The Democratic Convention: Day One

Full of talk about “energy” and “the future is now” and “breaking the glass ceiling” and of helping the “middle class” and working “tirelessly” to elect Harris and Walz, the speakers at the opening night of the Democratic National Convention in Chicago did not disappoint in their banalities. They said goodbye to Joe Biden and welcomed with rousing applause and yells and waving their signs the new team of Kamala Harris and Tim Walz. Israel was mentioned only once by name, when Senator Raphael Warnock in his speech said “We are as close in our humanity as a cough. I need my neighbors’ children to be okay so my children will be ok… I need the poor children of Israel and the poor children of Gaza. I need Israelis and Palestinians — those in the Congo, those in Haiti, those in Ukraine, I need Americans on both sides of the track to be okay. Because we are all God’s children.”

Joe Biden himself quite unnecessarily mentioned— and not unfavorably — the anti-Israel protesters outside the convention hall. The organizers of those protests had predicted there would be tens of thousands of them; instead, fewer than 5,000 showed up. Biden addressed the Gaza issue head-on, saying he’d keep working to “end the war in Gaza and bring peace and security to the Middle East.” He did not say, as he ought to have, that Israel had that very day accepted the latest deal for a ceasefire and a return of the hostages, and that it was Hamas that had rejected the deal. He did not say, as he might have, that the government was working “tirelessly” to prevent Iran and Hezbollah from launching attacks they threaten to unleash on Israel. He did not say that Israel was now “fighting a seven-front war.” He did not say “under President Kamala Harris, we will continue to have Israel’s back.” Most astonishingly, instead of denouncing the pro-Hamas people clamoring outside, or ignoring them altogether, he praised those calling for a “free Palestine, from the river to the sea,” which means an end to Israel and its replacement by a twenty-third Arab state, stating that “those protesters out in the streets have a point. A lot of innocent people are being killed, on both sides.” In other words, he was equating Israel, which is fighting in Gaza to make sure that Hamas will never again be able to launch the kind of attack it unleashed on October 7, when the terror group sent 3,000 of its operatives into Israel to torture, rape, mutilate, and murder 1,200 Israelis, with Hamas itself. He never said, as he ought to have, that “we stand with Israel.” He never used the word “Israel.” Apparently his remark about those “protesters have a point” was ad libbed; it was not part of his prepared remarks. While never mentioning the mistreatment, and even murder, of the Israeli hostages, he did, however, express his sympathy for the “civilian suffering of the Palestinian people.”

He said, with his usual exaggeration, that “I wrote a peace treaty for Gaza. Two days ago, I put forward a proposal that brought us closer to doing that than we’ve done since Oct. 7. We’re working around the clock, and my secretary of state [sic] to prevent a wider war and reunite hostages with their families and surge humanitarian, health and food assistance into Gaza now, to end the civilian suffering of the Palestinian people, and finally, finally deliver a cease-fire and end this war.” End. This. War, he carefully enunciated.

Biden’s comments infuriated some pro-Israel Democrats. The president “so caved to the anti-Israel lobby that he did not even use the word ‘Israel’ and spoke only of ceasefires and hostages, adding that there are good people on both sides,” Mark Penn, a former longtime Clinton strategist, wrote on X. Democratic activist Sam Yebri said that Biden was “dead wrong. The protesters are not calling for peace; they are standing with terrorists. Please don’t play politics with national security and foreign policy.”

The most mediagenic member of the Squad, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, also spoke. She did not mention either Israel or Hamas by name, but what she did say was surprising. She praised Harris “for working tirelessly to securing a ceasefire in Gaza and bringing hostages home.” Mentioning the hostages, and not denouncing Israel, nor mentioning the “suffering of the Palestinian people” signals a shift in AOC’s rhetoric. It could not have escaped the notice of, and must have infuriated, her former friends in The Squad, Rashida Tlaib and Ilhan Omar. They now realize she is deliberately distancing herself from them because she has her eye set on a prize — likely a Senate seat — and on the subject of Israel has decided to abandon her previous extreme hostility and to move closer to the center. Not pro-Israel, of course, but no longer reliably anti-Israel. The 5,000 protesters outside the convention must also have been enraged by AOC’s comments. Last March, AOC was besieged on a New York street by pro-Palestinian protesters who demanded that she denounce Israeli “genocide.” She refused, got angry, and flung the usual expletives at them. That unpleasant encounter may have contributed to her souring on the virulently anti-Israel protesters.

In the next few days and weeks, it will be fascinating to see what Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib have to say about their former comrade-in-arms. Meanwhile, be prepared for another few days of horse latitudes hoarse platitudes from the speakers, both reading off the teleprompter and off the cuff. Thankfully, it will all be over on Thursday, when the official coronation takes place.