After 50 days, Gaza European Hospital, one of the few trauma centers serving the Gaza strip, reopened, according to the Gaza Health Ministry. The hospital has been a vital part of the crumbling medical infrastructure in the region. It reopened earlier this month.
In August, I told the story of two medical students who worked at Gaza European Hospital before it was shuttered and forcibly evacuated on July 1st. The medical center remained closed amid bombardment in the area for over a month. Each student told me harrowing stories of their time suddenly propelled to the job of full-time doctors amid the devastation of the medical system in Gaza.
Now, the students are back to work. Hasan Ali Abu Ghalyoon, a dental student I interviewed via WhatsApp in August, returned to European Hospital on September 9th. He said things are different there now.
Before the July evacuation, he slept at the hospital. Now, he commutes back and forth from his family’s tent in Deir al-Balah, a trip that takes him three or four hours a day. It is only about a seven-mile journey. But in Gaza, it can be treacherous.
Normally, he takes a hospital-provided bus to work. Last Friday, though, “I was a little late for the bus and I was forced to go by car,” he said. On his journey, he passed a destroyed World Health Organization warehouse, a torched mosque, and innumerable teetering husks of buildings and dust-covered tents. “I took three cars on my way to get from my tent to the hospital and I walked through many destroyed streets on foot.”
In some areas of eastern Gaza, there are no cars at all. The trip, he said, cost him 25 shekels, or about eight dollars, thanks to the lack of fuel entering Gaza. Before the war, transportation wouldn’t cost a thing.
Nermeen Ziyad Abo Mostafa, another student volunteer, hears the zanana—Gazan slang for the incessant buzzing of drones overhead—on her way to the hospital. “It was not easy to reopen it, because all the hospital’s property was stolen,” she said. The hospital is still not fully equipped, she explained, but medical teams are doing their best to work with what they have.
Once the students arrive, they see “mostly burns and fractures,” Abu Ghalyoon said. Every day, there are patients requiring skin grafts.
Another change: there are now fewer international delegations than before. The flow of international medics into the Gaza strip has slowed to a trickle. The Israeli military has hit international aid workers like those from World Central Kitchen, after a vehicle from the group was bombed in April, and UN workers, like those from the World Food Program, whose vehicles were struck in August. Supply shortages are ongoing. As Abu Ghalyoon put it: “There is a very, very severe shortage of all medicines. The medical equipment is old and sometimes works and sometimes doesn’t.”
On September 12th, the World Health Organization released a report estimating that over 22,500 people in Gaza have suffered “life-changing injuries” since Israel’s offensive in Gaza began. Most of these injuries—about 13,000 to 17,000—are what the WHO report calls “severe limb injuries,” and at least 3,000 are amputations.
“The huge surge in rehabilitation needs occurs in parallel with the ongoing decimation of the health system,” said Dr. Richard Peeperkorn, WHO Representative in the occupied Palestinian territory. “Patients can’t get the care they need. Acute rehabilitation services are severely disrupted and specialized care for complex injuries is not available, placing patients’ lives at risk. Immediate and long-term support is urgently needed to address the enormous rehabilitation needs.”
The Uncommitted movement announced on Thursday that it will not be endorsing Vice President Kamala Harris. The decision comes in response to Harris declining to break with the Biden administration over its response to the war in Israel and Palestine and after a tumultuous Democratic National Convention in which Palestinian voices were largely shut out from speaking about the horrors happening in Gaza.
The group, which represents the hundreds of thousands of Democrats who voted “uncommitted” during the primaries in protest of Biden’s Gaza policy, said in a statement released Thursday that “Vice President Harris’s unwillingness to shift on unconditional weapons policy or to even make a clear campaign statement in support of upholding existing US and international human rights law has made it impossible for us to endorse her.”
At the same time, the movement’s leaders stressed that they oppose Donald Trump and are not recommending that supporters vote for a third-party candidate because doing so could help elect Trump.
“I told VP Harris through the tears that Michigan voters want to vote for her, but we need a policy change that is going to save lives.”
“We must block Donald Trump, which is why we urge Uncommitted voters to vote against him and avoid third-party candidates that could inadvertently boost his chances, as Trump openly boasts that third parties will help his candidacy,” the group said in a statement released on Thursday. “We urge Uncommitted voters to register anti-Trump votes and vote up and down the ballot.”
Uncommitted leaders, throughout the past months, have been eager to endorse Harris and organize on her behalf if she were willing to move more aggressively towards ending the war. In early August, when organizer Layla Elabed briefly met the vice president, she told her as much. “I told VP Harris through the tears that Michigan voters want to vote for her,” Elabed said at the time, “but we need a policy change that is going to save lives.” Elabed stressed that “pro-war forces like AIPAC may want to drive us out of the Democratic Party, but we’re here to stay.”
Uncommitted had asked Vice President Harris to respond by September 15 to a request to meet with Palestinian Americans in Michigan whose family members have been killed during the war. That meeting has not happened and the Harris campaign has not committed to making it happen.
“The Vice President is committed to work to earn every vote, unite our country, and to be a President for all Americans,” the Harris campaign said in a statement. “She will continue working to bring the war in Gaza to an end in a way where Israel is secure, the hostages are released, the suffering in Gaza ends, and the Palestinian people can realize their right to dignity, security, freedom and self-determination.”
The latest announcement from Uncommitted comes one month after the group made news with a sit-in at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago. Uncommitted made two main policy asks at the convention: an immediate ceasefire and a US arms embargo on Israel to help bring one about. But Uncommitted delegates also made much smaller demands in the lead up to and during the convention.
Most notably, they asked that an American doctor who has volunteered in Gaza, or a Palestinian American, be given a brief speaking slot from the convention’s main stage. After convention organizers rejected Tanya Haj-Hassan, a pediatric intensive care doctor, the group eventually began pushing for a speaking slot for Georgia state Rep. Ruwa Romman, a Palestinian American Democrat.
Lexis Zeidan, an organizer with the Uncommitted national movement, said that in their refusal to allow even one Palestinian American speaker, “the DNC and the vice president’s campaign fumbled even a small gesture.”
“Now, the vice president’s team is courting people like Dick Cheney, while sidelining these incredibly important anti-war voices,” she said. Some leaders within Uncommitted are voting for Harris—and others will not be voting at the top of the ticket at all. Zeidan, who is Palestinian American, said that on a personal level, she “simply cannot go to the ballot box and cast a vote for a candidate that is not hearing the demands of her people.” Her fellow organizer, Abbas Alawieh, will be voting for Harris, a choice he describes as a “chess move” against Donald Trump.
“If you’re willing to get some satisfaction out of feeling like you punished Harris, and that’ll help you sleep at night, I can respect that,” Alawieh said. But, he added, “In order for me to try and start sleeping at night, I need to know that I’m blocking Donald Trump because his plans are very clearly to enable Netanyahu to do more murdering.”
Mother Jones reported during the convention that Romman, who was not an Uncommitted delegate, planned to explicitly endorse Harris from the main stage. Nevertheless, national Democrats denied her and any other Palestinian American Democrat a speaking slot without asking to see their remarks. Uncommitted had made clear that any speech would be vetted and pre-approved by convention planners. As we reported:
By denying someone of Palestinian descent the chance to speak, the Harris campaign missed an easy opportunity to create distance between itself and President Biden’s failing and highly unpopular response to the war. A June poll by CBS News and YouGov found that 77 percent of Democrats and 62 percent of independents believe that the United States should not send weapons and supplies to Israel, despite the Biden administration’s support for continuing to do so. Only 23 percent of Democrats, compared with 76 percent of Republicans, told Gallup in June that they support Israel’s military actions in Gaza.
More than 41,000 Palestinians have been killed and nearly 100,000 have been injured in Gaza, according to the local health ministry. Public health experts fear that the full death toll may be far higher. Nearly a year into the war, the chances for a ceasefire in the near future still appear low.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu appears committed to prolonging the war—even if it means the death of more hostages—to appease far-right cabinet members and remain in power. President Biden has largely refused to use the United States’ extensive leverage to push Netanyahu toward a ceasefire.
In last week’s debate, Harris reiterated her support for Israel and once again called for the US to have the “most lethal fighting force in the world.”
“Our organizing around the presidential election was never about endorsing a specific candidate,” Alawieh, the Uncommitted cofounder, made clear on Thursday. “It has always been about building a movement that saves lives.”
Update, September 19: This post has been updated with a statement from the campaign of Vice President Kamala Harris.
When Vice President Kamala Harris used Tuesday night’s debate to tout her bipartisan appeal, she emphasized the backing she’d received from two particularly notable GOP officials.
“I actually have the endorsement of 200 Republicans,” she said, including “the endorsement of former Vice President Dick Cheney and Congressmember Liz Cheney.”
On its own, Harris welcoming the Cheneys to her tent is no big shakes. Liz’s work on the January 6 committee left her popular with Democrats. Dick is 83, old enough to seem less likely to start a reckless war, and long ago surpassed as a top Democratic bogeyman by Trump himself.
But if the Cheneys are no longer Republican voters, they remain unrepentant hawks, advocates of aggressively using US military power to achieve American policy aims. And Harris’ embrace of a top architect of the disastrous militarism of George W. Bush’s administration was one of several signals she offered suggesting fans of the neoconservative foreign policy associated with the Cheneys should feel comfortable with her as president.
On Gaza, Ukraine, Afghanistan, and other national security matters, Harris appeared to deliberately strike notes aimed at appealing to the interventionist consensus in Washington’s foreign policy establishment. The result was Harris’ latest and perhaps clearest suggestion that she will not venture far to the left of President Joe Biden, or former President Barack Obama, on national security. That may or may not be good politics, but it is a disappointment to the substantial number of Americans hoping that Harris would pursue a more restrained, anti-war foreign policy than Biden.
Harris, eager to make the election about Trump’s unfitness for office, is clearly trying to play it safe on national security, as with other policy areas. What’s notable, though, is what playing it safe entails.
Nowhere is that dynamic clearer than on Israel. While a handful of pro-Palestinian protesters clashed with Philadelphia police outside the debate, Harris responded to a question about achieving a ceasefire in Gaza by emphasizing her support for Israel’s “right to defend itself.” To be sure, she then pivoted. “It is also true far too many innocent Palestinians have been killed,” she said in a by-now-familiar caveat. “Children, mothers. What we know is that this war must end.” She also called for a two-state solution. But Harris’s formulation provides no real departure from Biden’s policy, which has, so far, failed to end the war.
On Tuesday Harris even seemed to suggest that she would limit US efforts to restrain Israel from actions that could cause a broader regional war. “The one thing I will assure you always, I will always give Israel the ability to defend itself, in particular as it relates to Iran and any threat that Iran and its proxies pose to Israel,” Harris said.
On Ukraine, Harris focused on distinguishing herself from Trump, who has touted his cozy ties with Russian President Vladimir Putin and repeated his dubious claim he could settle that war “before I even become president,” presumably by letting Russia keep the Ukrainian territory it now occupies.
Harris—appealing to “the 800,000 Polish-Americans right here in Pennsylvania”—argued that without US support, “Putin would be sitting in Kyiv with his eyes on the rest of Europe, starting with Poland.” What the vice president did not mention is that Poland, as NATO member, enjoys protection Ukraine does not, a mutual defense agreement with the US and its allies. Russia has invaded former Soviet republics, but never, dating to the formation of NATO, risked nuclear war by attacking a member of the alliance.
Harris also avoided offering her own prescription for ending the war in Ukraine, absent Ukraine, which is currently losing ground, achieving its increasingly far-fetched goal of regaining all the territory Russia has seized since 2014. (Nor did she or Trump opine on whether the US should allow Ukraine to launch missiles supplied by the US and other states at targets more than 60 miles inside Russian territory.)
Harris “acted as though it was still 2022 and would be forever as long as the U.S. kept funding the war,” with “no real explanation as to why this was in anyone’s best interest, even Ukraine’s, to continue on this course,” wrote Kelley Beaucar Vlahos, a senior adviser at the Quincy Institute, a think tank advocating more dovish US policy.
On Tuesday, Harris ticked off policy goals that included “ensuring we have the most lethal fighting force in the world.” Asked about US soldiers who died during the withdrawal from Afghanistan, Harris said she “agreed with President Biden’s decision to pull out of Afghanistan.” But the vice president also ripped Trump for launching the negotiations that preceded that pull-out. “He negotiated directly with a terrorist organization called the Taliban,” Harris said. Harris argued that the Trump gave away too much in those talks and failed to include Afghanistan’s then-government. That may be true, but her answer left her supporting the end of a 20-year war while deriding the mere existence of negotiations with the group the US had been fighting in that war.
Harris also mocked Trump for exchanging “love letters with Kim Jong Un.” The details of Trump’s diplomatic efforts are very much open to debate. But in singling out negotiations with the Taliban and North Korea, Harris flirted with the argument that the US should avoid talking to bad actors at all. That kind of criticism that has more often come from the hawkish right, and evokes the attacks that Republicans like John McCain and Mitt Romney—both of whom Harris name-checked Tuesday—once hurled at Obama.
In speaking about Afghanistan, Harris also made the curious statement that “as of today, there is not one member of the United States military who is in active duty in a combat zone in any war zone around the world.” That’s true if you do not consider the roughly 3,500 American solders in Syria and Iraq to be in war zones. But many of those troops are on bases repeatedly targeted by rocket attacks attributed to allies of Iran. In January, three American solders stationed in Jordan near the Syrian border were killed, and 30 injured, in a drone attack.
A Harris campaign spokesperson did not respond to questions about that statement. But the vice president’s comment does not suggest she sees an urgent need to end the US military presence in the Middle East.
Dick Cheney, who helped put US troops in Iraq 20 years ago, presumably approves.
Last school year’s historic protests over the war in Gaza roiled campuses and dominated headlines, with more than 3,100 students arrested nationwide. Over the summer, the protests cooled off and students returned home. But college administrators spent the summer crafting new free speech policies designed to discourage students from continuing what they started last spring. Between May and August, at least 20 colleges and university systems—representing more than 50 campuses—tightened the rules governing protest on their property.
The protest encampments that appeared on more than 130 campuses last spring served as a visual reminder of the 2 million displaced people in Gaza. Students held teach-ins, slept in tents, created art together, ate, and prayed in these makeshift societies—some for hours or days, others for entire weeks or months. The free speech organization FIRE estimated last week that 1 in 10 students has personally participated in a protest regarding Israel’s war in Gaza. The protesters demanded that their schools disclose any investments in (variously) the Israeli military, the state of Israel, or the military-industrial complex in general—and disentangle their endowments from war-makers.
Some student groups won meetings with administrators, disclosure of the terms of their college’s endowment, or representation for Palestine studies in their school’s curriculum. A few schools agreed to work towards divestment or implement new investment screening procedures. Students elsewhere, though, saw no concessions on their goals from college administrators—and were left, instead, to spend months doing court-ordered community service or working through a lengthy school-ordered disciplinary process.
Prior to last year’s protests, “time, space, and manner” restrictions on campus protest were considered standard practice, said Risa Lieberwitz, a Cornell University professor of labor and employment law who serves as general counsel for the American Association of University Professors.Many universities had pre-existing policies prohibiting, for example, obstructing a walkway or occupying an administrative office. Those policies were usually enforced via threats of suspension or expulsion. This year’s restrictions are different, said Lieberwitz, who previously described the new rules as“a resurgence of repression on campuses that we haven’t seen since the late 1960s.”
Lieberwitz is particularly concerned with policies requiring protest organizers to register their protest, under their own names, with the university they are protesting. “There’s a real contradiction between registering to protest and being able to actually go out and protest just operationally,” she said. “Then there’s also the issue of the chilling effect that comes from that, which comes from knowing that this is a mechanism that allows for surveillance.” Students who are required to register themselves as protest organizers may prefer to avoid expressing themselves at all.
MIT has lots of rules about ethical funding, about the duty to do no harm with one’s research. And yet, they refuse to apply any of those rules to their own behavior.
