KAMALA HARRIS, THE DEMOCRATIC NATIONAL CONVENTION, AND JUSTICE FOR PALESTINIANS
©Wendell Griffen, 2024
Little Rock, Arkansas
Harris delivered a stirring speech that described her personal and professional history. She forcefully expressed her commitment to civil liberty. She extolled the role of working people. And Harris was blunt about her resolve to correct the wrongs done to women and girls concerning reproductive freedom by the right-wing super-majority that former U.S. President Donald Trump nominated and had confirmed on the U.S. Supreme Court to overturn the landmark decision of Roe v. Wade.
On those and other issues, Harris clearly showed that she will be a different kind of leader from Donald Trump if she is elected President.
However, Harris failed to do the one thing that mattered most to people who watched all week for the Democratic Party to show concern for Palestinians. She refused to allow Palestinian-Americans to speak during the official proceedings of the convention.
More than 40,000 Palestinian men, women, and children have been slaughtered in Gaza by Israel since October 7, 2023. Schools, hospitals, homes, places of worship, and life support systems have been destroyed by bombs, artillery shells, and tank rounds.
The world has watched courageous Palestinian journalists daily report on the suffering of people in Gaza caused by Israel’s genocidal war. Humanitarian agencies have reported that Palestinians in Gaza are starving. Medical professionals have reported that Israeli war tactics have made medical care and treatment practically unavailable to Palestinians who have been shot, burned, bombed, and are being starved to death.
Palestinian-Americans begged for a few minutes to speak about the plight of their relatives in Gaza during the Chicago convention. Kamala Harris rejected their pleas.
100,000 “Uncommitted” voters in Michigan refused to vote for Joe Biden because of his support for the genocide that Israel is committing in Gaza. Biden’s bid for re-election was not only doomed by his dismal debate performance against Donald Trump on June 27. His disregard for the suffering of Palestinians and his administration’s military and diplomatic support for Israel’s inhumane treatment of Palestinians in Gaza caused those voters to recognize that Biden does not care about Palestinian suffering, dignity, security, and self-determination.
Kamala Harris could have shown that she is cut from a different cloth. She merely needed to allow Palestinian-Americans to be heard during the official proceedings in Chicago the same way that she allowed the parents of an American hostage held by Hamas in Gaza to be heard.
But for reasons she has not publicly explained, Harris refused to do so. Perhaps she didn’t think that being seen and heard about suffering and injustice matters if one is Palestinian. We may never know.
Harris made a stirring acceptance speech in Chicago. But history will not forget that when she became the most prominent Democratic politician in the world, Harris turned her back on U.S. relatives of starving, unhoused, defenseless, and dying Palestinians whose plight is directly caused by Biden administration support for Israeli genocide in Gaza.
100,000 voters in Michigan will remember how Harris treated those relatives and their plea to be heard in Chicago – for even a few minutes – every day, until November 5, 2024. Those voters cannot prevent Israel from starving, murdering, and robbing their kinfolk in Gaza.
But they may prevent Harris from becoming the next U.S president to help Israel do it.
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