By COCO SMYTH
Politicians, celebrities, capitalists, and party operatives convened at the 2024 Democratic National Convention (DNC) in Chicago between Aug. 19 and 24. They were greeted by thousands of protesters demanding justice for Palestine.
At the same time, a movement within the Democratic Party known as the “Uncommitted Campaign” was visible at the Convention. The movement tried to exert pressure on the Democrats to moderate their unflagging support of Israel and its genocidal war in Gaza by voting “uncommitted” in the party’s primaries. The movement also butted heads with the Democratic leadership over its outright refusal to allow a Palestinian-American speaker to make a presentation at the DNC.
Nevertheless, despite disaffection with the party line on Palestine among a minority of its operatives and the majority of the American people, the newly released 2024 Platform of the Democratic Party forcefully reasserts the party’s existing position.
The 2024 Platform, drafted by the bureaucrats of the Democratic National Committee, represents the priorities, goals, and general political outlook of the party for the upcoming election. A vote on the platform was taken at the Convention, but its passage was a fait accompli. Though its program is non-binding, we can gain a lot of insight from it into the worldview of the top echelons of the Democratic Party. For those committed to the Palestine solidarity movement, and especially those who support the Democratic Party and vote for its candidates in “normal” times, understanding the program is absolutely necessary to determine how to orient to the party in the 2024 elections and beyond.
Israel as key to U.S. imperialist objectives
The platform doesn’t leave you wondering for long where the Democratic Party stands on Palestine. In fact, support for Israel constitutes the framework and primary theme for the whole section on “The Middle East and North Africa.” Of the three pages of this 91-page document dedicated to the MENA region, there is barely a paragraph that doesn’t include statements of unequivocal support for Israel or further emphasis on the centrality of Israel for U.S. imperial politics.
The 2024 Platform states: “President Biden and Vice President Harris believe a strong, secure, and democratic Israel is vital to the interests of the United States. Their commitment to Israel’s security, its qualitative military edge, its right to defend itself, and the 2016 Memorandum of Understanding is ironclad.
“President Biden traveled to Israel—the first U.S. president to do so at a time of war—in the days after October 7 to demonstrate that the United States stands with Israel in its quest for peace and security. He has also defended Israel at the U.N. against one-sided efforts to condemn Israel. The Administration worked with Congressional leaders to pass a historic aid package worth $14 billion to help Israel defend itself and to provide more than $1 billion for additional humanitarian aid to Gaza.
Kamala Harris’s DNC speech also hit on this theme. She promised, “I will always stand up for Israel’s right to defend itself. And I will always ensure Israel has the ability to defend itself.” In her Sept. 10 debate with Trump, Harris reiterated her determination to give military aid to Israel. Her remarks make crystal clear that Biden is not at all an outlier in his rabid support for Israel.
Many celebrated Biden stepping down, seeing it as a victory and product of the Palestine solidarity movement. Many have also entertained the idea that Kamala Harris might represent a break from unflinching Zionism within the party. However, this program and the speeches by the leading figures of the Democratic Party, including Harris, should put all this speculation to rest.
In her Sept. 10 debate, Harris also declared that “far too many Palestinians have been killed.” However, it is quite unconscionable that Harris and Biden talk about their commitment to Palestinian human rights while ensuring military funding for Israel’s genocidal offensive in Gaza. You can’t give somebody guns and bombs knowing that they’ll use it for murder, and then encourage them to moderate the carnage as you continue to give them more guns and bombs.
Negotiations between the sword and the neck
The platform states: “President Biden is working to build a durable peace in the Middle East bolstered by regional integration, a strong coalition to counter and deter Iran and prevent it and its terrorist proxies from threatening the security of the region, and a negotiated two-state solution that ensures Israel’s future as a Jewish and democratic state with recognized borders and upholds the right of Palestinians to live in freedom and security in a viable state of their own. The terrorist group Hamas sought to destroy the promise of that [two-state solution] vision on October 7, 2023, but they will not succeed. The United States strongly supports Israel in the fight against Hamas. And the hard work of diplomacy under the President’s leadership has made real progress on a way forward that will free the hostages, establish a durable ceasefire, ease humanitarian suffering in Gaza, and make possible normalization between Israel and key Arab states, together with meaningful progress and a political horizon for the Palestinian People.”