“The point of having a rally is to be disruptive, anyway,” said MIT PhD student Richard Solomon, who participated in last year’s campus protests. For Solomon, divestment is personal. Last month, Mohammed Masbah, a Gazan student he refers to as his brother and who spent several months living with his family, was killed in an Israeli airstrike. As Solomon pointed out in a column for the student newspaper, Masbah was likely killed with the help of technology developed at American universities like MIT.
“MIT has lots of rules about ethical funding, about the duty to do no harm with one’s research,” he told Mother Jones. “And yet they refuse to apply any of those rules to their own behavior, their own research, their own institutional collaborations.” It’s hard, he said, for students to respect protest rules when their school doesn’t respect its own rules, either. (When asked to comment, a MIT representative pointed me to a speech by the school’s president last spring, in which she stated that MIT “relies on rigorous processes to ensure all funded research complies with MIT policies and US law.”)
Beyond demanding that protests be registered, many schools have banned camping on their grounds. Some have required that anyone wearing a mask on campus—whether for health reasons or otherwise—be ready to present identification when asked. Others have banned all unregistered student “expressive activity” (a euphemistic phrase that generally covers a range of public demonstrations including protests, rallies, flyering, or picketing) gatheringsover a certain size.Still others have banned all use of speakers or amplified sound during the school week (including, in one case, the use of some acoustic instruments).
At Carnegie Mellon University, students and faculty were informed during the last week of August that any “expressive activity” involving more than 25 students must be registered—under the organizers’ names—at least three business days prior to the event, and be signed off on by a “Chief Risk Officer.”
In response, a group of Carnegie Mellon students, faculty members, and alumni lined up on a grassy campus quadrangle holding up signs labeled “1” through “29.” This act, now prohibited on Carnegie Mellon’s campus, drove home the policy’s absurdity—on a campus of 13,000 students, half of whom live on campus, a gathering of 25+ people may be harder to avoid than to initiate.
David Widder, who earned his PhD at Carnegie Mellon last year, called the new policy “authoritarian,” and unlike anything he’d seen during his six years at the institution. “We hoped to playfully but visibly violate the policy—and show that the sky does not fall when students and faculty speak out about issues that matter to them,” he told Mother Jones. “We can’t credibly claim to be a university with these gross restrictions on free expression.”
According to a statement by the university’s provost, the new policy was intended to “ensure coordination with the university and support the conditions for civil and safe exchange.”
Linguistics Professor Uju Anya, who spoke at the rally, pointed out that at least $2.8 billion of Carnegie Mellon’s research funding has come from the Department of Defense since 2008. “We know that our universities have skin in the game now, in the weapons and in the money,” Anya said. “So, ultimately, Carnegie Mellon is in bed with baby bombers, and they don’t want us—the members of this community, who also have a stake in what the university does—to openly question them.”
At some schools, the conflict over newly instituted protest policies has already made its way to the courts. The ACLU of Indiana announced August 29 that it would be suing Indiana University over an “expressive activity” policy which, like CMU’s, was implemented in late summer. The policy under debate defines “expressive activity” in part as “Communicating by any lawful verbal, written, audio visual, or electronic means,” as well as “Protesting” and “Distributing literature” and “circulating petitions.”
The policy limits “expressive activity” to the hours between 6 a.m. and 11 p.m. “This is written so broadly, if any one of us was to wear a T-shirt supporting a cause at 11:15 p.m. while walking through IU, we would be violating the policy,” Ken Falk, legal director of the ACLU of Indiana, said. “The protections of the First Amendment do not end at 11:00 p.m., only to begin again at 6 a.m.” Since Indiana University is a public school, it is bound by the First Amendment and can’t limit speech as strictly as a private college.
Lieberwitz, the AAUP lawyer, said she expects more legal challenges like the ACLU’s this coming year. According to the Crowd Counting Consortium at Harvard University, protests on college campuses are spiking again, though not at the levels seen last year. On at least two campuses, protesters have already been arrested. And between August 15 and September 3, there wasn’t a single day without some sort of Palestine solidarity action on a college campus somewhere in the United States.
The following is an incomplete list of US university protest policies changed between May and August of 2024.
Massachusetts Institute of Technology: As of August 30, unauthorized tent encampments are prohibited. Authorized demonstrations on campus may only be organized by “Departments, Labs, or Centers, recognized student organizations, and employee unions.”
University of Virginia: Updated “Rules on Demonstrations and Access to Shared Spaces” as of August 26. Non-permitted tents are now forbidden, no tent can stay up for over 18 hours, unless “in use for official University or school events,” and anyone wearing a mask on University property must present identification if asked. No outdoor events are permitted between 2 a.m. and 6 a.m.
University of Wisconsin, Madison: Updated its policy on “expressive activity” August 28. “Expressive activity,” defined as activities protected by the First Amendment including “speech, lawful assembly, protesting, distributing literature and chalking,” is now prohibitedwithin 25 feet of university building entrances.
University of California (1o campuses): Camping or erecting tents is forbidden as of August 19. Masking “to conceal identity” is banned.
California State University (23 campuses): “Camping, overnight demonstrations, or overnight loitering” is banned, as are “disguises or concealment of identity,” as of August 19.
Virginia Commonwealth University: As of August 9, anyone on University property covering their face must show identification. Encampments are explicitly prohibited, “unless approved in advance by the University.”
University of Pennsylvania: As of June 7, encampments are banned, as are any overnight demonstrations, and “non-news” livestreaming. “Unauthorized overnight activities” are to be considered trespassing.
James Madison University: As ofAugust, no “tents or other items” may be used to create a shelter on campus unless approved by the university. Chalking on walkways is prohibited. “Camping” is defined as “the use of any item to create a shelter.”
Indiana University (nine campuses): As of July 29, “expressive activity” is limited to the hours between 6 a.m. and 11 p.m., and any “signs or temporary structures” are now required to be approved at least 10 days in advance of “expressive activity” by the university.
University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign: As of August 21, camping is prohibited except in designated areas.
University of South Florida system (three campuses): As of August 26, “activities in public spaces” after 5 p.m. are prohibited unless students request a reservation.
Harvard University: Plans to ban “outdoor chalking” and “unapproved signage” are in process as of July 30, according to a draft obtained by the Harvard Crimson. Indoor protests have already been banned as of January 2024.
University of Connecticut (five campuses): As of August 21, students cannot make amplified sound through speakers or megaphones, or use certain acoustic instruments like “trumpets, trombones, or violins” in public spaces at any point during the day Monday through Friday, with official university events excepted.
Carnegie Mellon University: As of August 23,an “event involving expressive activity” occurring on campus “must be registered with the University if more than 25 participants are expected to attend” at least three business days in advance.
Pomona College: As of August 2024, encampments are prohibited, and noncompliance may result in “detention and arrest by law enforcement.” Additional police officers have been hired to patrol campus.
Emory University: As of August 27, camping is prohibited on campus, and protests are prohibited between midnight and 7 a.m.
Emerson College: As of August 23, protests may only occur between 8 a.m. and 7 p.m., and must be pre-registered with the college.
Rutgers University: As of August 20, Demonstrations must be held between 9 a.m. and 4 p.m. and only in “designated public forum areas.”
University of Minnesota (five campuses): On August 27, university administrators unveiled new “guidelines for spontaneous expressive activity,” which state that all protests must end by 10 p.m., must use no more than one megaphone, and that groups of over 100 people must register their spontaneous expressive activity at least two weeks in advance.
Syracuse University: As of August, “unauthorized use or assembly of tents or other temporary shelter structures” is prohibited.
Did your school implement a new protest policy this year? Email shurwitz@motherjones.com.
Correction, September 13: An earlier version of this story mischaracterized the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s protest policy as prohibiting protests within 25 feet of university buildings, rather than prohibiting protest within 25 feet of university building entrances.
Salma Hamamy wasn’t even watching the presidential debate when former President Donald Trump attempted a familiar verbal jab against Vice President Kamala Harris.
“I’m talking now if you don’t mind,” said Trump, as Harris grinned. “Does that sound familiar?”
The line hearkens back to a moment in the 2020 vice presidential debate, when Harris responded to an interruption from Mike Pence with the curt retort “I’m speaking.” The catchphrase, since then, has become a calling card for Harris; an indication of her toughness as the first female vice president.
But it has not always been completely effective. Earlier this summer, when Harris had just become the de facto Democratic nominee, she gave one of her first addresses on the trail in Detroit. Moments into her speech, she was heckled by Hamamy—a recent graduate from the University of Michigan—and other protesters clamoring for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza and end to weapon shipments to Israel.
The vice president responded to the demonstrators with a version of the same catchphrase she once used against Pence: “If you want Donald Trump to win, say that. Otherwise, I’m speaking.”
The July exchange instantly became another viral moment. Many ardent Harris fans cheered on social media while others, more sympathetic to the protesters, objected to Harris’ dismissal of not only the demonstrators but the topic that they were there to address—US support of Israeli military operations in Gaza.
Shortly after Trump landed his attack Tuesday night, curious what Hamamy thought, we texted her to ask whether she had seen the moment. She had not. “I’m watching a debate amongst our central student government right now regarding divestment,” Hamamy replied. She was referring to her alma matter’s student government debate over withholding more than half a million dollars for campus groups until the school would divest from all business with ties to Israel and weapons manufacturers. (Once Hamamy got a chance to watch the debate clip, she said it sounded familiar.)
“On October 7, Hamas, a terrorist organization, slaughtered 1,200 Israelis, many of them young people who were simply attending a concert,” Harris said.
“Israel has a right to defend itself, and how it does so matters because it is also true far too many innocent Palestinians have been killed: children, mothers,” she added. “What we know is that this war must end.”
But in contrast to Harris’ enumeration of Israeli deaths, she made little effort to explain the scale of the death and carnage in Gaza beyond the vague qualifier “too many.”
According to the official numbers from Gaza’s Ministry of Health, more than 41,000 Palestinians have been killed since October 7. A July letter published in the Lancet, one of the most famous medical journals in the world, estimated the total death toll may be closer to 186,000. (The study factored in the difficulty of accurately collecting data under crumbling infrastructure, and the indirect deaths caused by lack of access to health care, food, and aid.) Another letter published by international medics later that same month estimated that 92,000 Palestinians have been killed.
“She was fatally shot in the head by a bullet that came from an Israeli sniper positioned 200 meters away,” wrote Hamid Ali, Eygi’s partner. “This was no accident, and her killers must be held accountable.”
Harris issued a statement a day after the debate, saying “No one should be killed for participating in a peaceful protest. The shooting that led to her death is unacceptable and raises legitimate questions about the conduct of IDF personnel in the West Bank. Israel must do more to ensure that incidents like this never happen again.”
Trump was asked on the debate stage how he would negotiate with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Hamas on a hostage deal and prevent more civilians from being killed.
“She hates Israel,” Trump said. “At the same time, in her own way, she hates the Arab population because the whole place is going to get blown up: Arabs, Jewish people, Israel. Israel will be gone. It would have never happened.”
Harris replied, “That’s absolutely not true. I have my entire career and life supported Israel and the Israeli people.”
The short back-and-forth on Gaza probably didn’t do too much to move the political needle as far as activists for Palestinian human rights are concerned.
“Harris’s comments on Gaza continue to offend voters appalled by Netanyahu’s US-funded killing campaign,” wrote Abbas Alawieh, an organizer of the Uncommitted movement, after the debate. Alawieh had personally spoken with Harris in Detroit at a VIP greeting line. “They offer nothing new & perpetuate the murderous status quo. It’s simple: to stop the war, our government must stop sending the weapons fueling the war.”
According to a CBS/YouGov poll in April, nearly 70 percent of Democratic voters want the US to stop sending weapons to Israel. Neither candidate acknowledged an arms embargo as an option Tuesday night. Polls released the day before the debate show Harris leading Trump by only one point in the critical swing state of Michigan, which has been a center of anti-war organizing since October 2023.
Near midnight last week, Democratic delegates with the Uncommitted movement sat in protest outside Chicago’s United Center. Elected by hundreds of thousands of primary voters who oppose President Joe Biden’s response to the war in Gaza, the delegates were sent to the DNC “uncommitted”—not pledged to support any candidate at the convention. Earlier in the week, the group did what they were elected to do by calling for a permanent ceasefire and immediate arms embargo. They also continued a simpler request they’d started making before the convention: a spot for a speaker on the main stage to talk about Palestine.
On Wednesday evening, the DNC and Harris campaign finally told them that no Palestinian American would be allowed to speak from the main stage of the convention. Here was their last ditch effort. They hoped a sit-in—and the Civil Rights history it evoked—would push party leaders to change their minds.
As the delegates waited, I watched a middle-aged man walk past. He shouted at the protesters: “Free the hostages!”
“We agree,” a chorus of Uncommitted supporters replied.
He shouted again: “Free the hostages!”
“We agree,” a woman wearing a hijab repeated. The man, seemingly confused, wandered away.
That image, over the past week after the DNC, has stuck in my mind. Despite being a group of staunch Democrats working to affect change from within the party, the Harris campaign—and many Democrats—mostly treated Uncommitted and their allies as outsiders ruining a party at the DNC. And, often, it seemed without even understanding what they were saying or where agreement could be had. The result was a four-day convention that managed to find space for seemingly everyone on the main stage except those willing to speak personally about what is happening in Palestine.
Donald Trump’s former communications director Stephanie Grisham, who stayed through family separations but called it quits after January 6? Yes. An American doctor who saved the lives of children in Gaza? No. A former Republican Lieutenant Gov. of Georgia who Democrats said in March was on the “frontlines of banning abortion, restricting the right to vote, and cutting taxes for the rich and powerful?” Yes. Rep. Ruwa Romman, a Georgia Democrat currently fighting against that agenda in the state legislature? No.
By denying someone of Palestinian descent the chance to speak, the Harris campaign missed an easy opportunity to create distance between itself and President Biden’s failing and highly unpopular response to the war. A June poll by CBS News and YouGov found that 77 percent of Democrats and 62 percent of independents believe that the United States should not send weapons and supplies to Israel, despite the Biden administration’s support for continuing to do so. Only 23 percent of Democrats, compared with 76 percent of Republicans, told Gallup in June that they support Israel’s military actions in Gaza.
Nevertheless, Biden has pursued a policy of effectively unconditional support for Israel that is more in line with the preferences of Republican voters than independents and members of his own party. A Palestinian American speaker would have given Uncommitted delegates something to bring back to the voters who elected them to show that Harris understands this reality.
“If we go to [uncommitted voters] right now and say, Hey, trust us there’s been a change at the top and we feel like maybe Vice President Harris feels a little bit differently in her heart,” Uncommitted co-founder Abbas Alawieh explained at the group’s first press conference of the convention, “that’s not going to win back voters. We need a plan. We need to know how the killing is going to be stopped.”
The Uncommitted delegates made clear throughout the week that they want to defeat Trump. But they want Harris to take positions that will help them to convince their voters to support her. It is a remarkably pragmatic message for a movement that believes Harris has served as vice president in an administration enabling a genocide. Uncommitted delegates were not the communists I saw carrying a hammer and sickle–adorned banner at a protest outside the convention’s security perimeter. They were Democrats sent to Chicago by Democratic voters to pursue the inside track.
It was always going to be hard to sustain US media attention on Gaza as the presidential election came to dominate the minds of journalists and their bosses. Uncommitted, in a stroke of depressingly clear-eyed organizing tact, launched a movement that asked Democrats to vote uncommitted instead of backing Biden. And in doing so, Waleed Shahid, a Democratic strategist who previously served as the spokesperson for the Squad-adjacent Justice Democrats, along with Alawieh and fellow co-founder Layla Elabed, turned the effort to end the war into the kind of campaign story journalists could cover.
Alawieh, a large and gentle man who previously worked as Rep. Cori Bush’s (D-Mo.) chief of staff, served as an emotional spokesperson throughout the DNC. As a teenager, he survived Israeli bombs that fell on south Lebanon. “I remember what those bombs feel like when they drop,” Alawieh explained. “I remember how your bones shake within your body.”
The overarching message of his speeches was that the more than 16,000 children who have died in Gaza are just as human as the boy he once was. The need to make that point again and again was its own form of dehumanization. But Alawieh hoped that repeating the message would get Democrats to accept his help and change their course on Gaza.
