The Washington Post reports:

A coalition of Muslim and Arab American grassroots groups based in the Midwest — including the key battleground states of Michigan and Wisconsin — sent a letter to the vice president recently outlining what it would take to win back their votes. Some Arab American and Muslim organizers say they are open to supporting Harris — but only if she lays out policies toward Israel that differ significantly from Biden’s.

The groups made several policy demands, including a plank in the Democratic platform calling for an immediate and permanent cease-fire in Gaza; a pledge to impose conditions on military aid to Israel; and a call for the dismantling of Israeli settlements in the West Bank.

“We wish to avoid a second Trump administration. We understand that as vice president, you were beholden to the policies of our sitting president, who was and is complicit in Israel’s crimes through the provision of weapons and diplomatic support at the United Nations,” the letter says.

It also calls her selection of Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz (D) as her running mate “a reassuring sign that you are listening to your base.” Many Palestinian Americans were concerned about the potential selection of Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro (D), who has spoken harshly about pro-Palestinian protesters.

Aladdin Nassar, a Little Palestine resident whose father was born in Gaza and fled during the founding of Israel, said he grew up hearing stories about the grapevines and orange groves that surrounded his father’s childhood home. His parents eventually made it to Little Palestine [which is about 15 miles from Chicago’s United Center, where the Democratic convention will be held], where his father worked as a contractor and helped build the Mosque Foundation.

The war in Gaza, he said, has elicited vivid memories of his father’s account of the Nakba, the displacement of Palestinians during Israel’s creation in 1948. Nassar has kept in touch with a cousin in Gaza, who relayed the agonizing decisions the family was making about whether to stay together or split up to increase the chances of survival.

“We should demonstrate as Americans until the genocide is over and humanitarian aid is flooding into Gaza,” Nassar said. “It almost doesn’t matter who the president is, or the candidate. When you’re looking at the enormity of the suffering and what’s happening, it almost feels like what she’s doing is a rhetorical exercise until or unless there’s an actual change in policy.” [Continue reading…]

Farah Stockman writes:

The founders of the uncommitted movement [Abbas Alawieh and Layla Elabed] say they want to help Ms. Harris get elected. But unless she gives them a significant policy win, they will not be able to justify their support, nor will they be able to mobilize their communities to vote.

“I want to be right there with my fellow Democrats, oozing enthusiasm about Tim Walz and what’s the latest with the campaign,” Mr. Alawieh told me. But as he gets campaign updates, he says he is “simultaneously getting updates from my family members in Southern Lebanon who are checking in on each other because of the last bomb that dropped.”

Calling for a cease-fire, which Ms. Harris has done, is not enough.

“We’ve seen a huge shift in language — when she talks about Palestinian right to self-determination,” Ms. Elabed told me. “But Palestinian children can’t eat words. Words are not going to make their limbs grow back.” She wants Ms. Harris to commit to an arms embargo that might actually force Israel to moderate its behavior.

That demand is a tall order, since pro-Israel groups are also a major force in Democratic politics. Calling for an arms embargo would spark outrage and dramatically change longstanding American policy toward Israel.

Ms. Harris has said she does not support an arms embargo, but Mr. Alawieh hasn’t given up. He used to serve as chief of staff for Representative Cori Bush of Missouri — an unapologetic supporter of Palestinian rights — and before that, he was legislative director for Representative Rashida Tlaib of Michigan, the first Palestinian American to serve in Congress, who is also Ms. Elabed’s sister. During those years, he said, he worked with Ms. Harris’s staff in the Senate. “I know that she has relationships with Arab Americans and Muslim Americans and Palestinian Americans,” he told me.

But this request comes at a time when the American Israel Public Affairs Committee is targeting some of the most outspoken defenders of Palestinian rights. Ms. Bush, Mr. Alawieh’s old boss, lost her primary race on Tuesday to a challenger who got a boost from an AIPAC-supported super political action committee that spent more than $8 million on the race.

Earlier this year, at the height of the campus protests about Gaza, meeting or at least acknowledging protesters’ demands wasn’t just the right thing to do, it also appeared to be the politically savvy thing for Democrats to do. That notion is looking shakier now, as two members of Congress who supported Gaza protesters, Ms. Bush and Jamaal Bowman of New York, lost primary challenges.

Some Democrats, in the name of unity, wish that the Gaza protesters would simply shut up. Nonetheless, protesters continue to heckle the Harris campaign, fueled by the righteous fury that bubbles up after each new report of tortured prisoners, buried babies, and soldiers celebrating the destruction of homes in Gaza. Ms. Harris managed to quickly dismiss them when they interrupted her rally speech in Detroit, but she will not be able to so easily dismiss the shocking reality against which they are protesting. Failing to adequately address protesters’ valid outrage could cause Democrats’ newfound party unity to quickly unravel. [Continue reading…]