The best that a supporter of the Palestine movement might latch onto in this Program is its reaffirmation of its “commitment to a two-state solution” and platitudes about the human rights of Palestinians. But these nice-sounding words occur in the same paragraph where the party discusses its total support for Israel.
Before accepting this as a sign of positive movement in the Democratic Party establishment, it’s important to recognize this echoes the U.S. government rhetoric for a generation — since the inauguration of the Oslo Accords and the era of the “peace process” in 1993. A whole generation has lived in this post-Oslo world; most Palestinians were born after its signing. For this whole period, vacuous discussion of human rights, commitments to a Palestinian state sometime in the future, and occasional finger-wagging at Israeli excesses against Palestinians has been the norm. Just as now, this rhetoric has always been hedged with declarations of total support for Israel, and practice has shown which part of the rhetoric reflects reality.
The events of Oct. 7, 2023, which the program has a titled section dedicated to condemning, was a predictable consequence of these decades in which official hypocrisy and human rights rhetoric poorly masked violent occupation, dispossession, and racial rule. The choice that the post-Oslo world has offered the Palestinian people is either horror without end or an end full of horrors. And faced with this terrible choice, an end full of horrors at least offers an end—either liberation or destruction.
The U.S. commitment to an ethno-supremacist Israel necessarily undermines the empty promise of “the right of Palestinians to live in freedom and security in a viable state of their own.” The party claims that “the President’s leadership has made real progress on a way forward” through negotiations, as though they couldn’t just end the war today. The war ends when Israel stops the offensive, and Israel can’t continue the offensive forever without U.S. arms and funding. Even threats of cutting off support have stopped Israel in the past. Consequently, the high-minded discussion of humanitarian concerns, a “durable ceasefire,” and a “two-state solution” rings hollow.
Moreover, the Democratic Party’s advocacy for a “two-state solution” should not be seen as a commitment to a just and final resolution to the “Israeli-Palestinian Conflict.” The two-state solution has constituted the theoretical aim of the peace process in the Oslo era, but it is neither feasible nor desirable. Israel and its U.S. backers have offered the Palestinian people a solution that, at its best, would constitute an internationally recognized Palestinian state comprised of the non-contiguous Gaza and West Bank bantustans. Such a “state” would still be dominated politically, economically, and militarily by Israel without resolving any of the fundamental problems facing the Palestinian people.
The “two-state solution” is nothing but ideological cover for the ongoing colonial situation, which serves no other purpose than to make the current reality palatable and to buy-off a section of Palestinians’ political leadership. One secular, democratic, and socialist state with equal rights for all in the whole of historic Palestine is the only basis for a just and lasting peace, which is precisely why it will never appear in a Democratic Party program.
The program then brags about a “historic aid package worth $14 billion to help Israel defend itself and to provide more than $1 billion for additional humanitarian aid to Gaza.” This factoid pretty much sums the whole issue up. It would offer $14 billion to continue the war, and $1 billion to offer a band-aid to those who are suffering its consequences. This “historic” aid package is the proof of how direct the link is between the U.S. ruling class and the ongoing genocide. This package was a product of the Democrats’ coveted “bipartisanship,” and it is a point of “pride” that Harris will point to countless times during her campaign.
Democrats on the Palestine Solidarity Movement
The 2024 Platform states, “The Administration opposes any effort to unfairly single out and delegitimize Israel, including at the United Nations or through the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions Movement, while protecting the Constitutional right of our citizens to free speech.”
The Democrats’ relationship to the Palestine solidarity movement in the United States is simple and can be encapsulated in three words: they oppose it. Democratic Party politicians from the state to the national level have made it a priority to attack—and where possible ban—the Boycotts, Divestments, and Sanctions (BDS) movement against Israel under the guise that the movement is “anti-Semitic.” This campaign has been fundamental to the solidarity efforts in the United States since 2001. Signed by hundreds of Palestinian civil society organizations and endorsed by thousands more organizations across the world, the demands the BDS campaign levels at Israel are quite simple:
- Ending its occupation and colonization of all Arab lands occupied in 1967 and dismantling the Wall
- Recognizing the fundamental rights of the Arab-Palestinian citizens of Israel to full equality
- Respecting, protecting, and promoting the rights of Palestinian refugees to return to their homes and properties as stipulated in UN Resolution 194
Readers can determine whether these demands are antisemitic. The Democrats constant denunciation of and attacks against the BDS movement demonstrate how violently they oppose even moderate expressions of support for Palestine or condemnation of Israel.