As he staged the sit-in, Alawieh struggled to accept that there would be no speaker at the DNC: “We did everything right, you know?” Again and again, Alawieh told reporters he was waiting for party leaders to call and tell him they’d changed their mind.
Often, during the DNC, I was struck by the restraint of the Uncommitted movement. So much, it seemed, was set up for Democrats to accept. And all of this was despite what they had seen—and their families had experienced.
What often got lost in commentary about the Uncommitted movement during the DNC were the atrocities that forced this moment. Israelis and Palestinians are now almost one year into the war that began with the brutal October 7 Hamas-led attack that took the lives of nearly 1,200 people in Israel. Since then, Israel has killed more than 40,000 people in Gaza and injured nearly 100,000—most of whom have been civilians, according to the local health ministry. (Relative to Gaza’s population, this is the equivalent to the United States suffering 20 million casualties in less than a year.)
Thousands of bodies are believed to be buried under the rubble and potentially tens of thousands of others may die due to malnutrition, disease, and the destruction of medical infrastructure caused by the Israeli siege. This suffering is happening in a small strip of land that was considered by many experts to be an “open-air prison” long before October 7 as a result of a devastating Israeli blockade. Beyond the damage to human life, Gaza has been reduced to rubble by one of the most intense aerial bombing campaigns in human history. Top Israeli officials have spoken openly about wanting to destroy Gaza. Thanks in part to a steady stream of American armaments, they have now succeeded to an extent that is still not fully understood.
When I spoke in March with Omer Bartov, an Israeli military veteran who is now the Samuel Pisar Professor of Holocaust and Genocide Studies at Brown University, he believed Israel’s actions in Gaza were on the verge of genocide. Since then, Bartov has concluded that the line has been crossed. (He is far from alone in that conclusion among genocide scholars and human rights experts.)
At the DNC, most of this went largely unheard. The focus was understandably on the joy and unity inspired by Harris replacing Biden atop the ticket. For the first time in more than a decade, Democrats seemed to have the swagger of the Obama era. They didn’t want to jinx it but they knew a Trump-ending victory was tantalizingly close. They mocked the former president as a morally—and perhaps anatomically—small man.
But, for others, it was impossible to fully take part in that celebration with Gaza in mind. A Tuesday Uncommitted press conference made that clear. Featuring American doctors who have volunteered in Gaza, their testimony was at times punctuated by the sobbing of those listening. Mark Perlmutter, a Jewish American orthopedic surgeon in North Carolina, said in a statement read by fellow surgeon Feroze Sidhwa:
Never before have I seen a small child shot in the head and then in the chest, and I could never have imagined that I would see two such cases in less than two weeks. Never before have I seen a dozen small children screaming in pain and terror—crowded into a trauma bay smaller than my living room, their burning flesh filling the space so aggressively that my eyes started to burn… And, worst of all, I could never have imagined that my government would be supplying the weapons and funding that keeps this horrifying slaughter going. Not for one week. Not for one month. But for nearly an entire year now. To this day, I wear my late father’s mezuzah around my neck. Since returning from Gaza, I have also draped a keffiyeh over my shoulders. And there is no contradiction.
These horrors are not abstractions for many Uncommitted voters and their allies. At the Monday panel on Palestinian human rights attended by hundreds of people, Hala Hijazi introduced herself as a moderate Democrat and civil servant from San Francisco. Hijazi said that more than 100 of her family members had been killed in Gaza—including two the previous week.
“I’m here because they can no longer speak,” she said. “I’m here because it’s the least that I can do as an American, as a person of faith, and as a Democrat.”
Like other convention speeches, the Uncommitted movement knew that the speaker and remarks would have been edited and vetted beforehand. Initially, Uncommitted organizers put forward Tanya Haj-Hassan, a pediatric intensive care doctor who spoke at Uncommitted press conferences.
Wrenching moment as Dr. Tanya Haj-Hassan, a pediatric intensive care doctor who did heroic work volunteering in Gaza, describes people trying to discredit her by claiming and assuming she is Palestinian. As she makes clear, it shouldn’t matter. But she is not Palestinian. pic.twitter.com/fYovf67zCU
After Dr. Haj-Hassan was rejected for unspecified reasons, organizers sent over the names of people who have lost relatives in Gaza, as well as Palestinian American elected officials. Uncommitted organizers had heard that it was a good sign that their speaking request was still in limbo.
One of their top choices was Romman, the Georgia state representative. Romman’s message would have complemented the one delivered by Jon Polin and Rachel Goldberg, who gave a moving speech about how their son Hersh Goldberg-Polin was taken hostage on October 7. Romman saw letting an elected Democrat like herself give a carefully worded speech as the “bare minimum” party leaders could do. But they never contacted her to see what she wanted to say.
As a result, the Harris campaign likely did not see the speech Romman hoped to give until Mother Jones published it during the convention. Once it was out, even more moderate writers like Jonathan Chait wondered what all the fuss was about. Why go through so much trouble and sow so much disunity to prevent an elected Democrat from giving a speech that included lines like:
Let’s commit to each other, to electing Vice President Harris and defeating Donald Trump who uses my identity as a Palestinian as a slur. Let’s fight for the policies long overdue—from restoring access to abortions to ensuring a living wage, to demanding an end to reckless war and a ceasefire in Gaza.
It was the refusal to let a Palestinian American say even that that led to the sit-in on Wednesday night. Instead, on the final night of the convention, Rep. Romman ended up reading the speech she’d hoped to give to the many members of the media assembled before her outside the United Center. Later that night, the delegates locked arms and made their way back into the United Center. As they made their way in, it was increasingly possible to imagine a Democratic Party that one day saw them not as disruptors but champions of the values the party purports to hold. But by the time that moment arrives, there may be far fewer Palestines left to save.
As Romman has made clear, there is a long tradition of this kind of activism at the DNC. In 1988, the Reverend Jesse Jackson famously invoked how liberals have lauded history they might have said was too controversial at the time of its happening. After mentioning apartheid in South Africa, Jackson spoke of the need for the party to not shy away from controversy if it meant keeping a conscience. “Fannie Lou Hamer didn’t have the most votes in Atlantic City, but her principles have outlasted the life of every delegate who voted to lock her out,” Jackson argued. “If we are principled first, our politics will fall in place.” Romman invoked their legacy, adding that “I hope we listen now instead of in the future.”
Back inside the arena, delegates—committed and uncommitted—heard Harris accept the nomination.
“What has happened in Gaza over the past 10 months is devastating,” the vice president said during the section of her speech that addressed the war. “So many innocent lives lost. Desperate, hungry people fleeing for safety, over and over again. The scale of suffering is heartbreaking.”
This was, if anything, a step backward from March, when Biden said in his State of the Union:
This war has taken a greater toll on innocent civilians than all previous wars in Gaza combined. More than 30,000 Palestinians have been killed. Most of whom are not Hamas. Thousands and thousands are innocent women and children. Girls and boys also orphaned. Nearly 2 million more Palestinians under bombardment or displaced. Homes destroyed, neighborhoods in rubble, cities in ruin. Families without food, water, medicine. It’s heartbreaking.
Either way, focusing on rhetoric is a distraction from the policy decisions that matter. As Uncommitted delegates said too many times to count at the convention: “Palestinians can’t eat words.”
In announcing the sit-in, Alawieh referenced how the parents of Hersh Goldberg-Polin had talked in their DNC speech about the idea in the Jewish tradition “every person is an entire universe.” He connected it to a Muslim idea that harming one person harms all of humanity. “As I was seated inside as a delegate, and hearing about the 109 hostages still in Gaza,” he explained. “I sat with them. Every one of those 109 people are universes.”
“And I was also thinking of the 16,000 children,” Alawieh continued. “I could have been one of those children.”
Why did no Palestinian go on that stage? Perhaps because it is easier for those enabling Israel’s war in Gaza not to hear these pleas of shared humanity. It would require them to maybe reckon with how easy it is to forget about who is at the end of the bombs we send to Israel. “We are talking about children,” Alawieh said outside the arena. “President Biden, Vice President Harris, what are we talking about here? We’re talking about children.”
Near midnight last week, Democratic delegates with the Uncommitted movement sat in protest outside Chicago’s United Center. Elected by hundreds of thousands of primary voters who oppose President Joe Biden’s response to the war in Gaza, the delegates were sent to the DNC “uncommitted”—not pledged to support any candidate at the convention. Earlier in the week, the group did what they were elected to do by calling for a permanent ceasefire and immediate arms embargo. They also continued a simpler request they’d started making before the convention: a spot for a speaker on the main stage to talk about Palestine.
On Wednesday evening, the DNC and Harris campaign finally told them that no Palestinian American would be allowed to speak from the main stage of the convention. Here was their last ditch effort. They hoped a sit-in—and the Civil Rights history it evoked—would push party leaders to change their minds.
As the delegates waited, I watched a middle-aged man walk past. He shouted at the protesters: “Free the hostages!”
“We agree,” a chorus of Uncommitted supporters replied.
He shouted again: “Free the hostages!”
“We agree,” a woman wearing a hijab repeated. The man, seemingly confused, wandered away.
That image, over the past week after the DNC, has stuck in my mind. Despite being a group of staunch Democrats working to affect change from within the party, the Harris campaign—and many Democrats—mostly treated Uncommitted and their allies as outsiders ruining a party at the DNC. And, often, it seemed without even understanding what they were saying or where agreement could be had. The result was a four-day convention that managed to find space for seemingly everyone on the main stage except those willing to speak personally about what is happening in Palestine.
Donald Trump’s former communications director Stephanie Grisham, who stayed through family separations but called it quits after January 6? Yes. An American doctor who saved the lives of children in Gaza? No. A former Republican Lieutenant Gov. of Georgia who Democrats said in March was on the “frontlines of banning abortion, restricting the right to vote, and cutting taxes for the rich and powerful?” Yes. Rep. Ruwa Romman, a Georgia Democrat currently fighting against that agenda in the state legislature? No.
By denying someone of Palestinian descent the chance to speak, the Harris campaign missed an easy opportunity to create distance between itself and President Biden’s failing and highly unpopular response to the war. A June poll by CBS News and YouGov found that 77 percent of Democrats and 62 percent of independents believe that the United States should not send weapons and supplies to Israel, despite the Biden administration’s support for continuing to do so. Only 23 percent of Democrats, compared with 76 percent of Republicans, told Gallup in June that they support Israel’s military actions in Gaza.
Nevertheless, Biden has pursued a policy of effectively unconditional support for Israel that is more in line with the preferences of Republican voters than independents and members of his own party. A Palestinian American speaker would have given Uncommitted delegates something to bring back to the voters who elected them to show that Harris understands this reality.
“If we go to [uncommitted voters] right now and say, Hey, trust us there’s been a change at the top and we feel like maybe Vice President Harris feels a little bit differently in her heart,” Uncommitted co-founder Abbas Alawieh explained at the group’s first press conference of the convention, “that’s not going to win back voters. We need a plan. We need to know how the killing is going to be stopped.”
The Uncommitted delegates made clear throughout the week that they want to defeat Trump. But they want Harris to take positions that will help them to convince their voters to support her. It is a remarkably pragmatic message for a movement that believes Harris has served as vice president in an administration enabling a genocide. Uncommitted delegates were not the communists I saw carrying a hammer and sickle–adorned banner at a protest outside the convention’s security perimeter. They were Democrats sent to Chicago by Democratic voters to pursue the inside track.
It was always going to be hard to sustain US media attention on Gaza as the presidential election came to dominate the minds of journalists and their bosses. Uncommitted, in a stroke of depressingly clear-eyed organizing tact, launched a movement that asked Democrats to vote uncommitted instead of backing Biden. And in doing so, Waleed Shahid, a Democratic strategist who previously served as the spokesperson for the Squad-adjacent Justice Democrats, along with Alawieh and fellow co-founder Layla Elabed, turned the effort to end the war into the kind of campaign story journalists could cover.
Alawieh, a large and gentle man who previously worked as Rep. Cori Bush’s (D-Mo.) chief of staff, served as an emotional spokesperson throughout the DNC. As a teenager, he survived Israeli bombs that fell on south Lebanon. “I remember what those bombs feel like when they drop,” Alawieh explained. “I remember how your bones shake within your body.”
The overarching message of his speeches was that the more than 16,000 children who have died in Gaza are just as human as the boy he once was. The need to make that point again and again was its own form of dehumanization. But Alawieh hoped that repeating the message would get Democrats to accept his help and change their course on Gaza.
As he staged the sit-in, Alawieh struggled to accept that there would be no speaker at the DNC: “We did everything right, you know?” Again and again, Alawieh told reporters he was waiting for party leaders to call and tell him they’d changed their mind.
Often, during the DNC, I was struck by the restraint of the Uncommitted movement. So much, it seemed, was set up for Democrats to accept. And all of this was despite what they had seen—and their families had experienced.
What often got lost in commentary about the Uncommitted movement during the DNC were the atrocities that forced this moment. Israelis and Palestinians are now almost one year into the war that began with the brutal October 7 Hamas-led attack that took the lives of nearly 1,200 people in Israel. Since then, Israel has killed more than 40,000 people in Gaza and injured nearly 100,000—most of whom have been civilians, according to the local health ministry. (Relative to Gaza’s population, this is the equivalent to the United States suffering 20 million casualties in less than a year.)
Thousands of bodies are believed to be buried under the rubble and potentially tens of thousands of others may die due to malnutrition, disease, and the destruction of medical infrastructure caused by the Israeli siege. This suffering is happening in a small strip of land that was considered by many experts to be an “open-air prison” long before October 7 as a result of a devastating Israeli blockade. Beyond the damage to human life, Gaza has been reduced to rubble by one of the most intense aerial bombing campaigns in human history. Top Israeli officials have spoken openly about wanting to destroy Gaza. Thanks in part to a steady stream of American armaments, they have now succeeded to an extent that is still not fully understood.
When I spoke in March with Omer Bartov, an Israeli military veteran who is now the Samuel Pisar Professor of Holocaust and Genocide Studies at Brown University, he believed Israel’s actions in Gaza were on the verge of genocide. Since then, Bartov has concluded that the line has been crossed. (He is far from alone in that conclusion among genocide scholars and human rights experts.)
At the DNC, most of this went largely unheard. The focus was understandably on the joy and unity inspired by Harris replacing Biden atop the ticket. For the first time in more than a decade, Democrats seemed to have the swagger of the Obama era. They didn’t want to jinx it but they knew a Trump-ending victory was tantalizingly close. They mocked the former president as a morally—and perhaps anatomically—small man.
But, for others, it was impossible to fully take part in that celebration with Gaza in mind. A Tuesday Uncommitted press conference made that clear. Featuring American doctors who have volunteered in Gaza, their testimony was at times punctuated by the sobbing of those listening. Mark Perlmutter, a Jewish American orthopedic surgeon in North Carolina, said in a statement read by fellow surgeon Feroze Sidhwa:
Never before have I seen a small child shot in the head and then in the chest, and I could never have imagined that I would see two such cases in less than two weeks. Never before have I seen a dozen small children screaming in pain and terror—crowded into a trauma bay smaller than my living room, their burning flesh filling the space so aggressively that my eyes started to burn… And, worst of all, I could never have imagined that my government would be supplying the weapons and funding that keeps this horrifying slaughter going. Not for one week. Not for one month. But for nearly an entire year now. To this day, I wear my late father’s mezuzah around my neck. Since returning from Gaza, I have also draped a keffiyeh over my shoulders. And there is no contradiction.
These horrors are not abstractions for many Uncommitted voters and their allies. At the Monday panel on Palestinian human rights attended by hundreds of people, Hala Hijazi introduced herself as a moderate Democrat and civil servant from San Francisco. Hijazi said that more than 100 of her family members had been killed in Gaza—including two the previous week.
“I’m here because they can no longer speak,” she said. “I’m here because it’s the least that I can do as an American, as a person of faith, and as a Democrat.”
Like other convention speeches, the Uncommitted movement knew that the speaker and remarks would have been edited and vetted beforehand. Initially, Uncommitted organizers put forward Tanya Haj-Hassan, a pediatric intensive care doctor who spoke at Uncommitted press conferences.
