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HARRIS SHOULD TAKE DIVISIONS OVER GAZA SERIOUSLY  
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Farah Stockman
August 12, 2024
New York Times
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_ It's not just a few hecklers, Michigan voters' concerns cannot be
ignored. How can Democrats speak of the importance of freedom —
while turning a blind eye to the imprisonment of Palestinian civilians
in a strip of land that has become a living hell? _

Roughly 15,000 people turned out to a Harris-Walz rally at an airport
hangar in Detroit., Photo credit: Daniel Ribar for The New York Times

 

For weeks, the signs did not look good for Kamala Harris in Michigan.
Literally. A digital billboard on the side of a barn, which I saw
while driving to Grayling, read, “Willie Brown Endorses Kamala,” a
farmer’s snarky reminder of a chapter of Ms. Harris’s life —
when she briefly dated the speaker of the California Assembly
[[link removed]] —
that I’m pretty sure she’d prefer voters forget.

Even in Detroit, usually friendly territory for Democrats, I bumped
into haters. The leader of a well-to-do neighborhood association told
me that the way Ms. Harris got nominated resembled “entrapment.”
And, at a street fair, I chatted with Tamika Daniels, an activist who
was working to register formerly incarcerated people to vote. Ms.
Daniels expressed skepticism about Ms. Harris because the vice
president had once been a prosecutor.

There was no sign of such skepticism at the Harris rally near the
Detroit airport last Wednesday, where roughly 15,000
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people waited hours to see her. The crowd included recovering
Republicans who had never been to a political rally before, United
Auto Workers members in matching red shirts and Black sorority sisters
dressed head to manicured toe in pink and green. Some of them
mentioned experiencing the same magic they’d felt during Barack
Obama’s 2008 presidential run, as they pondered the possibility of
breaking another barrier — this time, the first female president.
“I missed out on Obama,” Sheila Sigro, who runs the Wayne County
beauty pageant, told me. “I didn’t want to miss out on history
again.”

Those comparisons are both inspiring and worrying. Inspiring because
it does matter that such barriers are broken, and worrying because it
can tempt Democrats to focus on style and symbolism over substance.
This risk is most evident, and most significant, on the issue of Gaza.
There is perhaps no issue that divides the Democratic Party more than
the U.S. government’s support for Israel’s retaliation following
the brutal attack by Hamas on Oct. 7. If the Harris campaign is unable
to address this thorny issue in a way that feels like substance, then
Democrats may not get the unity they’ll need to win in November.

Nowhere is this question more salient than Michigan, a must-win state
and home to one of the largest Arab American communities in the
country. Arab Americans turned away from
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Democratic Party in large numbers, outraged that President Biden was
spending their tax dollars to buy bombs that were killing their loved
ones. To turn this outrage into political power, two Detroit-based
Democratic organizers, Abbas Alawieh and Layla Elabed, co-founded a
movement
[[link removed]] in
Michigan to convince people to vote “uncommitted” in the
Democratic primaries as a way to show their displeasure with President
Biden and demonstrate their electoral strength. It quickly grew into a
national effort.

 
Layla Elabed co-founded a movement in Michigan to convince people to
vote “uncommitted” in the Democratic primaries as a way to show
their displeasure with American policies in Gaza under President
Biden.  (Credit: Daniel Ribar for The New York Times)
More than 100,000 Michigan voters
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“uncommitted” ballots — not enough to change the outcome of the
primary, since Mr. Biden had virtually no competition — but enough
that the party could not afford to ignore them. Mr. Alawieh says 30
members
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the Uncommitted [[link removed]] National
Movement, including himself, earned delegate spots at the Democratic
National Convention in Chicago next week. The group is pushing for the
D.N.C. to allow Dr. Tanya Haj-Hassan, a doctor who recently spent two
weeks in Gaza, to address the convention, which seems like the least
the party can do to show they take the suffering of Palestinians
seriously. In Michigan, a state that Donald Trump won by a little
more than 10,000 votes
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these voters could be crucial. One of the biggest questions of this
election is whether Ms. Harris can win any of them back.

For some, there’s probably nothing she could do to earn
forgiveness. Floyd Merwan Beydoun
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a U.A.W. member, got his hopes up briefly after Ms. Harris began her
presidential campaign, when he saw a clip of Ms. Harris saying that
too many lives have been lost in Gaza. But then he saw her repeating
the old mantra about Israel’s right to defend itself after Israel
killed a Hezbollah commander in Lebanon, and Mr. Beydoun was done. He
says he’s voting for Jill Stein, the Green Party candidate. “I
know she doesn’t have a chance,” he told me. But he’s voting for
her anyway because she “believes in peace.”

