Follow us on social

Kamala & Gaza: All words and no deeds make a divided party

Kamala & Gaza: All words and no deeds make a divided party

Her speech Thursday night won't shake off the pessimism among the marginalized antiwar flank

Analysis | Middle East

CHICAGO —This week’s protests, which saw thousands of antiwar demonstrators take to the streets (lined with scores of Chicago police) in and around the United Center, pose a critical question to the Harris/Waltz ticket: Can they bridge the yawning gulf that divides the street and the establishment on the matter of Israel’s war on Palestine?

The answer is, probably not.

On Thursday night during her own showcase speech in which she formally accepted her party's nomination, Harris appeared full-throated in favor of ending the war in Gaza. Here are her full (brief) remarks on the issue:

“With respect to the war in Gaza, President Biden and I are working around the clock, because now is the time to get a hostage deal and a ceasefire deal done. And let me be clear: I will always stand up for Israel's right to defend itself, and I will always ensure Israel has the ability to defend itself, because the people of Israel must never again face the war that a terrorist organization called Hamas caused on October 7, including unspeakable sexual violence and the massacre of young people at a music festival.

At the same time, what has happened in Gaza over the past 10 months is devastating so many innocent lives lost, desperate, hungry people fleeing for safety, over and over again, the scale of suffering is heartbreaking. President Biden and I are working to end this war, such that 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."

But are words more important than deeds and were the few words issued on the subject this week persuasive to Democrats who want to actually see an end to the war, and at the very least, the American contribution to it?

Up until Thursday night, Vermont’s serial-presidential-also-ran Senator Bernie Sanders was the only other progressive on the DNC stage to give this issue some of the attention protesters believed it deserved (though he didn't go so far to call for an arms embargo). Earlier in the week, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) threw out one line about Harris "working tirelessly to secure a ceasefire in Gaza and bringing the hostages home,” and was quickly admonished for it, even by her own squad members. "Working tirelessly for a ceasefire is really not a thing and they should be ashamed of themselves,” charged Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.).

As antiwar activist and author Norman Solomon has noted, Harris “has toed President Biden’s war line, while at times voicing sympathy for the victims of the Gaza war that’s made possible by policies that she supports. Her words of compassion have yet to translate into opposing the pipeline of weapons and ammunition to the Israeli military as it keeps slaughtering Palestinian civilians.”

Despite their best efforts, the protestors didn’t get much traction this week. For proof of this, look no further than the fact that they couldn't even get a Palestinian-American speaker on stage because, as the Washington Post reported, "many Democratic leaders were concerned that such a speech from the podium would threaten the unity that has been on vivid display at the convention."

Then there's the DNC platform, which recognizes America's “ironclad” commitment to Israel. The Harris/Walz ticket, reads the platform, is dedicated “to Israel’s security, its qualitative military edge, its right to defend itself.”

A press conference outside the DNC Wednesday morning featuring Reps. Omar, Cori Bush (D-Mo.), and two rather heroic members of Doctors Without Borders who witnessed firsthand the horror in Gaza, was sparsely attended. Generally speaking, the mood among the antiwar activists outside the United Center was resigned.

Irene, who travel from Long Island, New York, with Jewish Voices for Peace, told Responsible Statecraft (she did not want to use her last name) that in her view they had to do everything in their power to end the war but Biden was making it impossible given the billions in American money and weapons flowing to Israel today. “So, am I optimistic? I'm not optimistic. But silence is complicity.”

Despite the smears directed at them (guests on Fox News openly call demonstrators terrorists, Hamas sympathizers, and extremists) they are not giving up. And why should they? Their position is a popular one. A recent CBS News/YouGov poll in June showed 61 percent of Americans oppose sending “weapons and supplies to Israel.”

Asked about the accusation made last month by Avril Haines, the Director of National Intelligence, that Iran is encouraging the protests, a union organizer from Chicago responded thusly to RS: “The drone strike pioneer Avril Haines? She’s speaking out against protestors calling for an end to the slaughter of innocent civilians? At least she’s consistent.”

Ann, another member of Jewish Voices for Peace, told RS that Harris’s argument to the antiwar faction of the party that basically “it’s me or Donald Trump” isn’t going to fly. “I think it's a false argument and it's intentional and it's used to instill fear and uncertainty and to make progressives and people with a conscience to feel bad that we are going to put Trump in office,” she said.

