Pro-Palestine, pro-Israel activists jostle for airtime as DNC gets underway
Historic panel on Palestinian rights to be held at Democratic convention’s satellite location, though unclear if activists for either side will command official DNC audience
CHICAGO (JTA) — American pro-Palestinian activists will host a panel on Palestinian rights on the first day of the Democratic National Convention in an event they called unprecedented, as they jostle with pro-Israel activists for the attention of the Democratic Party.
The panel is taking place six miles (10 kilometers) from the main convention action, at a satellite location in Chicago’s McCormick Place convention center. Still, its official slot on the packed schedule — albeit at the convention’s smaller, secondary location — offers the first public confirmation that the Democrats will allow for discussion of the Israel-Hamas war, which has divided the party, at a convention meant to project unity.
Pro-Israel and pro-Palestinian activists are vying for attention this week in Chicago, but up to now, the DNC has not offered any public confirmation that either would be able to command an official convention audience.
Major questions, including whether advocates for the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip or for the families of Israeli hostages held by Hamas get a spot on the convention stage, have not gotten official answers.
The panel on Palestinian rights is being organized by the “Uncommitted” movement, which urged Democratic primary voters to withhold support from US President Joe Biden in protest of his backing for Israel’s war against the Palestinian terror group in Gaza.
That war began in response to the October 7 massacre in which Hamas terrorists infiltrated the country, killing 1,200 people and seizing 251 hostages.
The Hamas-run Gaza health ministry says more than 40,000 people in the Strip have been killed or are presumed dead in the fighting so far, though the toll cannot be verified and does not differentiate between civilians and fighters. Israel says it has killed some 17,000 combatants in battle and another 1,000 terrorists inside Israel on October 7. Israel has said it seeks to minimize civilian fatalities and stresses that Hamas uses Gaza’s civilians as human shields, fighting from civilian areas including homes, hospitals, schools, and mosques.
“We thank the DNC for working with us on creating this historical panel while we continue focusing on policy change,” Layla Elabed, the Michigan-based co-founder of the “Uncommitted” movement, said Sunday evening in a post on social media.
It would be the first panel in political convention history “with Palestinian voices leading the conversation and the explicit subject being Palestinian human rights as an issue in the Democratic Party,” Natalia Latif, a spokeswoman for the movement, told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
A spokesman for the DNC did not return a request for comment.
The panel would not be the first time that a DNC sees public discussion of Palestinian rights. The party in 1988 had a floor debate on whether it should recognize Palestinian statehood as a goal; the motion failed, but the nascent pro-Palestinian movement saw the mere allowance of a debate as a win that pushed the issue to the forefront of progressive politics. There was also public protest in 2012 over the party platform’s discussion of Jerusalem.
This year, hundreds of thousands of voters voted “uncommitted” or its equivalent during the primaries, when Biden was on the ballot, although it is not clear whether all of them did so as part of the protest. As a result, the movement secured more than 30 out of some 4,000 delegates. The 30 or so delegates will give the movement a voice from the floor.
The war has riven Democrats, with strong pressure from progressives on the Biden administration to reduce its unstinting backing for Israel. Inside the convention, both pro-Palestinian and pro-Israel advocates are pressing for floor time. Outside, activists on both sides of the issue will be holding demonstrations, and both are accusing Chicago of treating them unfairly.
Uncommitted has asked the DNC to give a primetime spot to Tanya Haj-Hassan, a pediatric intensive care surgeon who recently worked in Gaza. Latif said there has not yet been word on whether she would get the slot. Haj-Hassan will speak on Monday’s panel, as will Andy Levin, the Jewish former Michigan congressman who was defeated in 2022, in part because he was campaigned against by mainstream pro-Israel donors.
Members of hostage families, who are also in Chicago, have also not been told yet whether they will have a slot. Parents of one American-Israeli hostage spoke at the Republican convention in July, where they were lauded as heroes.
