For four hours last Tuesday, Mark Jagner, sixty-two, bent over a journal in his lap and scribbled notes in the conference room of Rainbow PUSH Coalition Headquarters on 930 East 50th Street in Kenwood. The black-and-white fishnet pattern of a keffiyeh hung around his neck like a scarf, cascading down to twin slogans on both ends—“Democrats for Palestine.” To his left and right, a few others donned bright yellow t-shirts on the back of which, capitalized without decoration, was the bare demand—“END WEAPONS TO ISRAEL NOW.”
One participant among dozens, Jagner had driven down from Ann Arbor, Michigan to attend the three-day conference held from August 19-21 titled “Heeding the Voices for Justice: A Convention to Build Power,” convened by the Arab American Institute, Progressive Democrats of America, Rainbow PUSH Coalition, and (for Tuesday’s programming) the Institute for Middle East Understanding Policy Project.
The event examined the merits of keeping entwined two identities becoming more and more disparate—being a Democrat and being a supporter of Palestinian liberation. Over the course of six panels, delegates, coalition partners, and community members heard from prominent advocates who have worked within the Democratic party for over half a century to recently elected and former officials to policy analysts.
They provided perspectives on what progress has been made, what is possible for the future, and what structural constraints stand in the way of the ultimate goal which is long-lasting peace in Palestine.
For nearly a year since October 7 when Hamas militants killed 1,200 people and took some 250 hostages, the Biden administration has ensured that Israel was armed with billions of dollars worth of military equipment to carry out its lethal strikes against Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, while also delivering platitudes to those urging for the US to relieve the “catastrophic humanitarian situation,” as a United Nations Resolution calling for a ceasefire in Gaza stated in March.
Dedicated supporters of a ceasefire, a growing constituency, are confused and frustrated by the contradictory actions of Democratic leaders. Some, including lifelong Democrats, are wondering if they have a future with the party.
For those who want to address these concerns head on, “Heeding the Voices for Justice” was a welcome alternative gathering to the Democratic National Convention. The event’s focus on homegrown strategies for long-term peace in Palestine is what drew folks like Jagner, who has been active in mobilizing his local community to support Palestinian liberation for over a decade. He currently serves as the chapter lead for the Ann Arbor congregation of the Unitarian Universalists for Justice in the Middle East.
A lack of reliable information on Israel and Palestine initially drove Jagner to learn more about the conflict.
“I didn’t feel I had the whole story when I would read the newspapers or watch the evening news about what the situation was in Israel Palestine,” he said.
Eventually, Jagner found satisfying answers from a documentary he saw at his church depicting Palestinians in the West Bank fighting against the border wall’s encroachment on their land. In his hunt for more information, he eventually took a trip to Israel and the West Bank in 2019 with Eyewitness Palestine, an educational travel program led by Palestinians in Palestine.
“One of the things that really made me into more of an activist in support of Palestinian rights was learning that the US government is complicit in our support for Israel for the ongoing suffering of the Palestinian people,” he said.
Today, Jagner’s understanding of the Israel/Palestine conflict is no longer the minority. Public opinion, news coverage, and awareness have evolved rapidly since last October. Near the start of the war in November 2023, 45 percent of Americans surveyed in a Gallup Poll stated that they disapproved of Israel’s military action in Gaza. By March 2024, the majority, or 55 percent of Americans surveyed, disapproved. Among Democrats, the shift in attitude was even more stark. By March 2024, approval of Israeli military action in Gaza was slashed in half among Democrats, from 36 percent in November 2023 to just 18 percent.
James Zogby has dedicated most of his seventy-nine years of life to advocating for Palestinian rights.
As founder of Arab American Institute (AAI), one of the main conveners of “Heeding the Voices for Justice,” Zogby sent out the invitation a month before the DNC with the prescient words, “These voices may not be on the DNC stage but they won’t be silenced.”
Few Democrats, if any, have had the long career Zogby has forged in advocating for Palestinian rights to be elevated to a national platform. For thirty years, he has been a member of the DNC, serving sixteen years as part of its executive committee and eleven on its resolutions committee. Zogby’s pro-Palestine advocacy has led to him experiencing death threats while falling on deaf ears in the Democratic Party. In many ways, the pattern continues today; young pro-Palestine organizers have been doxxed, had job offers rescinded and diplomas withheld, and been arrested en masse, while the requests of uncommitted delegates for the DNC to feature a Palestinian speaker went unheard.
