Israel and the war in Gaza took up only a tiny fraction of US President Joe Biden’s speech at the Democratic Party Convention in Chicago on Monday evening – 126 out of a total of 4,869 words, to be exact.
But his carefully crafted six sentences on the subject revealed the balancing act the Democratic Party is attempting to walk: satisfying its anti-Israel progressives while avoiding alienating its Jewish constituency. That Jewish constituency has been a cornerstone of the party since Franklin D. Roosevelt was worshipped as a demigod by many American Jews in the 1930s and 1940s, even as he turned away from European Jewry.
The party needs Arab Americans and anti-Israel progressives to vote in Michigan and Wisconsin in November and not stay away to protest Biden’s support for Israel. But it also needs Jewish voters strategically located in key swing states like Pennsylvania, Georgia and Arizona to continue voting for Democrats in the usual numbers to ensure an electoral victory. For example, losing five or ten percent of Jewish voters in Pennsylvania could make all the difference in this election.
The party is walking a tightrope. Biden tried to walk that tightrope on Monday, but he didn’t do a particularly good job.
He gave the anti-Israel elements what they wanted: an appeal to the protesters outside calling not just for a ceasefire but for an end to Israel. But he did little to allay concerns among some Jewish voters that the party was being too influenced by its left fringe.
“These protests have a purpose”
“The protesters in the streets are right,” Biden said. “Many innocent people are being killed on both sides.”
This comment was particularly shocking because it came just minutes after he began his speech by declaring that one reason for his decision to enter the 2020 presidential race was the white supremacist riots in Charlottesville three years earlier.
“I ran for president in 2020 because I witnessed it in Charlottesville in August 2017,” Biden said. “Extremists came out of the woods, carrying torches, their veins popping out of their necks, wearing swastikas and chanting the exact same anti-Semitic bile that you heard in Germany in the early ’30s. Neo-Nazis, white supremacists and the Ku Klux Klan, so emboldened by a president in the White House who they considered an ally. They didn’t even bother to put their hoods on.”
At the time, Biden said, “In America, hatred was on the rise. Old ghosts in new clothes stirring up the oldest divisions, stoking the oldest fears, giving oxygen to the oldest forces that have long sought to tear America apart.” Biden then quoted then-President Donald Trump’s infamous comment when asked about those riots: “There are very fine people on both sides.”
Trump said in 2017 that there were “good people on both sides.” In 2024, Biden said that the anti-Israel, anti-Zionist and often anti-Jewish protesters in the streets “are right.”
Identify this point
Which point exactly and which protesters? Are they those who have covered their faces with Palestinian scarves and are chanting “We don’t want two states, we want 1948” or those who are waving Hamas and Hezbollah flags?
Biden spoke about the hatred at the Charlottesville riots, and he was right, including when he pointed out the bulging veins on the participants’ necks.
But has he looked at the protesters outside Congress who he thinks have a good point? Has he looked into some of their hate-filled eyes or listened to their anti-Semitic rhetoric? Not all of them are anti-Semitic or don’t believe Israel should exist; some are genuinely motivated by concern about the loss of civilian life. But there are enough anti-Semitic and staunch Israel-haters and Hamas supporters among them to warrant the President of the United States calling them out.
Hate is on the rise in America, Biden said of Charlottesville. But can we not see hate on the rise today, with the anti-Israel and pro-Hamas protests? Isn’t that – in his own words – “stirring up the oldest divisions, stoking the oldest fears, giving oxygen to the oldest forces?”
But these protesters, he claims, “are right.”
It is not the first time he has used those exact words. In March, at a campaign rally in Raleigh, North Carolina, where he was booed for his support for Israel and one of the protesters chanted “ceasefire now,” Biden said, “You’re right… we need to be much more careful in Gaza.”
“They are right” therefore seems to be his slogan to acknowledge Palestinian grievances in a way that he hopes will not alienate anyone from his Jewish base.
Biden’s wink at the anti-Israel protesters in the streets was not the only problem with Biden’s brief comments on the war.
Beating around the bush
“And we will continue to work to bring the hostages home, to end the war in Gaza, and to bring peace and security to the Middle East. As you know, I wrote a peace agreement for Gaza. A few days ago I put forward a proposal that brought us closer to that goal than we have been since October 7,” he said.
“We are working around the clock, Mr. Secretary of State, to prevent a larger war, to reunite hostages with their families, to intensify humanitarian health and food assistance to Gaza, to end the suffering of Palestinian civilians and finally, finally, finally achieve a ceasefire and end this war.”
What was missing from these words was any mention of Hamas.
By saying that the government would continue to work to “bring the hostages home, end the war in Gaza, and bring peace and security to the Middle East,” he may have wanted to remind everyone why there is war in Gaza and who and what started it.
Another point where he should have mentioned the terrorist organization that attacked Israel on October 7, murdering, raping, looting, maiming and pillaging like it was in the Middle Ages, was when he said that his government was working tirelessly to “get humanitarian aid and food to Gaza now to end the suffering of the Palestinian civilian population and finally, finally, finally reach a ceasefire and end this war.”
Mentioning the humanitarian crisis and suffering in Gaza without mentioning Hamas’s responsibility for it is like talking about the need to help Japanese civilians after Hiroshima without mentioning Pearl Harbor and the atrocities committed by Imperial Japan during World War II.
All this is not to say that Biden is not a strong supporter of Israel; he certainly is, and the country will miss him and his deep empathy for Israel and Zionism when he is no longer in office.
Biden’s speech was carefully tailored and reflected the delicate balance the party is trying to maintain. Instead of standing before the DNC and blatantly declaring his support for Israel – even mentioning the name “Israel” – he tiptoed around the issue so as not to anger the party’s radical left wing.
The party’s Jewish base must make it clear that it too has feelings and expectations. One of those expectations is not unreasonable: that the president and party leader will not wink at those who demonstrate in America’s streets, condemning Israel and calling for its end, intimidating Jews and stoking anti-Jewish sentiment the likes of which has not been seen in the country for decades.
