COMMENTARY
The Fight Over Having a Palestinian Speaker at the DNC
Seth Mandel
August 22, 2024

After the parents of Israeli-American hostage Hersh Goldberg-Polin were given a gracious reception at the Democratic National Convention last night, demands that a Palestinian-American speaker be added to the program went into overdrive. The Uncommitted movement—which has been pushing voters to punish the Democrats for being too friendly toward Israel—is especially agitated, though it remains unclear why they think they should be rewarded by a party for trying to sabotage that party. Chutzpah and hypocrisy aside, though, there’s a very clear reason such a speech hasn’t happened: The Democrats don’t cultivate relationships with Palestinians whom they trust to handle a prime-time convention speech. READ MORE

YOUTUBE Parents of Hamas hostage Hersh Goldberg-Polin speak at 2024 Democratic National Convention Rachel Goldberg-Polin and Jon Polin, American-Israeli parents whose son Hersh was abducted by Hamas from a music festival during the attack on Oct. 7, spoke at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago on Wednesday. Rachel told a hushed crowd inside United Center that Hersh’s left forearm was blown off by a grenade in the attack before Hamas loaded him onto a pick-up truck, “stolen from his life – and me and Jon – in Gaza.” “Since then, we’ve lived on another planet,” she said. “Anyone who is a parent or has had a parent can try to imagine the anguish and misery that Jon and I and all the hostage families are enduring.” Click here to watch video.

TABLET MAG The Democrats in Chicago  The radicals who actually matter have been brought back into the Democratic fold in order to project party unity. The Harris-Walz campaign is simultaneously courting the party’s pro- and anti-Israel constituencies in an effort to delay intra-party debates until after the election. The people on the outside of the convention are the leftovers. They have no power of their own now that their patrons within the party establishment have withdrawn their support, and their protests are, in effect, media pseudo-events, misleading even when they depict something “real.”

ARUTZ SHEVA Anti-Israel protesters confront Vivek Ramaswamy in Chicago: Racist go home! Anti-Israel protesters swarm former Republican presidential primary candidate blocks from DNC, tell him he has no right to be there unless he calls out Israel over “genocide” in Gaza.

TIMES OF ISRAEL Israeli diplomat hails platform adopted by DNC, decision not to platform Palestinian representative An Israeli diplomat at the Democratic National Convention hails the platform adopted by the party this week along with organizers’ decision not to offer a speaker slot to a representative of the Palestinian-American community.