The first day kicked off with programming on the environment of suppression of pro-Palestine voices through dark money and free speech policies, a thread that carried through to the last day’s conversations on party transparency.
Last Wednesday, Matt Duss, who was Bernie Sanders’ foreign policy advisor from 2017 to 2022, said he was disappointed in the closed “completely elite-driven process” this year that was a departure from conventions past.
As the incumbent president, President Biden did not participate in a primary debate this campaign, a move that mirrors every incumbent president since the first debate was held in 1948. But without a primary, Duss says there is little ability for progressives to press the party in the traditional way.
“This is the party that’s telling us there’s a binary choice, and voting Democrat is how you save democracy,” but when policy debates are happening behind closed doors and there is no appropriate pushback, that’s “what has to change,” said Maya Berry, executive director of AAI.
Duss recalled that when primaries were held in 2020 to pick the Democratic presidential nominee, it created an environment in which there was enough dispute towards Biden’s platform that Biden’s team “smartly agreed” to have task forces on every issue (notably except the Middle East, Duss recalls). Over the course of eleven televised debates, twenty-three presidential candidates, including Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, Pete Buttigeg, and Biden, hashed out policy stances in front of a national audience.
Duss argues that this format was key to eventually producing a party platform that also reflected Sanders’ approach to health care, the death penalty, and other issues, even though he did not win the nomination.
“We have this bizarre situation where you have this…massive slap dash document that is not even written for the candidate,” Duss said, referring to the current Democratic platform that was written and ratified for Biden in July before he dropped out, without an opportunity for Harris to reopen the process.
“There should have been at least some effort to put her stamp on that,” Duss said. As he looks ahead to 2028, he is concerned with “how do we get a bottom up process that creates leverage that can get in the kind of language and statement of policy and values that we want?”
Last Monday, the DNC delegates approved the party platform for Harris.
On Israel, the Democratic platform supports Jerusalem to “remain the capital of Israel” and states that the Democrats “oppose any effort to unfairly single out and delegitimize Israel,” including the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions Movement, and at the United Nations.
On the same panel, Berry argued that party platforms should not be read as binding policy proposals, but rather as a document that “reflects the political pressure that’s applied by different interest groups” instead of US foreign policy.
“The process of the platform is about the politics, not the substance,” she said. “They know that.”
During open mic time for audience questions following a discussion on progress, one person, originally from East Jerusalem, expressed their disappointment at the Democratic Party’s lack of acknowledgement of the worsening genocide in Gaza.
“We have this progress that we’re talking about, but in real life, the conditions have been getting progressively worse,“ they said. “To be honest, I came here looking for hope, and at first, I was very encouraged, but…”
Zogby interrupted her saying, “I’m going to give you hope, okay?”
He first confirmed that her concern is valid, that “this is genocide. There’s no question.”
“Nothing’s going to bring back those 40,000 or more, many more probably, who’ve died,” he said. “But what we can do is recognize that we have actually seen an awakening of conscience that we’ve not seen in all the years. This is genocide…and now we’re finally seeing people wake up. And I don’t think it’s going to go back, and I don’t think you put the lid back on this issue.”
He thanked the largely youth-led grassroots movement in relentlessly organizing and changing public opinion, while pointing to its diversity across race, gender, and nationality—something that wasn’t the case fifty years ago when the block in Washington “was just about fifty Palestinians and me. Older guys. What we saw in the last year are demonstrations of literally hundreds of thousands.”
Another panelist Rania Batrice, a Palestinian-American Democratic operative for over twenty years, was more frank. “No, a shift in rhetoric is not everything. A shift in rhetoric does not save lives.,” Batrice said. “It is a welcome change and it is an open door for the shift in policy. And what I’m asking [Harris’] team to do, it’s very simple. Follow our own damn laws.”
Batrice may have been referencing the Leahy Laws, which prevent the U.S. from sending assistance to foreign governments credibly accused of gross human rights violations. Despite findings from the U.N. that Israeli forces have violated human rights, the U.S. government continues to send military aid to Israel and disputes the U.N. reports.
One specific break in US policy from the rest of its peers internationally is funding to UNRWA, to which “Heeding the Voices” dedicated an entire panel to discuss last Tuesday.
Before October 7, the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) served over 60 percent of the population of Gaza, providing food, healthcare, education, and infrastructure. The United States was UNRWA’s biggest donor, providing $300-$400 million a year, or about a third of the organization’s budget.