Wrenching moment as Dr. Tanya Haj-Hassan, a pediatric intensive care doctor who did heroic work volunteering in Gaza, describes people trying to discredit her by claiming and assuming she is Palestinian. As she makes clear, it shouldn’t matter. But she is not Palestinian. pic.twitter.com/fYovf67zCU
After Dr. Haj-Hassan was rejected for unspecified reasons, organizers sent over the names of people who have lost relatives in Gaza, as well as Palestinian American elected officials. Uncommitted organizers had heard that it was a good sign that their speaking request was still in limbo.
One of their top choices was Romman, the Georgia state representative. Romman’s message would have complemented the one delivered by Jon Polin and Rachel Goldberg, who gave a moving speech about how their son Hersh Goldberg-Polin was taken hostage on October 7. Romman saw letting an elected Democrat like herself give a carefully worded speech as the “bare minimum” party leaders could do. But they never contacted her to see what she wanted to say.
As a result, the Harris campaign likely did not see the speech Romman hoped to give until Mother Jones published it during the convention. Once it was out, even more moderate writers like Jonathan Chait wondered what all the fuss was about. Why go through so much trouble and sow so much disunity to prevent an elected Democrat from giving a speech that included lines like:
Let’s commit to each other, to electing Vice President Harris and defeating Donald Trump who uses my identity as a Palestinian as a slur. Let’s fight for the policies long overdue—from restoring access to abortions to ensuring a living wage, to demanding an end to reckless war and a ceasefire in Gaza.
It was the refusal to let a Palestinian American say even that that led to the sit-in on Wednesday night. Instead, on the final night of the convention, Rep. Romman ended up reading the speech she’d hoped to give to the many members of the media assembled before her outside the United Center. Later that night, the delegates locked arms and made their way back into the United Center. As they made their way in, it was increasingly possible to imagine a Democratic Party that one day saw them not as disruptors but champions of the values the party purports to hold. But by the time that moment arrives, there may be far fewer Palestines left to save.
As Romman has made clear, there is a long tradition of this kind of activism at the DNC. In 1988, the Reverend Jesse Jackson famously invoked how liberals have lauded history they might have said was too controversial at the time of its happening. After mentioning apartheid in South Africa, Jackson spoke of the need for the party to not shy away from controversy if it meant keeping a conscience. “Fannie Lou Hamer didn’t have the most votes in Atlantic City, but her principles have outlasted the life of every delegate who voted to lock her out,” Jackson argued. “If we are principled first, our politics will fall in place.” Romman invoked their legacy, adding that “I hope we listen now instead of in the future.”
Back inside the arena, delegates—committed and uncommitted—heard Harris accept the nomination.
“What has happened in Gaza over the past 10 months is devastating,” the vice president said during the section of her speech that addressed the war. “So many innocent lives lost. Desperate, hungry people fleeing for safety, over and over again. The scale of suffering is heartbreaking.”
This was, if anything, a step backward from March, when Biden said in his State of the Union:
This war has taken a greater toll on innocent civilians than all previous wars in Gaza combined. More than 30,000 Palestinians have been killed. Most of whom are not Hamas. Thousands and thousands are innocent women and children. Girls and boys also orphaned. Nearly 2 million more Palestinians under bombardment or displaced. Homes destroyed, neighborhoods in rubble, cities in ruin. Families without food, water, medicine. It’s heartbreaking.
Either way, focusing on rhetoric is a distraction from the policy decisions that matter. As Uncommitted delegates said too many times to count at the convention: “Palestinians can’t eat words.”
In announcing the sit-in, Alawieh referenced how the parents of Hersh Goldberg-Polin had talked in their DNC speech about the idea in the Jewish tradition “every person is an entire universe.” He connected it to a Muslim idea that harming one person harms all of humanity. “As I was seated inside as a delegate, and hearing about the 109 hostages still in Gaza,” he explained. “I sat with them. Every one of those 109 people are universes.”
“And I was also thinking of the 16,000 children,” Alawieh continued. “I could have been one of those children.”
Why did no Palestinian go on that stage? Perhaps because it is easier for those enabling Israel’s war in Gaza not to hear these pleas of shared humanity. It would require them to maybe reckon with how easy it is to forget about who is at the end of the bombs we send to Israel. “We are talking about children,” Alawieh said outside the arena. “President Biden, Vice President Harris, what are we talking about here? We’re talking about children.”
On June 6, the Rahma Worldwide international medical delegation arrived at Gaza European Hospital in Khan Younis. The humanitarian volunteers noticed something immediately: Some of the medical staff welcoming them—with the best food available, an assortment of cucumbers, hummus, and french fries—appeared remarkably young to be doctors.
Before the delegation could ask any questions, an airstrike hit the neighborhood. The walls of Gaza European Hospital—then one of the only functioning medical centers in the region—shook.
“Within the first 15 minutes that we were here,” Dr. Mohammed Mustafa, an emergency specialist from Australia, recalled, “nine people came in an ambulance, already dead.”
This, the doctors learned, was typical of the day-to-day life in Gaza. It was only later the international doctors would come to find out that many of the staff were not fully credentialed doctors, but student volunteers. Dr. Bing Li, another member of the Rahma delegation—a team of a dozen doctors from different countries, there to provide support to Gaza’s depleted health system—estimated that half of the people working in European Hospital’s emergency department in June were students or trainees from Gaza’s two medical schools.
“The health care system’s on the verge of collapsing,” Salman Dasti, an anesthesiologist who worked in Gazan hospitals both before and during this war, said. “It’s being propped up because of students.”
“In this war, I lost many of my colleagues and friends from school. I lost four members of my family.”
Mustafa found the students’ ability to keep the hospital functioning remarkable. “We were getting patients moving and getting them treated. It was pretty amazing to see,” he recalled, “especially since you can see how broken they are physically, emotionally.”
Nermeen Ziyad Abo Mostafa, 21, was in her third year of medical school before the war.Photo courtesy of Nermeen Ziyad Abo Mostafa.
On the first day, Li recalled meeting one of the volunteers keeping Gaza’s hospitals running. A patient was brought in and losing blood quickly from a blast injury to his leg. Li worked with a volunteer to stabilize the man; the volunteer then pulled Li aside and introduced herself excitedly in English: Her name was Nermeen Ziyad Abo Mostafa, and she was 20 years old.
“I had this impression she was this very friendly person, and she asked me if I wanted help with translation and seeing other patients,” Li said. The foreign doctor appreciated the aid. Earlier that day, Li, an emergency specialist from Arizona, had already had a heartbreaking experience. “We evaluated one patient that was maybe three or four years old,” she recalled. “Half his head was basically blown off.” (It ended up being “just one of many similar cases,” Li said; other doctors who have returned from Gaza say the Israeli military regularly targets children.)
As Nermeen showed Li around, another doctor noticed who the American was talking to and pulled her aside. Li was told Nermeen had a friend die earlier that same day in the blast that sent a raft of critically injured patients to the hospital.
“She was keeping this brave face despite learning that she lost somebody,” Li remembers.
Nermeen always wanted to be a doctor. As a young child, she said, she “had doctor’s tools in the form of toys.” As she grew older, she watched medical school graduation videos online, transfixed by the celebrations. She imagined herself as a cardiovascular specialist, or perhaps a pediatrician; she was overjoyed when, in 2021, she was finally able to enroll at her dream school: Al-Azhar University-Gaza. (For this article, I interviewed Nermeen using WhatsApp text messages and voice memos. Her internet and data access in Gaza is not good enough for phone calls of length.)
By October 7, 2023, Nermeen had made it through two and a half years of medical school. (In Gaza, students’ medical training starts immediately after high school, when they begin a six-year program of study.) Her tuition was expensive, and the hourlong bus ride to school from her home in Abasan Al-Kabira, a small city east of Khan Younis, made her carsick. But she was happy to be learning.
Then, the war came. In early November, Israeli warplanes destroyed Nermeen’s campus. By mid-January, Israeli bombardment had reduced every university in Gaza to rubble. Nermeen moved constantly. She evacuated from place to place four times in the first six months of the war. Eighty-four percent of Gaza is now under evacuation order. She watched classmates, professors, and friends die nearly every week. “In this war, I lost many of my colleagues and friends from school,” she told me. “I lost four members of my family.”
In April, Nermeen started volunteering at the hospital. It was the “one positive amid all of this,” she said. A third-year student would not ordinarily be actively treating patients. But her clinical phase began early. “I was learning from the doctors and helping them,” she said.
Video
Nermeen Ziyad Abo Mostafa, a medical student in Gaza, explains her work as a frontline doctor:
Many of those working and volunteering at the hospital had shifts lasting 24 hours—and no one I spoke with had received payment from the hospital since October. Anything shorter than a 24-hour shift would mean more trips on treacherous roads, made nearly impassable by millions of pounds of debris and sewage overflows from broken sanitation systems.
On a normal day, Nermeen began her shift early in the morning, connecting to the internet and trying to download lectures and readings from the website of her bombed university, before beginning to see the injured, “standing with doctors, talking to patients.”
Hasan Ali Abu Ghalyoon studying before the war. He is now 22, and unable to start his fourth year of medical school because his university has been destroyed.
As a volunteer, she cleaned wounds, translated for foreign doctors, and made treatment plans. “There were days when…the work was a lot, due to the arrival of large numbers of martyrs, and injured,” she said. “But the thing I loved to do most was stitches in the emergency department.”
This was made difficult by short supplies. The sutures in Gaza hospitals were labeled “not for use on humans,” Mohammed Mustafa, the ER doctor from Australia, recalled. Still, he helped Nermeen with her suture technique; he noticed that she was particularly careful in caring for patients during the process. Nermeen did her best to stitch in a way that would minimize scarring.
Conditions were hard. There were no beds, only rigid metal frames. Rooms were cramped and hot. Even the chairs in the hospital were occupied by patients, leaving little room for their caregivers to rest. The complex smelled of rot, and flies landed in patients’ wounds just as Nermeen finished disinfecting them. Even the suture needle was less sharp than it should be.
“It would take you maybe three, four attempts to pierce the skin with the suture,” Mustafa said. “And you can imagine trying to do that with very limited anesthetic, [on] children as well.”
Beyond the shortage of goods, there was also a shortage of personnel. Students did their best to fill in. One 22-year-old student who spoke to Mother Jones, Hasan Ali Abu Ghalyoon, was in his third year of dental school before the war. He was initially told he’d be working as a porter, then a translator. He spent four months volunteering at European Hospital, unable to see his family in Deir al-Balah after the Israeli army took over the area between the hospital and his family’s tent.
“I slept in the office of the International Committee of the Red Cross at the hospital for four months,” he said. ‘There was a broken bed that does not move from its place,” which was not used except for emergencies. When it was unoccupied by patients—and when he wasn’t being called to translate for a surgeon in the middle of the night—he got that bed.
As he spent more time in the hospital, he learned “there was a severe shortage of dentists specializing in maxillofacial surgery,” so he quickly found himself assisting with those surgeries, too. “It is difficult to talk to patients with burns or fractures,” he said, “some of whom lost a loved one with the same injury minutes before.”
Medical student Hasan Ali Abu Ghalyoon spent four months volunteering at Gaza European Hospital. Sometimes, he slept on a broken bed in the ICRC office there.Photo courtesy of Hasan Ali Abu Ghalyoon
Sometimes, the patients the students cared for were people they recognized. On the mid-June day when Nermeen met Bing Li, she wasn’t supposed to be at work. She was at her family’s tent, taking a rest day, when she felt a bomb detonate nearby. “We saw the smoke of the bombing, and a large number of ambulances,” she recalled. Without internet access, Nermeen worried her own relatives might be among the dead.
Nermeen decided to go to the hospital on her day off. “I put on the uniform and walked to the road.” A man with a car offered her a ride when he saw her medical uniform. His family lived in the area that had just been bombed, Nermeen remembered, and he was headed to the hospital, too. Once there, she opened her phone to scroll through the names of the dead. “My friend’s name was among the names of the martyrs of this massacre.” She rushed to the emergency room in hopes that the news was wrong. “But it was true.”
Most of her friend’s family had been killed. She found her friend’s younger sister, Samar, waiting alone, with wounds all over her body. Nermeen monitored her vital signs, stitched up a deep gash in her left foot, and patched up two wounds on her leg.
Samar was later transferred to a different department, where her head wounds were treated. “She remained in care for several days,” Nermeen remembered. Then, Samar was discharged, but “she was still in a state of shock, and would not speak.” At the end of July, Nermeen received word that Samar had been killed, too: “She joined the rest of her family.”
Video
Nermeen talks about the death of her friends in Gaza:
Gaza’s medical system has been painfully constricted for decades. This is partially due to the longstanding Israeli policy of blocking “dual-use items” at the border—medical devices that could, allegedly, be used as weapons. Those items have included crutches, hearing aid batteries, thermometers, and incubators. This means the doctors of Gaza must make do.
Dasti, the anaesthesiologist from San Francisco, visited Gaza multiple times as part of a medical mission group with the Palestinian Children’s Relief Fund before 2023. “I was fairly impressed with the robustness of the health care system,” he said. “I mean, it still lacked resources, but I was pretty impressed with the training that the physicians there had.”
There were 36 fully functioning hospitals in Gaza prior to the war. By mid-August, according to the World Health Organization, only 16 of those 36 hospitals were even partially operational. These 16 hospitals have treated patients far beyond their capacity. Staff is low: The UN Human Rights Office reported that more than 500 medical workers have been killed in Gaza since October 7. And an NBC News investigation recently suggested Israel has targeted doctors for kidnapping and taken them to torture camps. Hanan Balkhy, Eastern Mediterranean regional director for the World Health Organization, said that as of early August, WHO has been able to verify more than 500 attacks on medical personnel in Gaza.
This leaves a staggering hole for those in need of care. The WHO estimates that nearly 93,000 people in Gaza are injured. Among those 16 remaining hospitals, there are fewer than 1,500 hospital beds—about one for every 60 injured people. And those numbers don’t account for those who would ordinarily require hospital beds even in peacetime: diabetic patients requiring dialysis, cancer patients, and pregnant women needing somewhere to give birth.
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“The remaining students are now basically frontline doctors, because of just the lack of personnel,” Dasti said. Students spent their days at European Hospital “functioning as essentially an attending physician, while not getting paid and working long arduous hours with little sleep.”
Balkhy, of WHO, said the students are exhibiting “more resilience than anyone should need to have.” Nermeen and her classmates dream of continuing their education—perhaps leaving and studying elsewhere if the borders reopen—but, as Balkhy said, it is “a race against time and circumstance.”
Conditions in Gaza, meanwhile, are only worsening. WHO confirmed the first case of polio in Gaza in 25 years on August 22: “Health workers have been digging graves for patients they know they are not able to save because they don’t have the resources needed.”
Forty-five international doctors who spent time in Gaza published a letter on July 25 addressed to President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris. Bing Li and Salman Dasti were among the signatories. They detailed the injuries they’d seen—preteens deliberately shot in the head, healthy babies dying of preventable diseases—and noted their “acute awareness” that Gaza’s medical professionals have been targeted. The doctors begged the president for an arms embargo, and for “unfettered aid delivery” of antibiotics, painkillers, and sutures.
On August 1, 300 days into the destruction of Gaza, Nermeen turned 21 in a white tent, as temperatures soared above 90 degrees.As she sent me WhatsApp voice notes, warplanes buzzed overhead and her siblings chattered in the background.
She had been away from the hospital for a month. It was evacuated on July 1. Patients left, or were carried out by hand, over a chaotic 24 hours. “There’s really no roads because they’ve all been destroyed,” Dasti remembered. Taking a patient a couple of miles to the nearest hospital took at least an hour. Even in the United States, under the best of conditions, it is hard to move a patient from the ICU down the hall to the operating room safely. “I think some of them died on the way,” Dasti said.
Hasan, the dental student, evacuated too. He has spent the past two months sharing an 8-by-20-foot tent with four families in Deir al-Balah refugee camp, not far from the site of the Al-Tabin School bombing, in which the Israel Defense Forces used US-made bombs to hit a school building and kill nearly 100 people. He spends time making videos about his work in the hospital, which the international doctors he met have been sharing at conferences back home.
