Last night, when it was announced that the Democratic Party would not allow Palestinian-American Rep. Ruwa Romman of Georgia, who supports Kamala Harris, to give a vetted speech at the Democratic National Convention, the Democratic Party enthusiastically invited anti-abortion and anti-union speakers from the Trump administration and Uber to the stage.
I’ve had some pretty depressing days, but to be honest, today was the highlight. I don’t understand how there’s room in our party for a Republican who is anti-choice, but not for me. I need someone to explain to me what I should do now.
– MP Ruwa Romman (@Ruwa4Georgia) 22 August 2024
In my speech, I urged us to unite behind Harris, criticized Trump, and spoke about the promise of this moment. The only reason we are doing this is to save the soul of our party and prevent bad actors from exploiting our pain in an ongoing campaign of voter suppression. https://t.co/HCLqciwM0v
– MP Ruwa Romman (@Ruwa4Georgia) 22 August 2024
Democrats have been saying all week that the Democratic National Convention is an expression of the party’s values, and after last night, we have no choice but to take their word for it. That’s what the Democratic Party’s values look like.
DNC attendees cover their ears as the names of dead Palestinian children are read out as they leave Congress pic.twitter.com/9bueCbFeEr
— BreakThrough News (@BTnewsroom) 22 August 2024
The Uncommitted Movement has made its priorities crystal clear from the moment it organized in the Michigan Democratic primary. They want to vote for the Democratic nominee, but they cannot ask their Palestinian-American voters to vote for a party that fully supports a genocide against their families. Their demand for a halt to arms shipments is not unreasonable, as successive presidents from Ronald Reagan to Dwight Eisenhower have used this imperial leverage to keep our most important client state in check. Reagan reportedly even referred to Israel’s relentless bombing of Lebanon as a “holocaust.” It is an undeniable fact that Ronald Reagan publicly showed far more compassion for Israel’s victims than the Biden-Harris administration ever did. The actions of the Biden-Harris administration do not suggest that it truly seeks a ceasefire on anyone’s terms other than Israel’s. And they have been more active in trying to define the term differently from how it is used in the rest of the world than in forcing an actual ceasefire on Benjamin Netanyahu, who continues to think they are the idiots they have proven themselves to be.
Ilhan Omar blasts Anthony Blinken’s support for Gaza protesters: How can Blinken beg for a ceasefire for the 11th time while we keep supplying weapons, only for Netanyahu to reject him right afterward. The public humiliation is undeniable – how can we not be ashamed of it? pic.twitter.com/ZbI7bAnTFD
— HalalFlow (@halalflow) 22 August 2024
The Uncommitted Movement even shifted its primary focus this week to simply demanding Palestinian representation on the Democratic stage. The party invited family members of Israeli hostages who called to bring them home and end the suffering in Gaza, and Democrats would walk their talk if they invited a Palestinian American to the stage to share the same sentiment in a unifying moment, but not doing so when they had the opportunity was a choice. Democrats have talked a lot about how everyone should be represented in the supposed big tent while denying Palestinians that right, proving that this notion of a big tent party is still mostly just empty words.
Which other minority groups is the party willing to turn its back on in its quest for power?
The only conclusion that can be drawn from the Democratic Party’s actions this week is that Palestinians cannot be an equal partner in the Democratic coalition. Democrats are more than happy to support cowardly careerists who had no problem jumping on the Trump bandwagon until it turned out to be a loser, or executives who wholeheartedly oppose the party’s burgeoning populist economic agenda, but someone calling for an end to a Democratic Party-backed genocide is apparently not welcome on the Democratic stage, even if Democrats get a chance to edit their speech beforehand. The partisans who defend the administration by responding with the utterly brainless cliche, “The genocide our president supports will be even worse under the other,” are not making the convincing argument they think they are making, but are only showing how willing they are to let partisanship override their supposed values.
A common retort from partisans whose brains are forever stuck in 1994 is that any expression of solidarity with the Palestinians would be electoral. According to Gallup polls, this is true only of the Republican Party. The Democratic Party’s unwavering material support for Israel’s genocide in Gaza is diametrically opposed to the views of most independents and Democrats on the issue.
A poll by the YouGov IMEU Policy Project found that “a significant share of Democrats and independent voters in the crucial swing states of Pennsylvania, Georgia and Arizona would be more likely to vote for the Democratic presidential candidate (presumably Kamala Harris) if he pledged his support for an arms embargo against Israel.”
The assumption that any Palestinian solidarity will hurt the election is a classic example of the backward-looking cowardice inherent in the Democratic Party. It is fitting that all this happened on a night when Bill Clinton spoke, because this rigid ’90s mindset is destroying the goodwill Democrats have built with a vital and young constituency that helped them transform Hillary Clinton’s losing coalition of 2016 into Joe Biden’s winning coalition of 2020.
Just do what Ronald Reagan did and I guarantee the Democrats will gain votes from the left, while the YouGov/IMEU poll suggests they will lose very few votes to the right and it will be a huge net gain. So far to the right has Joe Biden and Kamala Harris’ position on Israel moved that we are begging for a return to the policies implemented by the man perhaps most responsible for creating our dystopian present. That Democrats walked out of the convention last night covering their ears as the names of dead Palestinian children were read to them is a more apt metaphor for the values of the superficial wing of this party trying to cheat its way through genocide than you will ever find.
This is a defining moment for Kamala Harris. She still has time today to reverse this disastrous course, because as I write this, Abbas Alawieh of the Uncommitted Movement sits outside the United Center in Chicago waiting for a call from the party, which is why I softened the title with the phrase “maybe not.” Most of us who are angry about last night’s developments would like to put this ugly moment behind us and celebrate Rep. Ruwa Romman bringing the party together under its stated values tonight while we put pressure on the Biden administration to do its damn job and join the rest of the civilized world.
But if an elected official from a swing state that supports Kamala Harris is too extreme to be allowed to speak, then any Palestinian solidarity is too extreme to be represented in the Democratic Party. That is the clear message behind this decision, and Democrats should not be surprised if they find in November that a large section of the pro-Palestinian movement takes the party at its word and says they are not welcome under the supposed big tent.
