CHICAGO — Pro-Palestinian activists will host a panel on Palestinian rights on the first day of the Democratic National Convention, in an event they called unprecedented.
The panel is taking place six miles from the main convention action, at a satellite location in Chicago’s McCormick Place convention center. A separate session on the American Jewish Community and Israel since Hamas launched the war last year will take place on Wednesday at an undisclosed location.
The official slots on the packed schedule offers the first public confirmation that the Democrats will sanction discussion of the Israel-Hamas war, which has divided the party, at a convention meant to project unity.
Pro-Israel and pro-Palestinian activists are jostling for attention this week in Chicago, but up to now, the DNC has not offered any public confirmation that either would be able to command an official convention audience.
Major questions, including whether advocates for the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip or for the families of Israeli hostages held by Hamas get a spot on the convention stage, have not gotten official answers.
The panel on Palestinian rights is being organized by the “Uncommitted” movement, which urged Democratic primary voters to withhold support from President Joe Biden in protest of his backing for Israel’s war in Gaza.
“We thank the DNC for working with us on creating this historical panel while we continue focusing on policy change,” Layla Elabed, the Michigan-based co-founder of the movement, said Sunday evening in a post on social media.
It would be the first panel in political convention history “with Palestinian voices leading the conversation and the explicit subject being Palestinian human rights as an issue in the Democratic Party,” Natalia Latif, a spokeswoman for the movement, told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
A spokeswoman for the DNC on Monday morning confirmed that the party approved the event.
Around the same time the DNC green lighted the Uncommitted session, on Sunday afternoon, a separate session organized by the Jewish Democratic Council of America was slotted into “Dempalooza,” a communications training seminar for delegates, called “The American Jewish Community and Israel after Oct. 7.” The DNC spokeswoman said it would among other issues address antisemitism and hate speech in the wake of the war.
The Uncommitted panel would not be the first time that a DNC sees public discussion of Palestinian rights. The party in 1988 had a floor debate on whether it should recognize Palestinian statehood as a goal; the motion failed, but the nascent pro-Palestinian movement saw the mere allowance of a debate as a win that pushed the issue to the forefront of progressive politics. There was also public protest in 2012 over the party platform’s discussion of Jerusalem.
This year, hundreds of thousands of voters voted “uncommitted” or its equivalent during the primaries, when President Joe Biden was on the ballot, although it is not clear whether all of them did so as part of the protest. As a result, the movement secured more than 30 out of some 4,000 delegates. The 30 or so delegates will give the movement a voice from the floor.
The war has riven Democrats, with strong pressure from progressives on the Biden administration to reduce its unstinting backing for Israel. Inside the convention, both pro-Palestinian and pro-Israel advocates are pressing for floor time. Outside, activists on both sides of the issue will be holding demonstrations, and both are accusing Chicago of treating them unfairly.
Uncommitted has asked the DNC to give a prime time spot to Tanya Haj-Hassan, a pediatric intensive care surgeon who recently worked in Gaza. Latif said there has not yet been word on whether she would get the slot. Haj-Hassan will speak on Monday’s panel as will Andy Levin, the Jewish former Michigan congressman who was defeated in 2022, in part because he was targeted by mainstream pro-Israel donors.
Members of hostage families, who are also in Chicago, have also not been told yet whether they will have a slot. Parents of one American-Israeli hostage spoke at the Republican convention in July, where they were lauded as heroes.
Ruby Chen, whose son Itay Chen was killed in the Oct. 7 Hamas invasion that launched the war, and whose body is still held by Hamas, said on Sunday that communications with the DNC had been “sketchy.” He said it was as important for Democrats to hear from the hostage families as it was for Republicans.
Chen said Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has been overly focused on attracting Republicans to Israel’s cause. “He’s been more attentive to the Republican side, and we need to have the State of Israel be attentive to everything it can do and more, to get the hostages out,” he said in an interview.
Republicans are set to seize on any sign of disrespect toward the hostages as evidence of anti-Israel sentiment among Democrats. The Republican Jewish Coalition has pledged to plant 1,800 trees in Israel in the name of any speaker on the main stage in Chicago who will “ask the crowd to cheer if they support Israel.”
Outside the convention’s doors, pro-Palestinian protest planners say they expect tens of thousands of marchers at major rallies on Monday and Thursday. Pro-Israel groups, in the meantime, are planning events on the sidelines of the conference, often at undisclosed locations in order to avoid disruptions.
The party appears hesitant to give much official breathing space to either side. A schedule sent to delegates Sunday for an eight-session “Dempalooza” communications training seminar did not include a single session on the conflict. The JDCA event on American Jews since Oct. 7 was added after the email was sent out.
Like most Jewish community events, the JDCA event location was undisclosed on public schedules; approved attendees would be informed of the address. Jewish organizations have sought to avoid disruptions or worse at their events. It was a telling contrast: As soon as it was ready to announce the session, Uncommitted posted the McCormick Place address for its session on social media.
The day before the convention, signs of pro-Palestinian protest were barely visible throughout the city, which was marked overwhelmingly by signage celebrating the four-day convention.
Harris briefly met with Uncommitted leaders in Michigan earlier this month and reportedly told them what was happening in Gaza was “horrific.” She later shushed protesters who were interrupting her speech, asking them if they wanted to elect Donald Trump, the Republican nominee.
Hatem Abudayyeh, the spokesperson for the Coalition and U.S. Palestinian Community Network, one of the organizers of the mass marches, staged a press conference on Sunday at Union Park to complain that the city had allotted them just a mile along narrow streets.
He said he did not believe the city when officials said security considerations were behind the restrictions. “We say it’s a content-based restriction,” he said, based on the pro-Israel policies of Harris, Biden and Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker, who is Jewish and whom Abudayyeh called a “Zionist.”
“J.B. Pritzker is a Zionist. J.B. Pritzker supports Israel unequivocally,” Abudayyeh said. “I believe that he’s done good work as a governor in general, but he’s one of those folks that we call progressive except on Palestine, and that’s not acceptable anymore.”
The pro-Palestinian groups have one top local official on their side: Brandon Johnson, Chicago’s mayor, on Saturday, told Mother Jones that Israel’s actions were genocidal.
The Israeli American Council, meanwhile, has also complained that the city declined to give it rally space near the convention. It plans to stage a “Hostage Square” with speakers from the families of captives on private property. IAC has also accepted a Wednesday evening spot at a “Speaker’s Platform” the city has set up in one of its parks to accommodate the many groups that applied for rally permits but were declined.
The pro-Palestinian activists’ agenda is to get the United States to coerce Israel into accepting a ceasefire and to impose an arms embargo on Israel.
Yet even among the progressives most dedicated to the cause of the Palestinians, the issue appears shunted to low priority because of the many threats Democrats perceive in Trump’s quest to regain the White House, which he lost to Biden in 2020.
A Progressive Democrats of America conference on the convention’s outskirts on Sunday had initially meant to devote an hour and 15 minutes to the Palestinian issue; the session was delayed and scored barely 30 minutes of rushed speeches.
Trump’s threats to round up undocumented migrants and deport them, to expand restrictions on abortion and to roll back Biden’s health care reforms got more urgent attention. Appeals from pro-Palestinian groups to leverage votes to persuade Biden and Harris to get tough on Israel fell flat in the venue.
Just prior to the session on the Gaza war, Erika Andiola, an immigration activist, told the gathering that Democrats were not making sufficiently clear what could happen to migrants, including members of her family.
“If Trump gets elected there could be mass deportations across the U.S.,” she said.
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