Hasan has been trying to return to European Hospital to see if he could help if it reopens—and perhaps find a path to continuing his studies. (World Health Organization officials told Mother Jones that they are partnering with the Gaza Ministry of Health to restore emergency services at the hospital, though the timeline has been postponed amid heavy bombing.) On WhatsApp, Hasan showed me a map outlining the route he planned to take, with red danger zones highlighted. When he tried to make the journey, “the people on the road told me to go back [because] the army is on the road.” He turned around and returned to Deir al-Balah.
When we messaged last week, Hasan said he had heard a system of buses organized by the International Committee of the Red Cross might be able to bring him back to Khan Younis. But a day after we spoke, Israeli forces once again ordered the evacuation of large portions of Khan Younis—and bombed portions of Deir al-Balah, where Hasan now lives. But he hasn’t given up. “I will try again,” he said.
Video
Nermeen discusses how she fled during the war...
Nermeen faces similar obstacles. “I am impatiently waiting for the hospital to reopen, because I miss helping and learning new things,” she said. While she heard that administrative work on reopening the hospital began in mid-August, she doesn’t know when it will reopen fully. And returning to the hospital might be dangerous: “Sudden bombing could occur on the road.” So, instead, she has returned to her studies, when the intermittent-at-best internet allows, and when the “terrifying” noises of artillery shells pause long enough to let her focus. One day, Nermeen announced proudly that she’d managed to turn in her endocrinology exam online, to a virtual classroom run by professors from a university that, physically, no longer exists.
“All of this losing makes my heart broken,” Nermeen said. “I hope I can be strong, because my dreams wait [for] me, and many people…I want to help them.”
Delegates with the Uncommitted movement at the Democratic National Convention have continued pushing this week for either a Palestinian American or a doctor who has volunteered in Gaza to be allowed to speak on the main stage of the arena. There are thirty uncommitted delegates at the DNC representing the hundreds of thousands who voted uncommitted in lieu of supporting President Joe Biden’s primary campaign. They have been calling for a ceasefire and a halt to arms transfers to Israel while in Chicago. As we reported on August 1, the Uncommitted movement has also been continually requesting a speaker for the main stage.
Last night, national Democrats denied their request for a speaker. Yesterday, ceasefire delegates began a sit-in to continue pushing for a brief speaking slot tonight.
Those concerned about the war in Gaza have been able to hold an unprecedented panel on Palestinian human rights. And at a press conference on Tuesday organized by the Uncommitted movement, doctors told heartwrenching stories of what they’ve seen. But they have not been allowed to address the convention as a whole.
On Wednesday evening, Jon Polin and Rachel Goldberg gave a moving speech from the main stage about their son Hersh Goldberg-Polin, who was taken hostage during Hamas’ attack on October 7. Uncommitted activists supported the decision to provide an opportunity for a hostage family to speak at the convention. But they believe it is also important for delegates and voters to hear from someone who can speak to the suffering in Gaza, where more than 40,000 people have been killed, according to the local health ministry.
Mother Jones obtained the speech that Georgia State Rep. Ruwa Romman, a Palestinian American and Democrat, is still hoping to give.
Romman has been a vocal and prominent activist for Uncommitted. Waleed Shahid, a strategist for the movement, said that she was among a list of potential speakers given to national Democrats. Initially, the Uncommitted movement pushed for Dr. Tanya Haj-Hassan, a pediatric intensive care doctor who volunteered in Gaza, to speak. (She is not Palestinian.) Shahid said this request was denied earlier in the week. After, the movement sent a list of more names for potential speakers, including Rep. Romman. (Shahid said he heard that Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s office was pushing for a speech from Romman.)
In an interview, Romman called herself a safe, last resort. “If an elected official in a swing state who is Palestinian cannot make it on that stage nobody else can,” she told Mother Jones.
Below, you can find the speech Romman wants to give. Uncommitted says it was open to multiple speakers. Rep. Romman and Uncommitted organizers both confirmed that this was the speech she was planning to give if allowed for a potential 2-minute speaking slot. Uncommitted said they were open to the speech being edited and vetted. They said the DNC did not ask to see the speech.
“We prepped the speech,” Romman told Mother Jones. “We don’t know why the campaign said no. We literally have no feedback. We are in the dark.”
The DNC did not respond to requests for comment in time for publication about why Romman—or another speaker—would not have been acceptable.
“I want to be clear,” Romman said. “We’ve been in negotiations for days. This did not just come up…We’ve been talking about this for at least a week. In addition, the campaign told us that not getting a ‘no’ [initially upon first hearing the request] was a really good sign. For them to give us a ‘no’ the same day that Geoff Duncan [a Republican from Georgia] was on the stage—especially when it was my name—was just absolutely a slap in the face.”
Here is the text of Romman’s speech:
My name is Ruwa Romman, and I’m honored to be the first Palestinian elected to public office in the great state of Georgia and the first Palestinian to ever speak at the Democratic National Convention. My story begins in a small village near Jerusalem, called Suba, where my dad’s family is from. My mom’s roots trace back to Al Khalil, or Hebron. My parents, born in Jordan, brought us to Georgia when I was eight, where I now live with my wonderful husband and our sweet pets.
Growing up, my grandfather and I shared a special bond. He was my partner in mischief—whether it was sneaking me sweets from the bodega or slipping a $20 into my pocket with that familiar wink and smile. He was my rock, but he passed away a few years ago, never seeing Suba or any part of Palestine again. Not a day goes by that I don’t miss him.
This past year has been especially hard. As we’ve been moral witnesses to the massacres in Gaza, I’ve thought of him, wondering if this was the pain he knew too well. When we watched Palestinians displaced from one end of the Gaza Strip to the other I wanted to ask him how he found the strength to walk all those miles decades ago and leave everything behind.
But in this pain, I’ve also witnessed something profound—a beautiful, multifaith, multiracial, and multigenerational coalition rising from despair within our Democratic Party. For 320 days, we’ve stood together, demanding to enforce our laws on friend and foe alike to reach a ceasefire, end the killing of Palestinians, free all the Israeli and Palestinian hostages, and to begin the difficult work of building a path to collective peace and safety. That’s why we are here—members of this Democratic Party committed to equal rights and dignity for all. What we do here echoes around the world.
They’ll say this is how it’s always been, that nothing can change. But remember Fannie Lou Hamer—shunned for her courage, yet she paved the way for an integrated Democratic Party. Her legacy lives on, and it’s her example we follow.
But we can’t do it alone. This historic moment is full of promise, but only if we stand together. Our party’s greatest strength has always been our ability to unite. Some see that as a weakness, but it’s time we flex that strength.
Let’s commit to each other, to electing Vice President Harris and defeating Donald Trump who uses my identity as a Palestinian as a slur. Let’s fight for the policies long overdue—from restoring access to abortions to ensuring a living wage, to demanding an end to reckless war and a ceasefire in Gaza. To those who doubt us, to the cynics and the naysayers, I say, yes we can—yes we can be a Democratic Party that prioritizes funding our schools and hospitals, not for endless wars. That fights for an America that belongs to all of us—Black, brown, and white, Jews and Palestinians, all of us, like my grandfather taught me, together.
Delegates with the Uncommitted movement at the Democratic National Convention have continued pushing this week for either a Palestinian American or a doctor who has volunteered in Gaza to be allowed to speak on the main stage of the arena. There are thirty uncommitted delegates at the DNC representing the hundreds of thousands who voted uncommitted in lieu of supporting President Joe Biden’s primary campaign. They have been calling for a ceasefire and a halt to arms transfers to Israel while in Chicago. As we reported on August 1, the Uncommitted movement has also been continually requesting a speaker for the main stage.
Last night, national Democrats denied their request for a speaker. Yesterday, ceasefire delegates began a sit-in to continue pushing for a brief speaking slot tonight.
Those concerned about the war in Gaza have been able to hold an unprecedented panel on Palestinian human rights. And at a press conference on Tuesday organized by the Uncommitted movement, doctors told heartwrenching stories of what they’ve seen. But they have not been allowed to address the convention as a whole.
On Wednesday evening, Jon Polin and Rachel Goldberg gave a moving speech from the main stage about their son Hersh Goldberg-Polin, who was taken hostage during Hamas’ attack on October 7. Uncommitted activists supported the decision to provide an opportunity for a hostage family to speak at the convention. But they believe it is also important for delegates and voters to hear from someone who can speak to the suffering in Gaza, where more than 40,000 people have been killed, according to the local health ministry.
Mother Jones obtained the speech that Georgia State Rep. Ruwa Romman, a Palestinian American and Democrat, is still hoping to give.
Romman has been a vocal and prominent activist for Uncommitted. Waleed Shahid, a strategist for the movement, said that she was among a list of potential speakers given to national Democrats. Initially, the Uncommitted movement pushed for Dr. Tanya Haj-Hassan, a pediatric intensive care doctor who volunteered in Gaza, to speak. (She is not Palestinian.) Shahid said this request was denied earlier in the week. After, the movement sent a list of more names for potential speakers, including Rep. Romman. (Shahid said he heard that Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s office was pushing for a speech from Romman.)
In an interview, Romman called herself a safe, last resort. “If an elected official in a swing state who is Palestinian cannot make it on that stage nobody else can,” she told Mother Jones.
Below, you can find the speech Romman wants to give. Uncommitted says it was open to multiple speakers. Rep. Romman and Uncommitted organizers both confirmed that this was the speech she was planning to give if allowed for a potential 2-minute speaking slot. Uncommitted said they were open to the speech being edited and vetted. They said the DNC did not ask to see the speech.
“We prepped the speech,” Romman told Mother Jones. “We don’t know why the campaign said no. We literally have no feedback. We are in the dark.”
The DNC did not respond to requests for comment in time for publication about why Romman—or another speaker—would not have been acceptable.
“I want to be clear,” Romman said. “We’ve been in negotiations for days. This did not just come up…We’ve been talking about this for at least a week. In addition, the campaign told us that not getting a ‘no’ [initially upon first hearing the request] was a really good sign. For them to give us a ‘no’ the same day that Geoff Duncan [a Republican from Georgia] was on the stage—especially when it was my name—was just absolutely a slap in the face.”
Here is the text of Romman’s speech:
My name is Ruwa Romman, and I’m honored to be the first Palestinian elected to public office in the great state of Georgia and the first Palestinian to ever speak at the Democratic National Convention. My story begins in a small village near Jerusalem, called Suba, where my dad’s family is from. My mom’s roots trace back to Al Khalil, or Hebron. My parents, born in Jordan, brought us to Georgia when I was eight, where I now live with my wonderful husband and our sweet pets.
Growing up, my grandfather and I shared a special bond. He was my partner in mischief—whether it was sneaking me sweets from the bodega or slipping a $20 into my pocket with that familiar wink and smile. He was my rock, but he passed away a few years ago, never seeing Suba or any part of Palestine again. Not a day goes by that I don’t miss him.
This past year has been especially hard. As we’ve been moral witnesses to the massacres in Gaza, I’ve thought of him, wondering if this was the pain he knew too well. When we watched Palestinians displaced from one end of the Gaza Strip to the other I wanted to ask him how he found the strength to walk all those miles decades ago and leave everything behind.
But in this pain, I’ve also witnessed something profound—a beautiful, multifaith, multiracial, and multigenerational coalition rising from despair within our Democratic Party. For 320 days, we’ve stood together, demanding to enforce our laws on friend and foe alike to reach a ceasefire, end the killing of Palestinians, free all the Israeli and Palestinian hostages, and to begin the difficult work of building a path to collective peace and safety. That’s why we are here—members of this Democratic Party committed to equal rights and dignity for all. What we do here echoes around the world.
They’ll say this is how it’s always been, that nothing can change. But remember Fannie Lou Hamer—shunned for her courage, yet she paved the way for an integrated Democratic Party. Her legacy lives on, and it’s her example we follow.
But we can’t do it alone. This historic moment is full of promise, but only if we stand together. Our party’s greatest strength has always been our ability to unite. Some see that as a weakness, but it’s time we flex that strength.
Let’s commit to each other, to electing Vice President Harris and defeating Donald Trump who uses my identity as a Palestinian as a slur. Let’s fight for the policies long overdue—from restoring access to abortions to ensuring a living wage, to demanding an end to reckless war and a ceasefire in Gaza. To those who doubt us, to the cynics and the naysayers, I say, yes we can—yes we can be a Democratic Party that prioritizes funding our schools and hospitals, not for endless wars. That fights for an America that belongs to all of us—Black, brown, and white, Jews and Palestinians, all of us, like my grandfather taught me, together.
The most significantaspect of the press conference held by the Uncommitted movement on Monday morning at the Democratic National Convention was that it happened at all. Never before has there been an official delegation at the DNC devoted to defending the rights of Palestinians.
Since President Joe Biden stepped aside, Democrats have tried to frame the campaign of Vice President Kamala Harris as one of “joy” and “unity.” Despite fears of infighting, the party quickly coalesced around Harris and moved beyond the questions about Biden’s age. But one of the central problems of the primary still looms large: How to handle the war in Gaza.
“Unity is great,” said Uncommitted organizer Natalia Latif. “But that unity can’t come at the cost of Palestinian lives.”
Inside the hall are the thirty uncommitted delegates elected by primary voters in states including Minnesota, Michigan, and Washington. At the Monday press conference, these delegates repeatedly emphasized their main two demands: a permanent ceasefire and an arms embargo against Israel.
They are vastly outnumbered by the more than 4,000 delegates pledged to Harris. But the presence of uncommitted delegates elected by a grassroots movement remains a powerful sign of many Democratic voters’ outrage over Israel’s actions in Gaza and their vote to push for a ceasefire and overall shift in how Democrats work with Israel.
“Unity is great,” said Uncommitted organizer Natalia Latif. “But that unity can’t come at the cost of Palestinian lives.”
The efforts to pressure Vice President Kamala Harris and the Democratic Party are split between those within the convention hall and the protesters outside. And not all these groups are in total agreement on every issue, or on methods for pushing Democrats.
Outside the arena, a major protest is scheduled for later on Monday. Protest organizers have said they expect up to 40,000 people to attend. The march is sponsored by a coalition of more than 200 groups including the Arab American Action Network, American Friends Service Committee, and the Democratic Socialists of America, along with the Chicago chapters of Students for Justice in Palestine and Jewish Voice for Peace. Other groups in the march coalition such as the Denver Communists have much smaller national profiles.
"Palestinian children can't eat words." —@luluelabed
Thus far, Harris has not broken from Biden on Gaza, even if she has shown more empathy for suffering Palestinians. But some delegates and other pro-peace activists see her as more persuadable than Biden, whose fervent support for Israel calcified back when he was a senator in the 1980s.
Over the past month, delegates with the Uncommitted movement have been pushing for a speaking slot for Tanya Haj-Hassan, a pediatric intensive care doctor who saw the carnage inflicted by the Israeli assault on Gaza while volunteering at the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital.
“I’m hoping to provide moral witness to the delegates of the Democratic National Convention because an end to this military campaign is the only way to preserve human life under the current circumstances,” Haj-Hassan said on an Uncommitted movement Zoom call on August 1. Thus far, the DNC has not agreed to let Haj-Hassan or Palestinian American elected officials speak from the mainstage of the DNC. Relatives of hostages taken by Hamas during its attack on October 7 have also reportedly not been told whether they will have a speaking slot.
“I think that building bridges is going to be the most effective approach in this specific space.”
“It’s definitely telling that there’s not going to be a Palestinian speaking on the convention stage,” Latif, the Uncommitted organizer, said. The DNC will, for the first time in its history, host an official panel on Palestinian human rights on Monday afternoon.
Sabrene Odeh, a delegate from Washington, said on Friday that those associated wtih the Uncommitted movement will speak to as many fellow Democratic delegates as possible this week to build support for their movement. “A lot of it’s real old school,” said Odeh, who is Palestinian American. “I think most of my days are going to be spent giving my elevator speeches to folks—and I really hope that they care about what’s going on in Gaza.”
