As protesters breached the barricades outside the Democratic National Convention in Chicago, demanding an end to the war in Israel and capitulations to be made to Palestinians and their terrorist leaders in Gaza, the Democrats inside the United Center also signaled a shift in their perspective and policy plans for Israel and the region. Alexandria Ocasio Cortez broached the issue of Israel and Gaza during her remarks, though she did not mention the nation of Israel. Instead, she spoke of the "leadership" of Kamala Harris, and how Harris would handle bringing an end to the war that Palestinian terrorists began on October 7, 2023.
"And she is working tirelessly to secure a ceasefire in Gaza," she said, "and bringing hostages home. In Kamala Harris, I see a leader who understands." The remains of six of those hostages were recovered by Israeli Defense Forces this week. Over 100 are still being held, including small children. No one knows how many of those who are left are still alive.
President Joe Biden, who gave his farewell to the Democrat Party and, in essence, to the American people on Monday night, also signaled a change in how he views the conflict in Israel—or perhaps the change is with how the future of the party, like AOC and Harris, view it. Biden spoke about efforts being made by Secretary of State Antony Blinken to secure a ceasefire, each attempt at which he has failed when Hamas leaders refuse to accept terms. He also did not mention Israel, saying that it was important, instead, to "surge humanitarian health and food assistance into Gaza, now."
That aid has been flowing from the US, which has funded both sides of the war. Historically, Hamas leaders, who were elected into power by Palestinians nearly 10 years ago after a brutal civil war between Hamas and the previous governing body of Gaza, Fatah, have used aid from western nations to build weapons, bombs, rocket launchers, dig tunnels, and continue their bloody fight to eradicate Israel and eliminate Jews from the region. That is the mission of Hamas, about which the terrorists have been very clear.
Biden was cheered by Democrats at the convention remarking on the need to aid the aggressor state over the nation that has been fighting both in self-defense and to recover their kidnapped citizens, whether they be alive or dead. There are conservatives and Republicans who feel unequivocally that the war in Israel is not America's problem, but the Democrat perspective is that it is America's job to aid the terrorists who attacked Israel and began the war in the first place. Democrats will say that it was reasonable for Hamas to attack because Israel, which withdrew forces from Gaza when Hamas took over, is a colonialist oppressor, a settler state, that has no right to exist on what they call stolen land.
This fight against Israel by Palestinians is then equated to the struggle of Native Americans in the United States, where America is remade as the oppressing settler colonialist power, and the indigenous are reframed as freedom fighters who have the right to take the land back. The protesters outside the convention hold this view. They marched around the convention, tore down fencing, and chanted about how much they hate Christians, America, and the west in general. The amount of cognitive dissonance in the brains of abortion and LGBTQ activists for Gaza is rather extensive, as both things are illegal in Gaza, not just due to leadership, but due to the Muslim faith of the people.
"And finally, finally, finally," Biden continued, "deliver a ceasefire and end this war." At that, the crowd went wild—or as wild as they could at midnight while listening to the final political speech from an irrelevant, ousted leader.
Then Biden delivered the final blow to the pro-Israel faction of the Democrat Party. He not only acknowledged the protesters outside the United Center, who had been marching around carrying the flags of terrorist Arab groups and of Gaza, wearing keffiyehs and pledging allegiance to a people who has dubbed them "useful idiots," but praised them.
"Those protesters out in the street, they have a point," he said, before both-sidesing a conflict in which terrorists massacred 1,200 citizens of a US allied nation and now complain about the consequences. "A lot of innocent people are being killed on both sides."
Harris has already been more sympathetic to the terrorists in Gaza and the people they put in harm's way than with Israel, a long-standing ally of the United States. She has already signaled, in her declining to sit for a speech from Israeli leader Benjamin Netanyahu in Congress, to meeting with him privately afterward and refusing the public photo op, that she's not super on board with that relationship. If night one of the DNC is any indication, the future into which the party wants to take us will be far more opposed to Israel, the only democracy in the Middle East, than with its authoritarian, theocratic, terrorist neighbors.