The contrast with the mood among the delegates couldn’t be more stark. The Democrats in the convention hall this week were ebullient. At a DNC event Tuesday night, one came away with the impression that the election had already been won. Among the rank and file, Gaza is a mere afterthought. They might cheer on the idea of “ceasefire” as applause lines, and even support the policy, but are quick to move on, and certainly did not have patience for chanting or theater outside or inside.

The attitude, expressed to RS by numerous delegates over the course of the week is: win first, sort out the details later.

But meantime, the carnage in Gaza continues.


Democratic presidential nominee and U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris speaks on Day 4 of the Democratic National Convention (DNC) at the United Center in Chicago, Illinois, U.S., August 22, 2024. REUTERS/Kevin Wurm

Analysis | Middle East
Daniel Noboa, Xi Jinping
Top photo credit: Beijing, China.- In the photos, Chinese President Xi Jinping (right) and his Ecuadorian counterpart, Daniel Noboa (left), during a meeting in the Great Hall of the People, the venue for the main protocol events of the Chinese government on June 26, 2025 (Isaac Castillo/Pool / Latin America News Agency via Reuters Connect)

Why Ecuador went straight to China for relief

Latin America

Marco Rubio is visiting Mexico and Ecuador this week, his third visit as Secretary of State to Latin America.

While his sojourn in Mexico is likely to grab the most headlines given all the attention the Trump administration has devoted to immigration and Mexican drug cartels, the one to Ecuador is primarily designed to “counter malign extra continental actors,” according to a State Department press release.The reference appears to be China, an increasingly important trading and investment partner for Ecuador.

keep readingShow less
US Capitol
Top image credit: Lucky-photographer via shutterstock.com

Why does peace cost a trillion dollars?

Washington Politics

As Congress returns from its summer recess, Washington’s attention is turning towards a possible government shutdown.

While much of the focus will be on a showdown between Senate Democrats and Donald Trump, a subplot is brewing as the House and Senate, led by Republicans but supported by far too many Democrats, fight over how big the Pentagon’s budget should be. The House voted to give Trump his requested trillion dollar budget, while the Senate is demanding $22 billion more.

keep readingShow less
Yemen Ahmed al-Rahawi
Top image credit: Funeral in Sana a for senior Houthi officials killed in Israeli strikes Honor guard hold up a portraits of Houthi government s the Prime Minister Ahmed al-Rahawi and other officials killed in Israeli airstrikes on Thursday, during a funeral ceremony at the Shaab Mosque in Sanaa, Yemen, 01 September 2025. IMAGO/ via REUTERS

Israel playing with fire in Yemen

Middle East

“The war has entered a new phase,” declared Mohammed al-Bukhaiti, a senior official in Yemen’s Ansar Allah movement, after Israeli jets streaked across the Arabian Peninsula to kill the group’s prime minister and a swathe of his cabinet in Yemen’s capital, Sana’a.

The senior official from Ansar Allah, the movement commonly known as the Houthis, was not wrong. The strike, which Israel’s Defense Minister Israel Katz promised was “just the beginning,” signaled a fundamental shift in the cartography of a two-year war of attrition between the region’s most technologically advanced military and its most resilient guerrilla force.

The retaliation was swift, if militarily ineffective: missiles launched towards Israel disintegrated over Saudi Arabia. Internally, a paranoid crackdown ensued on perceived spies. Houthi security forces stormed the offices of the World Food Programme and UNICEF, detaining at least 11 U.N. personnel in a sweep immediately condemned by the U.N. Secretary General.

The catalyst for this confrontation was the war in Gaza, unleashed by Hamas’s October 7 attacks on Israel, which provided the Houthis with the ideological fuel and political opportunity to transform themselves. Seizing the mantle of Palestinian solidarity — a cause their leader, Abdul-Malik al-Houthi, frames as a “sacrifice in the cause of God Almighty ” — they graduated from a menacing regional actor into a global disruptor, launching missiles toward Israel just weeks after Hamas’s attacks and holding one of the world’s most vital shipping lanes hostage.

The chessboard was dangerously rearranged in May, when the Trump administration, eager for an off-ramp from a costly and ineffective air campaign, brokered a surprise truce with the Houthis. Mediated by Oman, the deal was simple: the U.S. would stop bombing Houthi targets, and the Houthis would stop attacking American ships. President Trump, in his characteristic style, claimed the Houthis had “capitulated” while also praising their “bravery.”

keep readingShow less

LATEST

QIOSK

Newsletter

Subscribe now to our weekly round-up and don't miss a beat with your favorite RS contributors and reporters, as well as staff analysis, opinion, and news promoting a positive, non-partisan vision of U.S. foreign policy.