Odeh and other uncommitted delegates are trying to build support for a broader ceasefire delegation that includes Harris delegates. “I think that building bridges is going to be the most effective approach in this specific space,” she explained.
To that end, Uncommitted organizers estimated some 200 delegates have already pledged to sign a petition calling to make an arms embargo part of the Democratic Party platform this campaign cycle. Organizers plan to send the petition to Harris. The 91-page platform the party unveiled Sunday evening, according to the Washington Post, makes no mention of an arms embargo and is expected to pass as written.
Latif said that Harris delegates who sign on to the “ceasefire” pledge and walk around the convention with “not another bomb” pins and t-shirts will help show Harris and Biden that “even their own delegates are in line with this policy.”
“A ceasefire and an arms embargo is actually in line with what a majority of Democrats want, and our leadership right now is actually out of step with those desires,” Latif said. According to one Data for Progress poll in May, 83 percent of Democratic voters support a permanent ceasefire between Israel and Hamas. Latif and the Uncommitted Movement believe that a permanent ceasefire can only come about when coupled with an arms embargo.
Uncommitted delegates are clear-eyed about the challenges they face. Harris has served as vice president while Biden has offered Israel almost unconditional support as it wages a war on Gaza that has killed more than 40,000 people. The International Court of Justice has found that Israel’s actions may constitute genocide, and has argued that the country’s conduct in the West Bank and Gaza is equivalent to apartheid. The chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court is seeking arrest warrants for crimes against humanity for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, along with leaders of Hamas for their actions on October 7.
“At the end of the day, what we really want folks to realize is this movement has been pulled together in like six months,” Odeh said. “This is incredibly, incredibly successful—especially for really something that is one issue. We don’t see this happen very often. And so as a Palestinian, I’m just incredibly proud.”
Update, August 19, 2024, 3:48 p.m.: This story has been updated to reflect more signatories of the call for an arms embargo.
The most significantaspect of the press conference held by the Uncommitted Movement on Monday morning at the Democratic National Convention was that it happened at all. Never before has there been an official delegation at the DNC devoted to defending the rights of Palestinians.
Since President Joe Biden stepped aside, Democrats have tried to frame the campaign of Vice President Kamala Harris as one of “joy” and “unity.” Despite fears of infighting, the party quickly coalesced around Harris and moved beyond the questions about Biden’s age. But one of the central problems of the primary still looms large: How to handle the war in Gaza.
“Unity is great,” said Uncommitted organizer Natalia Latif. “But that unity can’t come at the cost of Palestinian lives.”
Inside the hall are the thirty uncommitted delegates elected by primary voters in states including Minnesota, Michigan, and Washington. At the Monday press conference, these delegates repeatedly emphasized their main two demands: a permanent ceasefire and an arms embargo against Israel.
They are vastly outnumbered by the more than 4,000 delegates pledged to Harris. But the presence of uncommitted delegates elected by a grassroots movement remains a powerful sign of many Democratic voters’ outrage over Israel’s actions in Gaza and their vote to push for a ceasefire and overall shift in how Democrats work with Israel.
“Unity is great,” said Uncommitted organizer Natalia Latif. “But that unity can’t come at the cost of Palestinian lives.”
The efforts to pressure Vice President Kamala Harris and the Democratic Party are split between those within the convention hall and the protesters outside. And not all these groups are in total agreement on every issue, or on methods for pushing Democrats.
Outside the arena, a major protest is scheduled for later on Monday. Protest organizers have said they expect up to 40,000 people to attend. The march is sponsored by a coalition of more than 200 groups including the Arab American Action Network, American Friends Service Committee, and the Democratic Socialists of America, along with the Chicago chapters of Students for Justice in Palestine and Jewish Voice for Peace. Other groups in the march coalition such as the Denver Communists have much smaller national profiles.
"Palestinian children can't eat words." —@luluelabed
Thus far, Harris has not broken from Biden on Gaza, even if she has shown more empathy for suffering Palestinians. But some delegates and other pro-peace activists see her as more persuadable than Biden, whose fervent support for Israel calcified back when he was a senator in the 1980s.
Over the past month, delegates with the Uncommitted movement have been pushing for a speaking slot for Tanya Haj-Hassan, a pediatric intensive care doctor who saw the carnage inflicted by the Israeli assault on Gaza while volunteering at the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital.
“I’m hoping to provide moral witness to the delegates of the Democratic National Convention because an end to this military campaign is the only way to preserve human life under the current circumstances,” Haj-Hassan said on an Uncommitted Movement Zoom call on August 1. Thus far, the DNC has not agreed to let Haj-Hassan or Palestinian American elected officials speak from the mainstage of the DNC. Relatives of hostages taken by Hamas during its attack on October 7 have also reportedly not been told whether they will have a speaking slot.
“I think that building bridges is going to be the most effective approach in this specific space.”
“It’s definitely telling that there’s not going to be a Palestinian speaking on the convention stage,” Latif, the Uncommitted organizer, said. The DNC will, for the first time in its history, host an official panel on Palestinian human rights on Monday afternoon.
Sabrene Odeh, a delegate from Washington, said on Friday that those associated wtih the Uncommitted movement will speak to as many fellow Democratic delegates as possible this week to build support for their movement. “A lot of it’s real old school,” said Odeh, who is Palestinian American. “I think most of my days are going to be spent giving my elevator speeches to folks—and I really hope that they care about what’s going on in Gaza.”
Odeh and other uncommitted delegates are trying to build support for a broader ceasefire delegation that includes Harris delegates. “I think that building bridges is going to be the most effective approach in this specific space,” she explained.
To that end, Uncommitted organizers estimated 120 delegates have already pledged to sign a petition calling to make an arms embargo part of the Democratic Party platform this campaign cycle. Organizers plan to send the petition to Harris. The 91-page platform the party unveiled Sunday evening, according to the Washington Post, makes no mention of an arms embargo and is expected to pass as written.
Latif said that Harris delegates who sign on to the “ceasefire” pledge and walk around the convention with “not another bomb” pins and t-shirts will help show Harris and Biden that “even their own delegates are in line with this policy.”
“A ceasefire and an arms embargo is actually in line with what a majority of Democrats want, and our leadership right now is actually out of step with those desires,” Latif said. According to one Data for Progress poll in May, 83 percent of Democratic voters support a permanent ceasefire between Israel and Hamas. Latif and the Uncommitted Movement believe that a permanent ceasefire can only come about when coupled with an arms embargo.
Uncommitted delegates are clear-eyed about the challenges they face. Harris has served as vice president while Biden has offered Israel almost unconditional support as it wages a war on Gaza that has killed more than 40,000 people. The International Court of Justice has found that Israel’s actions may constitute genocide, and has argued that the country’s conduct in the West Bank and Gaza is equivalent to apartheid. The chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court is seeking arrest warrants for crimes against humanity for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, along with leaders of Hamas for their actions on October 7.
“At the end of the day, what we really want folks to realize is this movement has been pulled together in like six months,” Odeh said. “This is incredibly, incredibly successful—especially for really something that is one issue. We don’t see this happen very often. And so as a Palestinian, I’m just incredibly proud.”
Ilhan Omar won renomination to Congress on Tuesday night, beating back a repeat challenger.
Leading up to the primary, it seemed Rep. Omar, after an aggressive campaign backed by a major financial advantage, would cruise to an easy win against her familiar opponent, Don Samuels, who lost the 2022 primary by a little over 2,000 votes. And that’s more or less how it turned out: Within two hours of the close of voting, Omar was declared the winner with a victory margin of around 16,00o votes, or 14 percent.
In the race’s final days, conservatives looking to oust Omar mounted a late effort to take advantage of Minnesota’s open primary format and convince Republicans to skip their party’s primary and instead vote for Samuels, a former member of the Minneapolis city council.
Royce White, the state GOP-endorsed Senate candidate, posted to X that he would gladly give up 5,000 votes in the fifth congressional district to help unseat Omar. Far-right influencer Laura Loomer tweeted that “Republicans, Independents and Democrats have a once in a lifetime opportunity to remove a HAMAS supporter from Congress. Everyone can vote in the open primary.”
A recent investigation by The Interceptrevealed a WhatsApp group named “Zionists for Don Samuels,” that played host to pro-Israel activists and a campaign consultant for Don Samuels; the group chat had also explored corralling Republican voters against Omar in the primary.
Omar won her primary by 14 percent.
Samuels campaign stated they had no part in the plan. On Twitter, Omar wrote that it “is shameful that my opponent is actively courting Republican votes.”
One participant in “Zionists for Don Samuels” boasted he had raised more than $120,000 for a pro-Samuels super-PAC in the last two weeks, part of a fundraising effort discussed in the channel that arose in response to a lack of support for Samuels from the American Israel Public Affairs Committee. That lobbying group and its spending vehicle, the United Democracy Project have put over $25 million this primary season to supporting challengers that rose up to take on “squad” members who have been critical of Israel’s assault on Gaza.
While AIPAC reportedly planned to spend $100 million to elect more pro-Israel members of Congress in 2024, they seem to have sidestepped Samuels. Before he announced his repeat campaign, AIPAC sought to recruit sitting city councilmember LaTrisha Vetaw, as they reportedly believed Samuels had “reached his capacity” in 2022. But Vetaw’s campaign did not take shape, and Samuels again became Omar’s challenger.
In the 2022 primary, the Samuels-backing super-PAC Make a Difference MN 05 received $350,000 from UDP—a late donation that went unreported before the polls closed. This year, if late AIPAC support for Samuels exists, it has yet to be seen. But an almost identically named super-PAC sprung up in late July to amass over $100,000. Whatever its final receipts, this late funding was not enough to overcome Omar’s nearly $5 million lead.
Omar will now face Dalia Al-Aqidi, an Iraqi-immigrant who has the GOP endorsement, in the general election. The district has not sent a Republican to Congress since 1963. Omar won the 2022 general election with roughly 75 percent of the vote.
Salma Hamamy and Zainab Hakim are no strangers to disruption.
Over the last few months at the University of Michigan, the two have loudly called for the school to officially divest from Israel and its ongoing military offensive in Gaza. They were involved in their school’s Gaza solidarity encampment and briefly took over their campus administration building for about eight hours (before the police department pepper sprayed, removed, and arrested them).
But they never expected their action at Vice President Kamala Harris’ Detroit rally this week—in which they loudly yelled for a ceasefire, prompting Harris’ scorn—would gain so much attention.
The two shouted, “Kamala, you need to call for a ceasefire in Gaza. We demand an arms embargo and a free Palestine.” Then, they chanted: “Kamala, Kamala, you can’t hide, we won’t vote for genocide.” (Such actions have been common at President Joe Biden’s events for months.)
The vice president was both stern and direct in her response. “If you want Donald Trump to win, say that,” Harris commanded from the stage. “Otherwise, I’m speaking.”
Her supporters at the rally roared in applause, drowning out both Hamamy and Hakim, who were escorted out of the rally.
Following the Hamamy and Hakim protest, Phil Gordon, an adviser to Vice President Harris posted on social media that her position has been clear. “She will always ensure Israel is able to defend itself against Iran and Iran-backed terrorist groups. She does not support an arms embargo on Israel,” Gordon wrote. “She will continue to work to protect civilians in Gaza and to uphold international humanitarian law.” (The Harris campaign did not respond to questions in time for publication.)
The two activists spoke with Mother Jones about their protest, what they make of the vice president’s response, and the implications it has for the upcoming election.
This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.
Why did you interrupt Vice President Kamala Harris’ speech, and what were you hoping to achieve?
Hamamy: If she is expecting to come to Michigan—because it is such a crucial swing state in the election—she must understand that there is a primary issue for Michigan voters. And it is the entire reason as to why we are in this predicament in the very first place and to why she’s actually running and why Biden dropped: It is because of the approach to Palestine.
And if she’s not going to take any crucial steps forward—or at least take a moral position—then there will be a movement that she must face. And she will face it through the protesters attending and disrupting and making it very clear where we stand.
How did you think she would react?
Hakim: I guess the closest thing that I had imagined is that we we would be told we weren’t interested in dialog and we were just interested yelling and that’s maybe what I imagined she would say.
And what do you make of the vice president’s retort? “If you want Donald Trump to win say that. Otherwise, I’m speaking.” Do you want Donald Trump to win?
Hamamy: No, of course not.
I think it’s a really interesting response. And a questionable response to people who are saying, we want an end to the genocide. The fact that her first response is: Oh, so you want Donald Trump to win. It just shows her inability to understand what constituents are saying.
“That is not a good way to act with people who have directly lost family members due to the ongoing genocide.”
When people are demanding a ceasefire and arms embargo and an end to the genocide and you say that we want Donald Trump to step in—it just shows a lack of accountability. It shows a lack of leadership, a lack of responsibility, and a lack of ownership.
There was a mix of reactions to her response online. I think some were applauding the vice president for being so direct—and shutting all of it down (like there was the head nod, the stare). And there were others who were far more skeptical, kind of realizing the Harris campaign is jeopardizing a win in Michigan by potentially alienating the large Arab-American community with that kind of response.
What did you make of how everyone reacted?
Hamamy: For the people who were applauding her body language or saying, “Oh, she shut those protesters up.” I was disturbed by them thinking that that was a good stance to take when someone is calling for a ceasefire. When someone’s calling for an end to weaponry shipments being sent overseas, that is not a good way to interact with constituents. That is not a good way to act with people who have directly lost family members due to the ongoing genocide.
Hakim: Obviously, I knew that this was going to be important. But I definitely did not process nearly how much attention it was going to get.
I think that the genre of response that was most surprising to me is the people who are like: Oh, well, this has changed people’s mind; and this is showing people who Kamala Harris really is—and she’s losing Michigan because of this.
I think what was most surprising to me is the idea that this one sentence of hers—as opposed to her consistent, decades-long support for Israel—could be the thing for someone to feel like, yeah, maybe Kamala Harris isn’t a good person.
There was even some discourse around this idea of interrupting a woman of color, particularly a woman of color in this case, and there’s a lot to unpack there. But do you think that’s a fair critique of your particular protest?
Hakim:I thought that was just bullshit, the whole interrupting a woman of color thing.
It’s important to remember that this disruption was obviously about Harris and about election-related stuff. But that’s not the message to take from this. The message isn’t that this is going to have consequences on the election. The message is that Kamala is a bad person for supporting the genocide of Palestinians.
Anyone reading this might ask, okay, but when the other candidate in this race is Donald Trump, who has used the term Palestinian as an insult, does this not hurt the cause that you are advocating for in the long term?
Hamamy: In the long term, the Republican Party and the Democratic Party have basically taken the same approach and same stance on the issue of Palestine. They are both pro-Israel in the same way. Primaries are both bought by AIPAC; they are both taking money from Zionist organizations. The only difference is just how they try to appeal to their voters, to make it seem like they care about human life.
So to me, as someone who keeps track of the ongoing issues in Palestine, the Republican Party and the Democratic Party are one and the same on this. And for them to constantly keep saying that we need to vote a Democratic member in and not the Republican Party, because they’re the lesser of two evils—and because one just has a less intense version of genocide (which I actually don’t find that to be true considering that the genocide is being aided by the Democratic Party right now). They just seem so concerned about a hypothetical genocide when there is an actual genocide that is happening in the current moment.
Often, people do not realize there are different strains of those protesting. That this is a diverse group of people who have internal disagreements, too, about how to push for a change. It’s not all one movement. Are you part of the Abandon Biden camp? Are you part of the Uncommitted movement? Like, where do you and the broader student protest movement stand across Michigan—are you all in one camp versus the other?
Hamamy: I am not in the Abandon Biden movement or the Uncommitted campaign, both of them have done amazing work. I do think there are some differences in approach at times in comparison to the student movement. The student movement is primarily focused on the fact that these politicians will never save us.
Communication is never going to get through their head. Us, you know, praying and hoping that they’re going to implement a ceasefire simply because we say that we have family members being killed—that is never going to happen. If the scenes and the video footage and the literal depiction of actual death, murder and slaughter—at one of the highest rates ever—coming out is not going to shake them enough to call for a ceasefire, then our words will never do that.
