CHICAGO — Democrats for weeks have been bracing for massive pro-Palestinian demonstrations outside this week’s convention, fearing they would recall the protests of 1968. They fretted that antiwar delegates might disrupt the proceedings inside the hall. They worried that dissent over the war in Gaza would spoil their hard-earned show of unity.
Instead, pro-Palestinian activists have won small but notable concessions at the Democratic National Convention that, three days into the event, have largely headed off any major eruptions of anger or division. Organizers have provided space for a panel to discuss Israeli-Palestinian conflict and for a vigil for Palestinians killed in Gaza, and several high-profile speakers have demanded an end to the war from the stage.
Those concessions have helped defuse the issue, but most critical has been the emergence of Vice President Kamala Harris as the Democratic nominee. Harris, in her public comments, has emphasized Palestinian suffering notably more than President Joe Biden has and held Israel more directly responsible for the high civilian death toll and the slow pace of a humanitarian aid. In addition, her campaign has ramped up its efforts to engage with those calling for a change in U.S. policy.
So while the Israel-Gaza war has hung over the convention this week, it has not dominated the gathering in the way party leaders feared.
“Vice President Harris and her team have decided to reengage in the difficult conversations necessary to rebuild our Democratic coalition, especially the part of our coalition for whom Gaza is a top policy issue,” said Abbas Alawieh, co-founder of the Uncommitted National Movement. “To me, the engagement, compared to before Vice President Harris was the nominee, feels like night and day.”
He added: “We’re from this party. We love this party. … We also just so happen to be people who are in touch with loved ones in Gaza who we think deserve to be alive.”
Democratic leaders have grappled with how best to deal with the Israel-Gaza war throughout the convention. As of Wednesday evening, they still had not decided whether to put a Palestinian-American on the convention stage — a key demand of the “uncommitted” delegates who represent voters in states like Michigan and Minnesota who withheld their votes from Biden in the Democratic primaries because of his staunch support of Israel.
Family members of an American-Israeli hostage being held in Gaza are scheduled to speak before the convention concludes on Thursday.
The party has been divided since Hamas’s Oct. 7 attack, when militants broke through an Israel-Gaza border fence, murdered 1,200 people and took some 250 hostage. Israel in response launched a scorched-earth military campaign that has killed more than 40,000 Palestinians, according to the Gaza Health Ministry, and created a humanitarian catastrophe in the enclave that has resulted in widespread hunger.
The “uncommitted” organizers are pushing for Harris to endorse an arms embargo on Israel, a policy her national security adviser has said she does not support. During the process of drafting the Democratic platform in July, party leaders declined the request of Minnesota activist Elianne Farhat to “include language that unequivocally supports a permanent ceasefire in Gaza and an arms embargo on Israel’s war and occupation against Palestinians.”
The Democratic Party platform, adopted Monday night and drafted before Harris became the nominee last month, does support a Palestinian state alongside Israel and recognizes “the right of Palestinians to live in freedom and security in a viable state of their own.” The document also backs Biden’s efforts to establish “a durable ceasefire” and “ease humanitarian suffering in Gaza.”
But rather than supporting an arms embargo against Israel, the document declares, “The United States strongly supports Israel in the fight against Hamas.”
Even if Democrats wrap up their convention without a major show of dissent, Harris will likely continue having to navigate ongoing policy disagreements over Gaza in the final two months before Election Day. Many Arab Americans and Muslims, as well as pro-Palestinian activists, have said they are open to supporting Harris but are waiting to see if she signals a willingness to condition aid to Israel and adopt an approach distinct from Biden’s.
In recent months, Biden has faced protesters at nearly every public appearance holding signs accusing him of supporting “genocide” in Gaza. While some activists say Harris is equally responsible for U.S. policy in the Mideast, she has faced fewer protesters, and some progressive activists are reluctant to hurt her chances of becoming the first female president.
