The anti-Israel/pro-Hamas crowd can’t be appeased, and they were always going to test the Democratic Party’s resolve to resist its demands by force.
“You know what?” Kamala Harris growled after being forced to depart from the text of her stump speech last week amid the familiar hectoring of a handful of anti-Israel demonstrators. “If you want Donald Trump to win, then say that. Otherwise, I’m speaking.”
To this, the pro-Harris crowd roared with approval. That’s encouraging, but only insofar as her allies recognize that any diminution of the fanatical adoration to which they’ve treated the vice president these last three weeks risks shattering the whole artifice. Deep down, her supporters recognize that accommodating, much less courting, these elements on the fringes of progressive politics has reached the point of diminishing returns. The argument implicit in Harris’s admonition isn’t that Israel’s mission in Gaza is a moral and practical necessity that advances America’s permanent interests abroad. It’s that the protesters’ cause is a minority proposition.
The Harris campaign has yet to propose a policy agenda that might explain to the public what she intends to do with the power she seeks, so analyses of her campaign must rely on auguries and the Kremlinological parsing of statements produced by Harris’s staff. And yet, the campaign does seem committed to rebuking the protestors as a practical matter. When, for example, the New York Times got wind that Harris had taken a meeting with cease-fire activists in Detroit and reported that she was “open” to embargoing arms shipments to Israel, the campaign was quick to strike the rumor down. “She does not support an arms embargo on Israel,” Harris foreign-policy adviser Phil Gordon declared. “She will continue to work to protect civilians in Gaza and to uphold international humanitarian law.”
Sensitive as they are to the slightest rebuke by the Democratic Party’s more mainstream factions, the jilted activist class is set on revenge. According to the Washington Post’s Yasmeen Abutaleb, Democratic “leaders” had “hoped” that Harris’s elevation “would shrink the protests” based on the assumption that her role under Joe Biden rendered her the foremost critic of the Israeli government within the administration. “But to many activists, Harris has not done nearly enough,” Abutaleb added. Thus, the demonstrators are still planning to show up in force at the Democratic nominating convention intent on exposing the disunity within the party that Harris’s nomination had quieted.
“Protest organizers have for months battled in federal court with the city of Chicago over how close they can get to the United Center and how long the marching route can be,” her report continued. “For now, the city has agreed to a 1.1-mile route, while organizers are hoping for 2.3 miles.” The Chicago Sun-Times reports that protest organizers are prepared to deviate from the planned route, which is “too short and will take protesters down smaller streets, leading to potentially dangerous bottlenecks.” Local law enforcement has undergone preparations to respond with vigor if the mob that descends on Chicago turns violent. They are, however, wary of meting out a “forceful response” that aggravates the protesters or establishes parallels between this nominating convention and the 1968 debacle that marred Chicago’s reputation among left-wing opinion-makers for a generation.
Dissenters inside the convention hall and in the streets surrounding it have myriad demands. Some seek the inclusion of a pro-cease-fire plan in the Democratic Party’s platform. Others want the U.S. to force Israel to end its blockade of the Gaza Strip and force Israel to withdraw all Israeli citizens from the Palestinian territories. At a minimum, they want the Democratic Party to demonstrate that it rejects the overwhelming consensus in Israel’s favor. “People feel more betrayed by the Democratic Party,” 31-year-old organizer Jae Yates told the Sun-Times. “I think people are exhausted and sick of the runaround from the Democrats.”
Harris has tried to mollify the activists, but the effort is misplaced. When asked by a pool reporter about her alleged openness to imposing “limitations of arms” sent to Israel, Harris’s answer reflected the conundrum in which she finds herself. “We need to get the hostages out,” the vice president replied. “We need a hostage deal, and we need a ceasefire. And I can’t stress that strongly enough, it needs to get done. The deal needs to get done. It needs to get done now.” The obstacle to that happy eventuality isn’t Israel. It is Hamas, which yet again rejected inducements to participate in cease-fire talks and a hostage-release deal over the weekend. The demonstrators don’t want to hear it, and Harris doesn’t want to say it.
Harris has spent months cultivating the impression among anti-Israel demonstrators that she was one of their own. That was a luxury that must now be dispensed with. The anti-Israel/pro-Hamas crowd cannot be appeased or mollified, and they were always going to test the Democratic Party’s resolve to resist its demands by force. The Harris campaign’s failure to unambiguously reject the authors of the violence and vandalism that plagued America’s streets and college campuses for nearly a year has now set the stage for a confrontation that risks reminding voters of the salience of Donald Trump’s “law and order” message.