So what needs to happen is us withholding our vote and withholding any positive affiliation that we would give to the Democratic Party or to the Republican Party—or to whoever is perpetuating this genocide. And that is one of the main ways that I think the student movement goes forward. It is through continuous disruption and creating a social crisis throughout; to say that we will not operate as business as usual, so long as our tax dollars are funding a genocide that is killing so many people in Palestine.
Leaders of the Uncommitted Movement met with Vice President Harris before the rally and asked for another meeting—hoping to discuss an arms embargo and a permanent ceasefire. And we reported that she expressed openness to a meeting. Then, at the rally, there was the retort to you all. Is this a one-step forward, one-step back situation for the Harris campaign, or considering the ongoing Israeli offensive in both Gaza and the suffering currently in the West Bank, do you see it as no movement at all?
Hamamy: Kamala very clearly shared her words of sympathy with leaders of the Uncommitted campaign because of her worry about them not mobilizing the community to vote for her. She says one thing to one person and changes the moment she gets on stage, and there are several cameras around—it was very clear. And to me, what I’m going to prioritize is what her policies stand for, and what she said to the entire crowd and to the entire audience when she was challenged and when we said we’re not going to vote for genocide, as opposed to what her response would be to people on the side in private. So, to us, her response was one step forward in making the general population understand that she’s no different.
“The message isn’t that this is going to have consequences on the election. The message is that Kamala is a bad person for supporting the genocide of Palestinians.”
Hakim: In regards to Uncommitted: I definitely appreciate them for making clear the fact that Arab Americans and Muslim Americans are a significant voting bloc—and have power to sway the election whichever way, and I think that’s really important work that the committee did. But I also think that it’s important for all of us to remember that none of these options are gonna free Palestine or end the genocide and that appealing to Kamala Harris is not a solution in any way, shape, or form.
What people seem to be forgetting is that she’s not just like some random person who decided to run for president. She has been the vice president for all 300-plus days of this genocide, and could have said something in all of that time. She deliberately chose not to do that.
If the Harris campaign called and tried to hash this out and have a conversation, would you take that call?
Hamamy: If she wanted to hash this out, she needs to go to the Israeli government and say: We’re cutting off all military funding. There’s nothing to hash out with the voters. What needs to be hashed out is with the people who are committing genocide right now.
Salma Hamamy and Zainab Hakim are no strangers to disruption.
Over the last few months at the University of Michigan, the two have loudly called for the school to officially divest from Israel and its ongoing military offensive in Gaza. They were involved in their school’s Gaza solidarity encampment and briefly took over their campus administration building for about eight hours (before the police department pepper sprayed, removed, and arrested them).
But they never expected their action at Vice President Kamala Harris’ Detroit rally this week—in which they loudly yelled for a ceasefire, prompting Harris’ scorn—would gain so much attention.
The two shouted, “Kamala, you need to call for a ceasefire in Gaza. We demand an arms embargo and a free Palestine.” Then, they chanted: “Kamala, Kamala, you can’t hide, we won’t vote for genocide.” (Such actions have been common at President Joe Biden’s events for months.)
The vice president was both stern and direct in her response. “If you want Donald Trump to win, say that,” Harris commanded from the stage. “Otherwise, I’m speaking.”
Her supporters at the rally roared in applause, drowning out both Hamamy and Hakim, who were escorted out of the rally.
Following the Hamamy and Hakim protest, Phil Gordon, an adviser to Vice President Harris posted on social media that her position has been clear. “She will always ensure Israel is able to defend itself against Iran and Iran-backed terrorist groups. She does not support an arms embargo on Israel,” Gordon wrote. “She will continue to work to protect civilians in Gaza and to uphold international humanitarian law.” (The Harris campaign did not respond to questions in time for publication.)
The two activists spoke with Mother Jones about their protest, what they make of the vice president’s response, and the implications it has for the upcoming election.
This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.
Why did you interrupt Vice President Kamala Harris’ speech, and what were you hoping to achieve?
Hamamy: If she is expecting to come to Michigan—because it is such a crucial swing state in the election—she must understand that there is a primary issue for Michigan voters. And it is the entire reason as to why we are in this predicament in the very first place and to why she’s actually running and why Biden dropped: It is because of the approach to Palestine.
And if she’s not going to take any crucial steps forward—or at least take a moral position—then there will be a movement that she must face. And she will face it through the protesters attending and disrupting and making it very clear where we stand.
How did you think she would react?
Hakim: I guess the closest thing that I had imagined is that we we would be told we weren’t interested in dialog and we were just interested yelling and that’s maybe what I imagined she would say.
And what do you make of the vice president’s retort? “If you want Donald Trump to win say that. Otherwise, I’m speaking.” Do you want Donald Trump to win?
Hamamy: No, of course not.
I think it’s a really interesting response. And a questionable response to people who are saying, we want an end to the genocide. The fact that her first response is: Oh, so you want Donald Trump to win. It just shows her inability to understand what constituents are saying.
“That is not a good way to act with people who have directly lost family members due to the ongoing genocide.”
When people are demanding a ceasefire and arms embargo and an end to the genocide and you say that we want Donald Trump to step in—it just shows a lack of accountability. It shows a lack of leadership, a lack of responsibility, and a lack of ownership.
There was a mix of reactions to her response online. I think some were applauding the vice president for being so direct—and shutting all of it down (like there was the head nod, the stare). And there were others who were far more skeptical, kind of realizing the Harris campaign is jeopardizing a win in Michigan by potentially alienating the large Arab-American community with that kind of response.
What did you make of how everyone reacted?
Hamamy: For the people who were applauding her body language or saying, “Oh, she shut those protesters up.” I was disturbed by them thinking that that was a good stance to take when someone is calling for a ceasefire. When someone’s calling for an end to weaponry shipments being sent overseas, that is not a good way to interact with constituents. That is not a good way to act with people who have directly lost family members due to the ongoing genocide.
Hakim: Obviously, I knew that this was going to be important. But I definitely did not process nearly how much attention it was going to get.
I think that the genre of response that was most surprising to me is the people who are like: Oh, well, this has changed people’s mind; and this is showing people who Kamala Harris really is—and she’s losing Michigan because of this.
I think what was most surprising to me is the idea that this one sentence of hers—as opposed to her consistent, decades-long support for Israel—could be the thing for someone to feel like, yeah, maybe Kamala Harris isn’t a good person.
There was even some discourse around this idea of interrupting a woman of color, particularly a woman of color in this case, and there’s a lot to unpack there. But do you think that’s a fair critique of your particular protest?
Hakim:I thought that was just bullshit, the whole interrupting a woman of color thing.
It’s important to remember that this disruption was obviously about Harris and about election-related stuff. But that’s not the message to take from this. The message isn’t that this is going to have consequences on the election. The message is that Kamala is a bad person for supporting the genocide of Palestinians.
Anyone reading this might ask, okay, but when the other candidate in this race is Donald Trump, who has used the term Palestinian as an insult, does this not hurt the cause that you are advocating for in the long term?
Hamamy: In the long term, the Republican Party and the Democratic Party have basically taken the same approach and same stance on the issue of Palestine. They are both pro-Israel in the same way. Primaries are both bought by AIPAC; they are both taking money from Zionist organizations. The only difference is just how they try to appeal to their voters, to make it seem like they care about human life.
So to me, as someone who keeps track of the ongoing issues in Palestine, the Republican Party and the Democratic Party are one and the same on this. And for them to constantly keep saying that we need to vote a Democratic member in and not the Republican Party, because they’re the lesser of two evils—and because one just has a less intense version of genocide (which I actually don’t find that to be true considering that the genocide is being aided by the Democratic Party right now). They just seem so concerned about a hypothetical genocide when there is an actual genocide that is happening in the current moment.
Often, people do not realize there are different strains of those protesting. That this is a diverse group of people who have internal disagreements, too, about how to push for a change. It’s not all one movement. Are you part of the Abandon Biden camp? Are you part of the Uncommitted movement? Like, where do you and the broader student protest movement stand across Michigan—are you all in one camp versus the other?
Hamamy: I am not in the Abandon Biden movement or the Uncommitted campaign, both of them have done amazing work. I do think there are some differences in approach at times in comparison to the student movement. The student movement is primarily focused on the fact that these politicians will never save us.
Communication is never going to get through their head. Us, you know, praying and hoping that they’re going to implement a ceasefire simply because we say that we have family members being killed—that is never going to happen. If the scenes and the video footage and the literal depiction of actual death, murder and slaughter—at one of the highest rates ever—coming out is not going to shake them enough to call for a ceasefire, then our words will never do that.
So what needs to happen is us withholding our vote and withholding any positive affiliation that we would give to the Democratic Party or to the Republican Party—or to whoever is perpetuating this genocide. And that is one of the main ways that I think the student movement goes forward. It is through continuous disruption and creating a social crisis throughout; to say that we will not operate as business as usual, so long as our tax dollars are funding a genocide that is killing so many people in Palestine.
Leaders of the Uncommitted Movement met with Vice President Harris before the rally and asked for another meeting—hoping to discuss an arms embargo and a permanent ceasefire. And we reported that she expressed openness to a meeting. Then, at the rally, there was the retort to you all. Is this a one-step forward, one-step back situation for the Harris campaign, or considering the ongoing Israeli offensive in both Gaza and the suffering currently in the West Bank, do you see it as no movement at all?
Hamamy: Kamala very clearly shared her words of sympathy with leaders of the Uncommitted campaign because of her worry about them not mobilizing the community to vote for her. She says one thing to one person and changes the moment she gets on stage, and there are several cameras around—it was very clear. And to me, what I’m going to prioritize is what her policies stand for, and what she said to the entire crowd and to the entire audience when she was challenged and when we said we’re not going to vote for genocide, as opposed to what her response would be to people on the side in private. So, to us, her response was one step forward in making the general population understand that she’s no different.
“The message isn’t that this is going to have consequences on the election. The message is that Kamala is a bad person for supporting the genocide of Palestinians.”
Hakim: In regards to Uncommitted: I definitely appreciate them for making clear the fact that Arab Americans and Muslim Americans are a significant voting bloc—and have power to sway the election whichever way, and I think that’s really important work that the committee did. But I also think that it’s important for all of us to remember that none of these options are gonna free Palestine or end the genocide and that appealing to Kamala Harris is not a solution in any way, shape, or form.
What people seem to be forgetting is that she’s not just like some random person who decided to run for president. She has been the vice president for all 300-plus days of this genocide, and could have said something in all of that time. She deliberately chose not to do that.
If the Harris campaign called and tried to hash this out and have a conversation, would you take that call?
Hamamy: If she wanted to hash this out, she needs to go to the Israeli government and say: We’re cutting off all military funding. There’s nothing to hash out with the voters. What needs to be hashed out is with the people who are committing genocide right now.
Next week, Rep. Ilhan Omar will take on a familiar opponent. On Tuesday, August 13, the progressive stalwart will face a second-consecutive primary challenge from Don Samuels, a former Minneapolis City Council member who came within 2 percent of beating her in 2022.
For Samuels, that narrow margin was enough evidence to try again. But he didn’t announce his plans for a rematch against the congresswoman until about a month after Hamas’ October 7 attack, as a wave of contenders emerged to take on left-leaning lawmakers who spoke critically of Israel’s retaliatory assault on Gaza. Soon after getting in the race, Samuels staked his turf by going on TV to claim Omar had voiced opinions that were “the last straw in a long series of insensitive statements about Israel and Jewish people.”
Omar has “been raising money on the idea that AIPAC would attack her. That has not happened.”
Samuels and these other challengers stepped up as the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, the long standing lobbying group, announced plans to spend $100 million in 2024 to contest candidates that they’ve determined are not pro-Israel enough, many of whom, like Omar, count themselves among the group of incumbent progressive representatives known as the “squad.” The strategy paid off when Rep. Jamaal Bowman lost to George Latimer in a June race where 61 percent of the money spent was from the United Democracy Project, an AIPAC-affiliated vehicle. It did so again on Tuesday night in St. Louis, as Rep. Cori Bush lost her primary to prosecutor Wesley Bell—whose campaign has been supported by $9 million from United Democracy Project.
While Samuels has made Omar’s positions on Israel and Gaza a key talking point—even calling her a “pawn for Hamas”—unlike Latimer and Bell, he has failed to garner substantial pro-Israel PAC funding. Samuels didn’t have the same issue in 2022, when United Democracy Project contributed $350,000 to his efforts just days before voting. The donation was only disclosed a month after the 2022 primary; Samuels later complained that he did not receive as much support from pro-Israel funders as the failed challenger who took on Omar in 2020.
While a similar late infusion of money, potentially spurred on by Bell’s fresh win, remains a possibility, so far FEC filings show just one minor contribution backing Samuels from a pro-Israel PAC—$5,000 from an entity called To Protect Our Heritage.
Given Samuels’ strong showing two years ago, it’s not exactly clear why he’s failed to garner such support. In August, Jewish Insiderreported that while Samuels was already considering a rematch, AIPAC was instead seeking to recruit LaTrisha Vetaw, a sitting Minneapolis council member, to run against Omar. An operative involved in the discussions told the outlet that AIPAC had judged Samuels to have already “reached his capacity.” (AIPAC and UDP declined to comment on why they have not backed Samuels, or if they might still do so.)
While an AIPAC-supported Vetaw candidacy never materialized, Joelle Stangler, a Minneapolis teacher who is managing Omar’s primary campaign, says the hundreds of thousands of dollars AIPAC spent against the congresswoman in 2022 “could be seen as a bellwether” of the money spent this year taking down incumbents like Bowman and Bush. “We were a test case.”
Given Omar’s narrow victory over Samuels in 2022, Stangler admits the campaign “took our foot off the gas” in that election. This year Omar, who is one of a handful of Muslim members of Congress, has been aggressively campaigning. Another change: their 2022 primary took place about a year after George Floyd was murdered by Minneapolis cops, kicking off widespread and sometimes destructive protests against police violence. By suing to force the city to hire more cops at the same time Omar and energized activists were calling for the dismantling of the city’s police department, Samuels emerged, as the Star Tribune put it, as “the face of the backlash against calls to reduce the police force.” That pro-police image boosted him among moderate Democrats and was a cornerstone of his 2022 challenge to Omar—but it’s a less salient issue in 2024.
There’s no indication Samuels has the traction he did two years ago.
Omar has also already doubled the amount she fundraised in all of 2022; her nearly $7 million as of July 24 almost quintuples Samuels’ haul. Samuels has attempted to make an issue of the fact that a majority of Omar’s funding comes from out of state. “Representative Omar, with a large national fundraising base, has since November, been raising money on the idea that AIPAC would attack her. That has not happened,” says Joe Radinovich, Samuels’ campaign manager.
In June, Omar’s campaign put AIPAC aside when it released research identifying roughly $50,000 in 2024 contributions to Samuels that came from right-wing or Republican-backing donors, while noting his 2022 backers included Clarence Thomas-patron Harlan Crow and Republican-supporting super PACs.
Radinovich defends the donations, arguing “that there are a number of people out there, of all political stripes…willing to give their resources to Don Samuels, who supports universal health care, bold climate policy, a woman’s right to choose—then you know we’re going to use the money to get that message out.”
Molly Priesmeyer, a South Minneapolis resident and an Omar supporter, says Samuels’ conservative funders have become a voting issue. After people learn about “that kind of influence,” she says, “regardless of their feelings about Omar, they’re reluctant to go with Don Samuels.”
Samuels’ attacks have centered on Omar’s high number of missed votes, her foreign policy, a World Cup trip funded by the Qatari government, and an ongoing fraud case involving her husband. In spots that ran on local television during the Republican National Convention, Samuels’ debut ad slammed Omar for being “missing on the issues that matter most,” and assailed her position on police reform and her vote against Biden’s infrastructure bill.
But the ad also depicted her face on a missing persons poster—an image that immediately drew blowback from advocates from organizations focused on the disproportionate number of women of color who go missing or are murdered; one of them called it “insensitive, racist, [and] anti-women.” It wasn’t the first time Samuels was criticized for sexism. In November, Samuels spoke about Omar on a podcast, saying “You’re not cute enough, you don’t dress well enough, nothing about you is attractive enough to overcome that deficit.” Omar tweeted that the remarks were misogynist.