Israel strongly denies that its military operations in Gaza constitute genocide, saying it tries to avoid killing innocents but that Hamas routinely embeds its fighters amid the civilian population.
Despite the lowered temperature, pro-Palestinian activists have been very visible at the convention. The “uncommitted” organizers launched an effort to encourage delegates to sign a petition declaring themselves “ceasefire delegates” calling for an immediate and permanent cessation of hostilities, as well as the return of all Israeli hostages and Palestinian captives being held in Israel — an effort that has seen more than 210 delegates sign on, according to backers.
But the scenes that Democratic leaders clearly feared most at the convention have not materialized.
Thousands of pro-Palestinian demonstrators crowded into Union Park on Monday, less than a half-mile from the United Center where the convention is taking place, to denounce Biden and his administration as complicit in the mass killing of Palestinians in Gaza. Many in the throng held signs calling Biden “Genocide Joe,” while another placard referred to the president as “the butcher of Gaza.” But the protest fell short of the tens of thousands of people organizers were predicting.
A handful of pro-Palestinian activists attempted to protest during Biden’s speech on Monday night and unfurled a banner that read “stop arming Israel” — an effort that was quickly drowned out by cheers and delegates who raised “We Joe” signs to block them.
On Wednesday, protesters streamed back into Union Park for another rally and march. By late afternoon more than a thousand people were clustered around a makeshift stage for the unpermitted demonstration as a phalanx of police officers looked on from across the street.
Organized by the Chicago Coalition for Justice in Palestine, the rally was expected to be the largest of the week, and lines of protesters were still arriving an hour after it began. The event’s slogan was “Shut the DNC down,” and speakers and chanters focused their ire on the gathering of Democrats nearby.
An emcee led the crowd in chants of “DNC, don’t you lie, because of you, our people die.”
The war has also played out in subtle ways inside the convention hall and onstage, as it has across the country. Critics of the protesters often accuse them of fomenting antisemitism, and on Tuesday evening, Senate Majority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) decried growing antisemitism and Islamophobia in the country — although he blamed Republican nominee Donald Trump.
‘Tonight, folks, I am wearing this blue square, to stand up against antisemitism, to stand up to all hate,” he said.
Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), who has been fiercely critical of Israel and supports cutting off offensive weapons, spoke more forcefully than other speakers about the war, but even his comments were limited to a single line. “We must end this horrific war in Gaza, bring home the hostages and demand an immediate cease-fire,” Sanders said Tuesday.
And Harris’s husband, second gentleman Doug Emhoff, spoke in personal terms about pride in his Jewish faith without directly addressing the war.
“Kamala has fought against antisemitism and all forms of hate her whole career,” Emhoff said. “And she encouraged me, as second gentleman, to take up that fight, which is so personal to me.”
Lavora Barnes, chair of the Michigan Democratic Party, said in an interview that the Israel-Gaza war has been front-and-center for nearly a year in her state, home to one of the country’s largest Arab American and Muslim populations, where the “uncommitted” movement began.
Barnes said the war is still a top issue because people are continuing to die, but that for voters for whom Gaza is a top issue, “what’s gone is some of the disappointment because they had someone at the top of the ticket who they felt was not open.”
“The vice president has expressed an openness to have conversations. She said the word cease-fire early, and having her at the top of the ticket has helped us reset,” Barnes said. “Within our Michigan delegation, our uncommitted delegates are part of our Democratic family. They’re here celebrating their party just like we are.”
In perhaps the clearest sign of the protesters’ impact, Biden himself addressed them in his speech Monday night as he said he was trying to negotiate an end to the Gaza conflict.
“We’re working around-the-clock … to prevent a wider war and reunite hostages with their families and surge humanitarian health and food assistance into Gaza now, to end the civilian suffering of the Palestinian people, and finally, finally, finally deliver a cease-fire and end this war,” Biden said. “Those protesters out in the street, they have a point. A lot of innocent people are being killed on both sides.”