The founders of the uncommitted movement say they want to help Ms.
Harris get elected. But unless she gives them a significant policy
win, they will not be able to justify their support, nor will they be
able to mobilize their communities to vote.

“I want to be right there with my fellow Democrats, oozing
enthusiasm about Tim Walz and what’s the latest with the
campaign,” Mr. Alawieh told me. But as he gets campaign updates, he
says he is “simultaneously getting updates from my family members in
Southern Lebanon who are checking in on each other because of the last
bomb that dropped.”

Calling for a cease-fire, which Ms. Harris has done
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is not enough.

“We’ve seen a huge shift in language — when she talks about
Palestinian right to self-determination,” Ms. Elabed told me. “But
Palestinian children can’t eat words. Words are not going to make
their limbs grow back.” She wants Ms. Harris to commit to an arms
embargo that might actually force Israel to moderate its behavior.

That demand is a tall order, since pro-Israel groups are also a major
force in Democratic politics. Calling for an arms embargo would spark
outrage and dramatically change longstanding American policy toward
Israel.

Ms. Harris has said she does not support an arms embargo
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hasn’t given up. He used to serve as chief of staff for
Representative Cori Bush of Missouri — an unapologetic supporter of
Palestinian rights — and before that, he was legislative director
for Representative Rashida Tlaib of Michigan, the first Palestinian
American to serve in Congress, who is also Ms. Elabed’s sister.
During those years, he said, he worked with Ms. Harris’s staff in
the Senate. “I know that she has relationships with Arab Americans
and Muslim Americans and Palestinian Americans,” he told me.

But this request comes at a time when the American Israel Public
Affairs Committee is targeting some of the most outspoken defenders of
Palestinian rights. Ms. Bush, Mr. Alawieh’s old boss, lost her
primary race on Tuesday to a challenger who got a boost from
an AIPAC-supported
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political action committee that spent more than $8 million on the
race
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Earlier this year, at the height of the campus protests about Gaza,
meeting or at least acknowledging protesters’ demands wasn’t just
the right thing to do, it also appeared to be the politically savvy
thing for Democrats to do. That notion is looking shakier now, as two
members of Congress who supported Gaza protesters, Ms. Bush and Jamaal
Bowman of New York, lost primary challenges.

Some Democrats, in the name of unity, wish that the Gaza protesters
would simply shut up. Nonetheless, protesters continue to heckle the
Harris campaign, fueled by the righteous fury that bubbles up after
each new report of tortured prisoners
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babies
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and soldiers celebrating the destruction of homes in Gaza
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Ms. Harris managed to quickly dismiss them when they interrupted her
rally speech in Detroit, but she will not be able to so easily dismiss
the shocking reality
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which they are protesting. Failing to adequately address protesters’
valid outrage could cause Democrats’ newfound party unity to quickly
unravel.

How can Democrats speak of the importance of freedom — as Ms. Harris
does so eloquently — while turning a blind eye to the imprisonment
of Palestinian civilians in a strip of land that has become a living
hell [[link removed]]?

How can Democrats insist that “America is not for sale” to
billionaires — as speakers did at that rally — and not be
disturbed by the role that money played in knocking Ms. Bush out of a
congressional seat?

How can the party uphold equality as a treasured value while defending
a system that renders Palestinians as a permanent underclass? These
questions must be wrestled with at the convention, and until a more
humane answer is found.

_[FARAH STOCKMAN joined the Times editorial board
[[link removed]] in
2020. For four years, she was a reporter for The Times, covering
politics, social movements and race. She previously worked at The
Boston Globe, where she won a Pulitzer Prize for commentary in
2016. @fstockman [[link removed]] ]_

* uncommitted voters
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* Uncommitted Movement
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* Vote Uncommitted
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* Michigan voters
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* Kamala Harris
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* Tim Walz
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* Democratic Party
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* Democratic Convention
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* 2024 Elections
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* Donald Trump
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* Stop Trump
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* #NotAnotherBomb
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* Layala Elabed
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* Israel-Gaza War
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* Gaza
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* Ceasefire
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* Israel
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* Palestine
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* Hostages
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* Hamas
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* Dearborn
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