After Israel alleged in January that 12 of UNRWA’s 13,000 employees were involved in the Hamas attack in October, and claimed up to 10 percent of UNRWA staff were linked to Hamas, the United States and several other countries paused funding. A U.N. internal investigation found Israeli accusations were not credible, an April report read.
“The work of UNRWA is under threat,” Mara Kronenfeld, executive director of UNRWA USA, told the Weekly. “There are all sorts of unfounded accusations about UNRWA, and they’re really meant to disable an organization that is keeping Palestinians alive.”
Ensuring long term healthcare access in the Gaza strip is essential because research shows that in conflicts like the one in Gaza, for every person that dies, the fallout from the aftermath of military campaigns will kill two or three more, said Zaha Hassan, a Palestinian human rights lawyer and political analyst.
“So we have 40,000 Palestinians dead, so we know that double that, or triple that number, will die. That’s even if we had a cease fire tomorrow,” said Hassan.
US funding to UNRWA remains frozen until at least March 25, 2025, despite the fact that all other countries who had halted funding have resumed.
Shama Patel, sixty, of Streeterville, considers herself “newly awakened” to the Israel/Palestine conflict. Not to say Patel was new to the issue, but the world that unfolded after October 7 motivated her to learn more intentionally about the issue and engage.
As an incoming teacher at New York University on digital technologies driving social change, Patel resonated with the event’s focus on the importance of continuous education, and how to have dialogue with people who do not agree with her views. “I definitely believe the first part…would be to really educate myself so that I have dialogue with people which are not full of anger and frustration and like ‘how can you not be worried about this?’ she said.
She knows it is a steep, uphill battle, but has had enough conversations to notice common pushback with the same questions. “The pro-Israeli agenda is so embedded in the American language lexicon,” she said. “I think there are very good answers for that. My first thing would be to really get some stock answers so that I can respond to that, so we can get over that.”
Elected Democrats are also committed to continuing the conversation with their peers in Congress. Ruwa Romman is a Palestinian-American Georgia state representative and was one of the people on the list the Uncommitted delegates gave to the DNC to consider as a speaker. Even prior to October 7, she had invested much time in educating fellow congressmen on Palestine.
“A lot of people don’t have the vocabulary, knowledge and understanding of how far reaching this issue is in every level of government,” she said as a panelist. “And I spoke to them, I explained it to them.”
Zogby concurred, adding that from his experience on the hill he learned that “you have to have a rapport, and people have to like you” in order to open minds to meaningful conversation on Palestine. “Too often, we take our issue and we go and pound it on the table and demand it with people who’ve actually had a life before us.”
Zogby, who said that he first testified in front of Biden in 1976 and has known him for “a number of years,” did not hold back his criticism, calling Biden a “neoconservative Democrat” who has been ideologically locked in for decades without “a new idea in his head.” Zogby described his talks with Biden on the Middle East as “one-sided” arguments against someone who is fixated on the idea of America as the benevolent superpower that must defeat foreign evil.
“I call him a secularized version of Christian fundamentalism. It’s like good versus evil and the ultimate battle has to be waged, etcetera,” Zogby said. “That’s where he comes from.”
In referencing personal conversations with Harris, Zogby notes differences between her approach and Biden’s in talking with different stakeholders about Israel’s actions. “She puts her ear to the ground and reads the room,” he said, referencing a meeting with her after she publicly stated in December 2023 that Israel must do more to protect the lives of innocent Palestinians.
“I’d never heard anybody in office do that….saying [about Israel] ‘you have the right to defend yourself, but how you do it matters.’”
For Patel, Biden’s actions in the public arena signaled a lack of respect for her vote and support as a Democrat, and a troubling sign of unchecked power. “When he went to Israel and hugged Netanyahu, I saw that and I was completely outraged by it,” she said. “I empathize with them, but I do not believe that Israel is the 51st state of the United States. I don’t believe that the contributions I make should go unquestionably for the kind of support that Biden has been giving Israel.”
Though she recognized Biden had made efforts to change his stance, it was too little too late.
“He literally had to be pushed into it, and I was like you’ve got to go,” Patel said. “It’s time for somebody else.”
“You’re not going to get the Vice President to break with her boss in a public way, and she can’t,” Zogby said. But still he sees “an indication of the corner being turned” in Harris’ approach to handling foreign policy, ultimately because “[Biden] never read the room. I think that’s the difference.”
