. I’ve got family in Gaza and they cannot come here. You have trapped an entire civilian population within the confines of closed walls and even their family that is an hour away can’t do anything.
[In the West Bank,] we are recording record numbers of [home] demolitions, record numbers of extrajudicial killings and detentions, also in East Jerusalem. [In Gaza,] as long as attacks are ongoing, there will be no improvement and that has been our case since the beginning: Gaza is so small there’s no isolated event. You cannot target surgically.
If allies of Israel continue the way they have, in terms of supporting them materially, financially … They may incur complicity in the war crimes that Israel has committed against the Palestinians. So if states are really committed to the international rules-based order, now is the time for accountability.
Feroze Sidhwa
A surgeon based in northern California, Sidhwa volunteered at a hospital in Gaza from March 25 to April 8. He organized a recent letter from 45 medical professionals who have worked there since Oct. 7 that urged Biden to end support for the Israeli offensive, and he plans to speak at a side panel during the DNC.
I’m not of the mind that these people [at the DNC] don’t know what’s going on, in terms of the violence that Israel is using and the fact that it’s killing tons and tons of people in Gaza. I suspect Kamala Harris looks at what the Israelis are doing in Gaza and wants to vomit but she knows that it’s politically inconvenient [to change the policy] so if another 15,000 children have to die — oh well, no one ever said it was easy to make the sausage.
I wouldn’t tell them anything other than I think this is bad politics … I’m certainly not going to vote for you. I’m not going to vote for Trump and I’m not going to be particularly swayed by people who think if you don’t vote for Harris, you’re voting for Trump. That’s technically accurate, but I don’t really care.
The wounded, including children, are taken to Al-Awda Hospital in Nuseirat Camp for treatment after the Israeli army attacked the house of the al-Saidy family in the central Gaza Strip on Aug. 18.
The damage that has been done to Gaza cannot be easily undone by delivery of aid at this point. …The whole society has been mined and biologically contaminated; the massive destruction of these concrete buildings and other such things has led to incredible contamination of the air. What effect that is going to have on people is completely unknown.
They’ve been saying the same thing for 10 months in terms of the [cease-fire]. At some point obviously a cease-fire deal will happen. It’s incredibly cynical, but a cease-fire deal will occur when it’s politically convenient for Israel and the United States … None of the victims actually matter in this situation. Maybe we’re closer to having a cease-fire — great, that’s better than continuing to drop bombs on people. The thing that’s killing people in Gaza is violence, but it’s almost certain that there’s plenty more people dying of starvation, disease, malnutrition.