The “Uncommitted Campaign” is another important facet of this discussion. The moderate successes in getting voters to vote uncommitted in an uncompetitive race have heartened many in the Palestine movement as a reflection of widespread disenchantment with the Democrats’ unwavering support of Israel. Thirty uncommitted delegates won seats and were present at the DNC. The Uncommitted Campaign also publicly celebrated the party’s decision to allow a panel at the conference entitled “Democrats for Palestinian Human Rights.”
But after reading the program of the party, how are we to feel about the state of this reform movement? The Democratic Party apparatus is happy to give superficial “wins” to movements in order to co-opt and placate them. The party loves to utter platitudes about Palestinian humanity and rights to self-determination, yet not for one day have they stopped their relentless funding and ideological backing for Israel, and consequently, its genocide.
Furthermore, conference speeches by Democratic leaders made clear that no change of position on Palestine is being considered. Kamala Harris, Joe Biden, and the supposed leftist firebrand Alexandria Ocasio Cortez maintained remarkable unity of line in their speeches. Just as in the platform, Democratic leaders reiterated their unequivocal support for Israel, blamed the Palestinian resistance for all of the carnage in this war, and bragged about their commitment to the phony peace negotiations—which Israel has undermined every step of the way, most recently, with the shocking assassination of the Hamas leader and leading Palestinian negotiator in the peace talks, Ismail Haniyeh.
Taken together, the Democratic platform and subsequent speeches make clear that support for Israel constitutes the core of the party’s orientation to this war. The leadership is criminalizing BDS and undermining reform efforts within its ranks at every turn. It’s time to accept that there is no place in the Democratic Party for those who support Palestine.
Hear what the Democrats are telling you!
As Israel’s war in Gaza approaches its one-year anniversary, the Democrats have only shifted their rhetoric on it, but have not changed their position. The suffering of the Palestinian people has not been enough to change their position. In Michigan, 100,000 people voted “uncommitted” in the Democratic primaries in disgust over Biden’s bankrolling of the war. But that was not enough to change the party’s position. Encampments, walk-outs, and sit-ins rocked the campuses of 140 colleges in 45 states. That was not enough to change their position. Over 3000 students were arrested in this protest wave, with thousands more facing suspensions, firings, and other forms of discipline thanks to a coordinated nationwide campaign of repression demanded by both parties. Despite majority disapproval of Israeli military action, despite support for Palestine within their base, despite everything—nothing has changed their stance.
Support for Israel is so central to U.S. imperial strategy and the interests of the U.S. ruling class that it is non-negotiable. There is a unanimous bipartisan consensus among the political elite, just as there is on the most fundamental issues for capitalist rule. Their new program for the 2024 elections is just the latest confirmation of which side they’re on.
Our movement as a whole needs to give up on the hopeless and demeaning efforts to reform or exert conditional pressure on the Democratic Party. The party doesn’t represent us and it’s not going to. Seeing the true character of the party, we must adopt demands and strategies that build the power of the movement as an independent force. We can halt Israel’s genocidal war by forcing the U.S. to withdraw all support to Israel through a well-organized nationwide movement based on mass struggle. Anything less ensures that the terrifying politics of the status quo will continue.
As a movement, let’s listen to the Democrats’ statements and accept the simple truth: If you want to see liberation for the Palestinian people, you have no home in the Democratic Party. We are not going to change the minds of Kamala Harris or the hundreds of operatives at the DNC. They’re not going to change their positions, but we can change their actions if we fight independently and turn this into a movement of millions.
Those of us in the United States collectively have more power to influence the course of events in Israel and Palestine than just about anyone. That makes it our duty to organize a mass solidarity movement for Palestinian liberation and make the current situation untenable. The Democratic Party knows that our movement is a threat, so let’s carry out the threat and do our part to support Palestinians as they fight for liberation.
