Chicago – On On the first day of the Democratic National Convention, several thousand protesters gathered in Union Park, their numbers growing throughout the day until they began their march to a park near the United Center — the heavily fortified basketball arena where President Joe Biden was scheduled to deliver his speech Monday night — chanting “Free, Free Palestine” as they walked.
About four miles from the United Center, at the Democratic National Committee’s headquarters on McCormick Place, a different kind of demonstration was taking place: the DNC’s first-ever symposium on Palestinian human rights. For Jim Zogby, who has served in leadership positions at the DNC for more than three decades, it had been a long time coming.
“The only two times the word Palestine was mentioned at the Democratic convention were in 1984 and 1988,” Zogby, founder of the Arab American Institute, said Monday. Among those times was when Zogby himself called for justice for the Palestinian people in his 1984 presidential nomination speech for the Rev. Jesse Jackson. “We’ve come a long way. People say to me… you say the glass is half full. I say, ‘No, I remember when we didn’t have a glass, and now we have a glass and we’re filling it.’”
“When I look at this symposium today, it’s not about the prize,” Zogby added, his eyes darting toward a room full of delegates and journalists. “The prize is a change in policy… but I don’t want to ignore it for a moment, because it’s about the importance of this.” [and the] The message the Harris campaign is sending is: “We want to talk about this.”
More than 700,000 Democratic voters cast their “uncommitted” ballots during the Democratic primary for Biden’s reelection. As a gesture to those voters, leaders of the uncommitted movement asked for two speaking slots at the convention, and a meeting with the Harris campaign to discuss the arms embargo on Israel. Neither request was granted. Instead, they were given the space for this symposium—a smaller, non-televised venue where the party’s conferences and caucuses meet during convention week.
The symposium itself was a painful testament to how ugly things had become in Gaza that the Democratic Party decided to devote official time and space to the Palestinian cause.
Dr. Tania Haj Hassan, a pediatric intensive care surgeon who was asked by the non-committal movement to speak on the conference’s main stage, told harrowing stories from her time working in Gaza.
Since the Israeli bombardment began, a new term has been coined in Gaza, says Haj Hassan: “Wounded child, no family left.” It’s a phenomenon she says she has “witnessed more times than I can count” while working in Gaza, where an estimated 17,000 children have lost one or more parents in the past 10 months.
Haj Hassan spoke of a young boy who arrived at the hospital with half his face and part of his neck missing. He had lost all his family members — except for his sister, whom he kept asking about — in an airstrike. She was lying in the next bed, but she was burned beyond recognition, Haj Hassan said.
“His whole family, his parents, the rest of his siblings, were killed in the same attack that the boy survived, and the next day I went to see him,” recalls Hajj Hassan. The boy had just had a skin graft – a piece of his shoulder to cover his neck. “He was lying on his bed mumbling because it was so hard to talk, and he kept saying… ‘Everyone I love is in heaven now. I don’t want to be here anymore.’”
She tells the story of a nurse who was detained without explanation for 53 days, reporting physical, sexual and psychological torture before being released. After his release, the nurse returned to the hospital. “He worked constantly, partly because he was very dedicated, and partly because he suffered from severe insomnia due to the trauma of his detention,” Haj Hassan says. “He was always in the intensive care unit of the emergency department, cleaning sand from the eyes of people pulled from the rubble, trying to comfort them.”
“One day, during the night, he fell asleep holding the body of a dead child and a breathing tube after they failed to revive the infant. Another day, I asked him to go home because he hadn’t slept for long hours. So he left the hospital. Two hours later, I saw him in the emergency department trying to revive a man who had lost his legs and an arm. I asked him what he was doing in the hospital. I thought he had gone home to rest, and he said, ‘This is my sister’s husband. They woke me up to tell me that the aid distribution site had been bombed and that my sister’s husband had gone there.’”
Her stories were so harrowing that one panelist—Laila Alabed, a co-founder of the nonconformist movement—broke down in tears and had to leave the room to collect herself. It was clear how important it was for the American public—whose taxpayer money funds arms sales to Israel—to hear them. It was also clear why the Democratic Party would be loath to highlight the devastating results of its current policies to voters it hopes will be inspired to turn out to the polls in November.
Hala Hijazi, a Democrat who said she lost more than 100 family members during the Israeli campaign in Gaza — including two last week — was part of the panel and spoke about the challenge Harris faces. “The vice president worked hard on her campaign, and I’m not saying that as someone who has known her since 1997. She did her best, and we have to hold her accountable, but we also have to give her a chance.”
Former Congressman Andy Levin, a Jewish Democrat and outspoken advocate for Palestine — who was defeated in the 2022 primary after pro-Israel interests spent $4 million to support his opponent — also spoke about the difficult position Harris finds herself in.
Levin noted that Harris refused to attend Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's recent address to a joint session of Congress. “When she met with him, she told him some truth about power and I don't think that's that easy. I think she's in a tough spot. She's the vice president, not the president,” he said.
Under Harris, the Democratic Party has made room for private intraparty debate on Mondays. Meanwhile, the party’s tolerance for public dissent in prime time was on display when protesters inside the United Center hours later unfurled a “Stop Arming Israel” sign during Biden’s retirement ceremony. The sign was blocked by delegates holding “We Love Joe” signs, before it was snatched from their hands, as chants of “Thank You Joe” drowned out their calls for attention. The lights over that part of the arena quickly went out, and the crowd watching from home didn’t notice.
Convention officials issued a soothing statement covering the protest: “We are proud of the electric atmosphere in our convention hall and proud that our convention showcased the broad and diverse coalition behind the Harris-Walz ticket all week long — on stage and off.”