Ruby Chen, whose son Itay Chen was killed in the Oct. 7 Hamas invasion and whose body is still held by Hamas, said communications with the DNC had been “sketchy.” He said it was as important for Democrats to hear from the hostage families as it was for Republicans.
Chen said Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has been overly focused on attracting Republicans to Israel’s cause. “He’s been more attentive to the Republican side, and we need to have the State of Israel be attentive to everything it can do and more, to get the hostages out,” he said in an interview.
Republicans are set to seize on any sign of disrespect toward the hostages as evidence of anti-Israel sentiment among Democrats. The Republican Jewish Coalition has pledged to plant 1,800 trees in Israel in the name of any speaker on the main stage in Chicago who will “ask the crowd to cheer if they support Israel.”
Outside the convention’s doors, pro-Palestinian protest planners say they expect tens of thousands of marchers at major rallies on Monday and Thursday. Pro-Israel groups, in the meantime, are planning events on the sidelines of the conference, often at undisclosed locations in order to avoid disruptions.
The party appears hesitant to give much official breathing space to either side. An eight-session “Dempalooza” communications training seminar for delegates does not include a single session on the conflict. The day before the convention, signs of pro-Palestinian protest were barely visible throughout the city, which was marked overwhelmingly by signage celebrating the four-day convention.
Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris briefly met with Uncommitted leaders in Michigan earlier this month and reportedly told them what was happening in Gaza was “horrific.” She later shushed protesters who were interrupting her speech, asking them if they wanted to elect Donald Trump, the Republican nominee.
Hatem Abudayyeh, the spokesperson for the Coalition and US Palestinian Community Network, one of the organizers of the mass marches, staged a press conference on Sunday at Union Park to complain that the city had allotted them just a mile along narrow streets.
He said he did not believe the city when officials said security considerations were behind the restrictions. “We say it’s a content-based restriction,” he said, based on what he termed the pro-Israel policies of Harris, Biden and Illinois Governor J.B. Pritzker, who is Jewish and whom Abudayyeh called a “Zionist.”
“J.B. Pritzker is a Zionist. J.B. Pritzker supports Israel unequivocally,” Abudayyeh said. “I believe that he’s done good work as a governor in general, but he’s one of those folks that we call progressive except on Palestine, and that’s not acceptable anymore.”
The pro-Palestinian groups have one top local official on their side: Brandon Johnson, Chicago’s mayor, on Saturday, told Mother Jones that Israel’s actions were genocidal.
The Israeli American Council, meanwhile, has also complained that the city declined to give it rally space near the convention. It plans to stage a “Hostage Square” with speakers from the families of captives on private property. IAC has also accepted a Wednesday evening spot at a “Speaker’s Platform” the city has set up in one of its parks to accommodate the many groups that applied for rally permits but were declined.
The pro-Palestinian activists’ agenda is to get the United States to coerce Israel into accepting a ceasefire and to impose an arms embargo on Israel.
Yet even among the progressives most dedicated to the cause of the Palestinians, the issue appears shunted to low priority because of the many threats Democrats perceive in Trump’s quest to regain the White House, which he lost to Biden in 2020.
A Progressive Democrats of America conference on the convention’s outskirts on Sunday had initially meant to devote an hour and 15 minutes to the Palestinian issue; the session was delayed and scored barely 30 minutes of rushed speeches.
Trump’s threats to round up undocumented migrants and deport them, to expand restrictions on abortion and to roll back Biden’s health care reforms got more urgent attention. Appeals from pro-Palestinian groups to leverage votes to persuade Biden and Harris to get tough on Israel fell flat in the venue.
Just prior to the session on the Gaza war, Erika Andiola, an immigration activist, told the gathering that Democrats were not making sufficiently clear what could happen to migrants, including members of her family.
“If Trump gets elected there could be mass deportations across the US,” she said.
Times of Israel staff contributed to this report.
The Times of Israel Community.