Duss pushed back on Zogby’s characterization of Biden, stating that there are issues that the President has shifted on because he was made to shift by the progressive movement. Duss is focused on “build[ing] that muscle within the party” to pressure Democrats in charge.
Harris’ ability to “read the room” was put to the test during the week of the DNC, when uncommitted delegates were denied an opportunity to speak from the main stage. As the week rolled from Tuesday to Wednesday to the final day on Thursday, the DNC found time to feature Republicans, former Trump press secretaries, credit card company ex-CEOs, and family members of Israeli hostages—but no Palestinian-Americans. Outside the United Center, dozens of uncommitted delegates and other supporters staged a sit-in instead.
For some Democrats, pushing Harris to do better on Israel is not only compatible with voting for her, but a crucial exercise in keeping elected officials accountable that must be sustained.
“There are a lot of people that want us to believe that there’s nothing that’s going to change [but] it is changing..and now is a time for us to lean in,” said Romman, adding that it is crucial for the ceasefire coalition to protect the coalition through and past November.
Jagner believes that voting for Kamala while simultaneously criticizing her platform is important and are not mutually exclusive. “We need to keep put[ting] pressure on her and on Joe Biden to change US policy on Israel-Palestine.”
He specifically wants political power pushing for an arms embargo and resuming humanitarian aid to Gaza.
Like Jagner, Patel remains critical of Kamala Harris’ position on Palestine and Gaza. She voted uncommitted for Biden in the primaries, and though for now she plans to vote for Harris in the general election, she caveats it with “unless, of course, something happens between now and November where she completely alienates me.”
This year, she wants to hold the Democratic party to be more accountable to their commitment to Palestinian lives. “She needs to demonstrate more than what I have seen.”
Some voters do not think it’s worth their time to continue engaging with the Democratic party.
“We have no reason to believe that the Democratic Party will actually do anything for the Palestinian people… Their whole platform has just been talking about how they’re not Trump,” said Maheen, an organizer with Chicago Dissenters, while outside a “F*ck the GNC” event held at Pilsen Community Books.
Maheen conceded that voting in the election and building community power can exist side by side, even though it’s not her personal priority to work with the Democratic party. “We don’t need their events. We don’t need their spectacle…because we’re building together outside of these political systems,” she said.
She is focusing her energy in building connections and support networks in her local community, and “find[ing] other ways to take care of one another, because neither party cares about the people.”
The audience refrain that echoed throughout the week of speeches was “We won’t go back!”, capturing the message the Democrats unified under for the 2024 DNC, that of a party for progress towards unity, freedom, and opportunity for all Americans.
In many ways, Harris’ de facto slogan points to the reality that progress isn’t always linear.
The word “occupation” to refer to Israel’s presence in Palestinian territories doesn’t come up in the 2024 platform or stage, nor was it in 2020. But Zogby pointed out it did make an appearance in 1988.
Thirty-six years ago from the DNC main stage in Atlanta, Zogby introduced Jesse Jackson’s minority plank position on Palestine for open policy debate. Multiple people were standing on the floor, holding signs reading “Palestine Statehood Now!” in green, black and red swirling into the Palestinian flag.
“We’ve won a victory today. The deadly silence that has submerged the issue of Palestinian rights has been shattered,” Zogby said, facing the crowd.
He would have seen in the audience a banner five feet tall and spanning over a dozen seats that read “SELF DETERMINATION AND STATEHOOD FOR THE PALESTINIAN PEOPLE.” A cluster of green signs read “MIDDLE EAST PEACE: Palestine Statehood, Israel Peace.” No delegate tore these signs or tried to cover them up. No security escorted them out.
Last week, the few signs brought by Palestine supporters were torn down by their peers in the stands. C-SPAN did not capture them on their livestream, and ultimately, no Arab-American was allowed on stage to share their views. Outside, protestors at the sit-in and across several marches brought their own. The larger crowd echoed what Zogby stated in the very first mention of Palestinian rights at a national convention forty years ago:
“Some, even leaders in this Party, have sought to write us out,” he said in 1984. “But our concerns are American concerns. Our agenda is the nation’s agenda. And so we will remain.”
Wendy Wei is the Weekly’s immigration editor and focuses on interracial solidarity among communities of color.
This DNC history on Palestine is critical. I was so unaware. As a Georgia resident, you gave avenues I can pursue locally.