In the 2020 general election, Omar got about 73,000 fewer votes in her district than Joe Biden. “There is no Democratic congressional candidate in the country who trailed Joe Biden by more than Ilhan Omar in 2020,” Radinovich says, arguing that pool of Biden voters could be receptive to Samuels, who only lost by 2,500 votes last time.
But so far, there’s little indication Samuels is making new inroads, or has anything approaching the traction he did two years ago. While most polling data in the race has been released by Omar’s campaign, those figures have consistently shown her with a massive lead—numbers she released in late July put it at 27 points.
Correction, August 7: This story has been updated to reflect the number of Muslim women in Congress.
Early on the morning of July 31, a group of about 70 people arrived at the anodyne office of the cargo company Atlas Air, in White Plains, New York.
They were members of Jews for Racial and Economic Justice (JFREJ)—an activist group that focuses on equity issues in New York City—there to stage a fake “press conference” to highlight the Department of Defense’s contracts with Atlas Air.
A man in a gray pinstripe suit played the CEO of the company, which is the single largest operator of 747 freighter jets in the world. “Atlas Air is so proud to do its part to support the US military,” the actor enthused. “I am especially proud that, through our DoD contracts, Atlas Air has made multiple deliveries to Israel in the last 10 months.” He added with gusto: “As the bombs keep raining on Gaza, the dividends keep raining on our shareholders!”
Those behind him, dressed as pilots complete with sewn-on epaulets, cheered as he held up a graph with a line going up—“more bombs equals higher profits!”
In the following hours, JFREJ launched a spoof website for Atlas, and sent out press releases claiming Atlas “is proud to have been responsible for transporting millions of dollars worth of material to the Israeli military as it bombs Gaza” to trade outlets like AirlineGeeks, Cargo Connect, Transport and Logistics Middle East, and American Military News.
The action is part of a broader push. Protest groups are turning toward a new strategy: beyond focusing on the government, they are targeting the companies that profit off Israel’s war in Gaza.
“We’ve called out, we’ve called in, I mean, we’ve done all that work to reach the decision-makers,” said Audrey Sasson, executive director of JFREJ. “We’ve talked about our Jewish community’s complicity in Israel’s genocide, and we’ve taken action to protest the US government’s culpability, but we haven’t heard enough about the war profiteers—the private companies profiting off of these atrocities.”
As first reported by Haaretz, records show that more than 30 chartered cargo flights were operated by the US Transportation Command (USTRANSCOM) to Nevatim Airbase in Beersheba between October 31, 2023, and March 31, 2024. At least three of those were cargo flights on planes owned by Atlas and leased by the USTRANSCOM, according to a Mother Jones analysis of publicly available flight data. The 747-400 heavy cargo planes flew to the Israeli air base from Cyprus and Germany. An Atlas Air representative said, “I have no information,” when asked if the company supplies weapons to fuel Israel’s bombardment of Gaza.
The flight path of an Atlas cargo airliner from Paphos, Cyprus, to Nevatim Air Force Base, Israel.Screenshot from adsbexchange.com
Without private cargo airlines and private companies, the United States Department of Defense would not be able to send Israel weapons at the rate it currently does. The DoD has sent more than 100 shipments to its ally over the past 10 months, containing weapons such as 2,000 pound bombs, Hellfire missiles, and 500-pound bombs.
Bradley Martin, a researcher at RAND and a former Navy captain, said the airplanes likely carried supplies or weapon parts for the Israel Defense Forces. But it is unlikely that Atlas Air would transport the bombs that get the most publicity. “Preferably, sensitive munitions are not going not going to be moved by commercial air,” he said. “They put them on a military flight because it takes special handling.”
Still, private companies, Martin said, play a key role. “The amount of material that’s required to sustain the force fighting this war is huge,” he said. “The military needs a [shipping] provider more than a provider needs the military.”
A report by the neoconservative Foundation for Defense of Democracies, titled “How to Ensure Israel has the Weapons it Needs,” points out why the US government needs these contracts: “According to one senior Pentagon official, the quantity of weapons sent [to Israel] was so significant that the Department of Defense sometimes [has] struggled to find sufficient cargo aircraft to deliver the systems.”
Though relatively unknown, Atlas Air is the third-largest cargo airline in the United States by fleet size. The company received an “indefinite delivery contract” from the military in April 2023 for $20 million. It also received nearly $19 million from New York state in subsidies and property tax abatements, plus more than $600 million in federal loans and guarantees.
JFREJ is not the only activist group setting their sights on Defense Department contractors. Last month, the Palestinian Youth Movement launched a campaign targeting the Danish shipping multinational Maersk, which sends weapons components as a subcontractor to manufacturers such as Lockheed Martin and also contracts directly with USTRANSCOM. A PYM representative said she’s seen enthusiasm for the campaign: “I think people really are hungry to have a set target and something that they can fuel their energy into.”
Maersk, she said, has a robust shipping portfolio outside of military shipments—after all, it’s the second-largest container shipping company in the world. “Economically, they can still sustain themselves if they don’t maintain these contracts,” the PYM organizer added.
Martin said that companies like Maersk and Atlas could “absolutely” remain economically viable without military contracts: They could “survive, and thrive,” he said. That, however, is not true the other way around. The governments need private aid to help with massive war efforts.
Janet Abou-Elias, co-founder of Women for Weapons Trade Transparency, said that the military has strong economic reasons to rely on companies like Atlas. “Outsourcing certain functions to private contractors can be more economical than maintaining large in-house capabilities.” Martin, of RAND, said that this trend goes back to the end of the Cold War. “It really started happening about 1990,” he explained. “DOD cut back on commitments, cut back on infrastructure—and for transportation [it] has started to look more and more to commercial types of sources.”
Maersk and Atlas aren’t the only companies catching heat: Protesters in the US and Australia have demonstrated outside ports by the Israeli shipping company ZIM, which has been sued by a group of Belgian NGOs for violating Belgian arms transport law. Last month, protesters brought the St. Louis Missouri pride parade to a standstill because it was sponsored by the airliner Boeing, which was the top manufacturer of missiles delivered to Israel in 2023, according to an analysis of arms transfer data conducted by NPR station KUOW. This past spring, students at protest encampments across the country demanded that their universities sever ties with Boeing. At least one university, Portland State, agreed to temporarily stop accepting Boeing money.
Atlas has contracted with the DoD, among other government entities, for decades. In the earliest years of the 21st century, Atlas Air’s name was listed among the airlines leasing planes for transit to and from CIA black sites; their aircrafts have flown to and from Guantanamo Bay as recently as 2022.
It is also owned by the private equity firm Apollo Global Management. (Per National Defense Magazine, private equity–owned companies accounted for 47 percent of defense transactions in 2022.) Apollo’s CEO, Marc Rowan, was so vehemently against antiwar campus protesters that he pushed for the removal of the University of Pennsylvania’s president for allowing a festival of Palestinian literature on her campus, which he described as “hate-filled.” He has railed against antiwar protesters, declaring them “anti-American” and “violent.”
“I think those executives going into their office jobs daily can pretend to sort of turn a blind eye to what’s happening in Gaza,” said Sasson of JFREJ. “We will not stand for them making money, millions of dollars off of this genocide.”
Early on the morning of July 31, a group of about 70 people arrived at the anodyne office of the cargo company Atlas Air, in White Plains, New York.
They were members of Jews for Racial and Economic Justice (JFREJ)—an activist group that focuses on equity issues in New York City—there to stage a fake “press conference” to highlight the Department of Defense’s contracts with Atlas Air.
A man in a gray pinstripe suit played the CEO of the company, which is the single largest operator of 747 freighter jets in the world. “Atlas Air is so proud to do its part to support the US military,” the actor enthused. “I am especially proud that, through our DoD contracts, Atlas Air has made multiple deliveries to Israel in the last 10 months.” He added with gusto: “As the bombs keep raining on Gaza, the dividends keep raining on our shareholders!”
Those behind him, dressed as pilots complete with sewn-on epaulets, cheered as he held up a graph with a line going up—“more bombs equals higher profits!”
In the following hours, JFREJ launched a spoof website for Atlas, and sent out press releases claiming Atlas “is proud to have been responsible for transporting millions of dollars worth of material to the Israeli military as it bombs Gaza” to trade outlets like AirlineGeeks, Cargo Connect, Transport and Logistics Middle East, and American Military News.
The action is part of a broader push. Protest groups are turning toward a new strategy: beyond focusing on the government, they are targeting the companies that profit off Israel’s war in Gaza.
“We’ve called out, we’ve called in, I mean, we’ve done all that work to reach the decision-makers,” said Audrey Sasson, executive director of JFREJ. “We’ve talked about our Jewish community’s complicity in Israel’s genocide, and we’ve taken action to protest the US government’s culpability, but we haven’t heard enough about the war profiteers—the private companies profiting off of these atrocities.”
As first reported by Haaretz, records show that more than 30 chartered cargo flights were operated by the US Transportation Command (USTRANSCOM) to Nevatim Airbase in Beersheba between October 31, 2023, and March 31, 2024. At least three of those were cargo flights on planes owned by Atlas and leased by the USTRANSCOM, according to a Mother Jones analysis of publicly available flight data. The 747-400 heavy cargo planes flew to the Israeli air base from Cyprus and Germany. An Atlas Air representative said, “I have no information,” when asked if the company supplies weapons to fuel Israel’s bombardment of Gaza.
The flight path of an Atlas cargo airliner from Paphos, Cyprus, to Nevatim Air Force Base, Israel.Screenshot from adsbexchange.com
Without private cargo airlines and private companies, the United States Department of Defense would not be able to send Israel weapons at the rate it currently does. The DoD has sent more than 100 shipments to its ally over the past 10 months, containing weapons such as 2,000 pound bombs, Hellfire missiles, and 500-pound bombs.
Bradley Martin, a researcher at RAND and a former Navy captain, said the airplanes likely carried supplies or weapon parts for the Israel Defense Forces. But it is unlikely that Atlas Air would transport the bombs that get the most publicity. “Preferably, sensitive munitions are not going not going to be moved by commercial air,” he said. “They put them on a military flight because it takes special handling.”
Still, private companies, Martin said, play a key role. “The amount of material that’s required to sustain the force fighting this war is huge,” he said. “The military needs a [shipping] provider more than a provider needs the military.”
A report by the neoconservative Foundation for Defense of Democracies, titled “How to Ensure Israel has the Weapons it Needs,” points out why the US government needs these contracts: “According to one senior Pentagon official, the quantity of weapons sent [to Israel] was so significant that the Department of Defense sometimes [has] struggled to find sufficient cargo aircraft to deliver the systems.”
Though relatively unknown, Atlas Air is the third-largest cargo airline in the United States by fleet size. The company received an “indefinite delivery contract” from the military in April 2023 for $20 million. It also received nearly $19 million from New York state in subsidies and property tax abatements, plus more than $600 million in federal loans and guarantees.
JFREJ is not the only activist group setting their sights on Defense Department contractors. Last month, the Palestinian Youth Movement launched a campaign targeting the Danish shipping multinational Maersk, which sends weapons components as a subcontractor to manufacturers such as Lockheed Martin and also contracts directly with USTRANSCOM. A PYM representative said she’s seen enthusiasm for the campaign: “I think people really are hungry to have a set target and something that they can fuel their energy into.”
Maersk, she said, has a robust shipping portfolio outside of military shipments—after all, it’s the second-largest container shipping company in the world. “Economically, they can still sustain themselves if they don’t maintain these contracts,” the PYM organizer added.
Martin said that companies like Maersk and Atlas could “absolutely” remain economically viable without military contracts: They could “survive, and thrive,” he said. That, however, is not true the other way around. The governments need private aid to help with massive war efforts.
Janet Abou-Elias, co-founder of Women for Weapons Trade Transparency, said that the military has strong economic reasons to rely on companies like Atlas. “Outsourcing certain functions to private contractors can be more economical than maintaining large in-house capabilities.” Martin, of RAND, said that this trend goes back to the end of the Cold War. “It really started happening about 1990,” he explained. “DOD cut back on commitments, cut back on infrastructure—and for transportation [it] has started to look more and more to commercial types of sources.”
Maersk and Atlas aren’t the only companies catching heat: Protesters in the US and Australia have demonstrated outside ports by the Israeli shipping company ZIM, which has been sued by a group of Belgian NGOs for violating Belgian arms transport law. Last month, protesters brought the St. Louis Missouri pride parade to a standstill because it was sponsored by the airliner Boeing, which was the top manufacturer of missiles delivered to Israel in 2023, according to an analysis of arms transfer data conducted by NPR station KUOW. This past spring, students at protest encampments across the country demanded that their universities sever ties with Boeing. At least one university, Portland State, agreed to temporarily stop accepting Boeing money.
Atlas has contracted with the DoD, among other government entities, for decades. In the earliest years of the 21st century, Atlas Air’s name was listed among the airlines leasing planes for transit to and from CIA black sites; their aircrafts have flown to and from Guantanamo Bay as recently as 2022.
It is also owned by the private equity firm Apollo Global Management. (Per National Defense Magazine, private equity–owned companies accounted for 47 percent of defense transactions in 2022.) Apollo’s CEO, Marc Rowan, was so vehemently against antiwar campus protesters that he pushed for the removal of the University of Pennsylvania’s president for allowing a festival of Palestinian literature on her campus, which he described as “hate-filled.” He has railed against antiwar protesters, declaring them “anti-American” and “violent.”
“I think those executives going into their office jobs daily can pretend to sort of turn a blind eye to what’s happening in Gaza,” said Sasson of JFREJ. “We will not stand for them making money, millions of dollars off of this genocide.”
As the Democratic National Convention kicked off its virtual roll-call vote this morning, the Uncommitted movement—an organization that successfully pushed thousands of primary voters to choose no one instead of casting a ballot for President Joe Biden because of US backing of Israel during its war on Gaza—called on the party to let a member of their delegation speak.
The movement would like a five-minute speaking slot for a humanitarian aid worker who has recently returned from Gaza. Abbas Alawieh, an Uncommitted organizer, said at this morning’s press conference that the delegates from his group communicated this request to the DNC via email “maybe a month ago.” They have not yet received a response.
The movement’s impact was notable, especially in swing states: 13 percent of voters in Michigan, just under 19 percent in Minnesota, and just below 15 percent in North Carolina voted “uncommitted.” In Illinois, a state without an “uncommitted” option on the ballot, voters wrote in “Gaza.”
The 30 Uncommitted delegates selected Tanya Haj-Hassan, a pediatric intensive care physician who spent time in Gaza’s hospitals, as their preferred speaker.
“I am not a politician,” Haj-Hassan said. “I’m not even an activist—my life prior to this year has been spent primarily doing clinical work.” But the “complete destruction of human life” she saw in Gaza—and the awareness that the destruction is made possible thanks to US funds and US weapons—has made Haj-Hassan determined to speak.
“People are being killed in a thousand and one ways—every hour, in the emergency department…we would receive mass casualties. We received children, maimed, killed, beheaded, shot…many of these child deaths were deliberate killings,” she said. When Haj-Hassan was able to save a child, she was haunted by the fact that they’d be in danger again the moment they left her care: “I know under the current military strategy that that child has a very small probability of surviving, once he’s discharged from the hospital.”
Speakers who are not politicians are often given airtime at party national conventions. At the 2016 DNC, a fifth-grade teacher, a tech entrepreneur, a 9/11 survivor, and actress Meryl Streep were all among the speakers.
Still, the Uncommitted movement has not received much engagement from Harris or her campaign yet. The vice president is scheduled to be in Michigan, the birthplace of Uncommitted, this coming Wednesday.
“If next Wednesday works for her, we’ll clear our schedules,” Alawieh said. “We need to be able to speak with the Vice President directly, make sure that she hears us and takes the opportunity to turn a new page.” And if Haj-Hassan isn’t given a speaker slot, organizer Layla Elabed said, they’ll find a way for her story to be heard regardless.
“We’ll find a way for her to speak, one way or another, in the tradition of Fannie Lou Hamer, who made moral witness to human suffering at the 1964 DNC,” Elabed said.
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