Michael Arria
Mondoweiss / August 29, 2024
James Zogby speaks to Mondoweiss about the DNC’s snub of the Uncommitted movement, and what it will take for Washington to shift on Palestine.
Last week the Democratic National Convention generated controversy, debate, and condemnation when it denied a Palestinian speaker from addressing the crowd on behalf of the Uncommitted Movement.
The decision came amid widespread protests in Chicago, as activists continued to demand that the Democratic party stop supporting Israel’s genocidal assault on Gaza.
Arab American Institute co-founder and author James Zogby has worked on this issue within the Democratic party for years. He was part of Jesse Jackson presidential campaigns, a member of Bernie Sanders’s committee to draft the Democratic Party platform in 2016, and was on the DNC’s Executive Committee for 16 years. He also participated in a panel on Palestinian human rights at last week’s DNC, the first to ever take place.
Zogby spoke to Mondoweiss about the Uncommitted snub, the Democratic platform, Biden, Harris, and what it will take for Washington to shift on the issue.
There’s a lot of anger about Uncommitted being prohibited from speaking at the Democratic National Convention, but you just wrote an article where you argue that “Palestine and supporters of Palestinian rights were big winners” at the DNC. Can you explain what you mean by that ?
I think we’ve reached a tipping point in terms of the degree to which we’ve become empowered and are therefore able to ensure that what we want can’t be ignored. We were able to gain even more traction precisely because we were slighted and ignored.
This is my 11th convention. There were other times when we were wanting more recognition. We were wanting a speaker. We were wanting change in language, et cetera. And it was ignored, but we had no capacity to elevate that as a slight.
When you gain some power, you have the ability to be slighted, to frame your slight as an insult and others have used that quite effectively. We take our wounds, we’ve taken our wounds for years, and I want to make it clear that there was hurt here, but this was different.
They made a boneheaded move denying this speaker. It would have been no cost to them, actually possibly a benefit to them if they had allowed it. When they denied it, it became a story. There was more press coverage of the slight than there would have been had a speaker actually been allowed to speak for two minutes. They wouldn’t have allowed the speech that [Georgia State Rep.] Ruwa Romman wanted to give, they never would have let that happen. Every speech at that convention was heavily edited and scripted and up on a teleprompter and it simply wouldn’t have been anything other than what they wanted somebody to say.
I was on a panel there at the McCormick Center, which was the first time there was ever [a panel on Palestinian human rights] at the DNC. We were able to do it unscripted there. They knew that. They knew that we were going to be able to criticize the administration. They knew we were going to be in a position of being very critical of what Israel has done. That would not have been the case if somebody had spoken from the podium.
It would have been good to have a Palestinian speak; it would have been respectful of the community, but the disrespect actually became a story, and it hasn’t been a story in previous years. That’s why I think people saying we should withdraw [from engaging with the Democratic Party] are wrong.
I conclude my recent article with two lessons that Jesse Jackson taught me in 1988. I delivered his minority plank on Palestine at the Democratic Convention and was pressured after that to withdraw as a member of the DNC. I had just been appointed. I was so frustrated. I told him I was ready to quit all this and he told me, “Never quit because you give them what they want. They’re most afraid if you stick around and fight.” He said, you won a victory here. You were able to break the silence, you were able to speak out on the issue from the podium of the convention. Embrace it, but never turn your back because the knives will be out. He was right on both counts. That’s the lesson I learned back then that I want people to understand now.
I saw you say that the decision to deny Uncommitted was a terrible political decision by the Democrats, beyond the moral component. What did you mean by that ?
Ask people who the Israelis who spoke at the convention were. They couldn’t tell you their names. All they remembered was that it was emotional, and they cried. That’s all.
They could have had a two-minute Palestinian speech that actually would have been as mild as the Israeli one was, but that wouldn’t have created the attention that the denial of that opportunity did. At the same time, they lost votes by not allowing a speaker. They didn’t gain any votes. If they had had a Palestinian speaker, they would have gained votes and not lost any votes. It was a dumb, dumb mistake.
Where did the decision come from? You know how [Obama aide] Ben Rhodes described the foreign policy establishment as “the blob?” Well, there’s a consulting class blob as well. Folks who get locked into a kind of thinking, who think they’ll lose Jewish votes. There are no votes to lose here and that’s why it was boneheaded.
Democrats recently released their 2024 platform. Very pro-Israel, very hawkish on Iran. As someone who has worked on past platforms, did anything surprise you about it ?
No.
We go through this ritual every four years, and in some ways, it’s pointless because there’s no relationship between the platform and anything that’s actually real. It’s a power struggle, and frankly, AIPAC has the ability to call the shots and dictate terms. This is also where “the blob” comes in.
I remember in 1996, this was during the early parts of Oslo and [former President Bill] Clinton was spending so much energy saying there shouldn’t be any unilateral measures, but then the platform draft called for moving the embassy to a unified Jerusalem.
I said, this is exactly what you’re warning against. He got upset. He called Sandy Berger. Sandy Berger and I worked out a statement, which was read into the platform. This may be your policy, but it’s not the policy of the administration. It was a rebuke, but the platform still went through because it was not a policy statement. It was a political statement about where the power center is. The power center is still with the pro-Israel forces.
We saw it in 2012, too, when they made another boneheaded move. They went to the convention and tried to undo the platform because it had left out “Jerusalem language.” They tried to reinsert it.
Just like this time, I spent a day doing interviews. People asking me what that move meant. Like this time, I thought they messed up. The stories that came out were about how they rammed this through.
We’re not at a tipping point yet, but we’re getting to the tipping point where their ability to force their will will become more of a liability than an asset.
We’re not at a tipping point yet, but we’re getting to the tipping point where their ability to force their will will become more of a liability than an asset. I think this situation showed a number of people supporting us, including Biden-appointed delegates who ended up wearing keffiyehs at the convention and who ended up saying how much they supported us. Ha’aretz, The Forward, they all did editorials about how there should have been a Palestinian speaker. The Israelis who spoke said there should have been a Palestinian speaker. Members of Congress, obviously The Squad, but others who had no stake in the game came out and said there should have been a Palestinian speaker.
We’re in a different place. I think we have to recognize that and say, okay, we’re not the defeated, dejected, despised minority. We are an empowered group and we have to figure out now how to use that moving forward in a way to advance, not to withdraw.
You were the last and only Arab-American to address this issue from the convention floor. That was 36 years ago. I think a lot of people look at what just happened and conclude that nothing has changed. Can you talk about the backlash to your speech and what happened next ?
After that speech, I got blacklisted for a while. I had just made it onto the DNC and they pressured me to resign. Ron Brown, who was to become DNC chair, told me he’d make it up to me.
Look, up until 1988, there had never been an Arab-American who’d been in a meeting at the DNC. The deputy political director met with a couple of my staff and when one of them asked why they don’t recognize Arab-American Democrats, he said that they would risk losing a constituency that’s far more important to them: Jewish Americans. I wrote back to him and I said, that sounds antisemitic to me. You’re pre-judging how the Jewish community will respond. It was also deeply hurtful and insulting to Arab Americans.
Again, like Jesse said, we did not give up. We continued to fight. In 1988 we produced a record number of delegates that we elected on the Jackson ticket. We registered thousands of voters. We were present at the convention.
So, Ron Brown said he’d make it up to me. Right after he took office, he called me and said, “I told the DNC I don’t want to meet with anybody before I meet with you. I want to send the message that the party is open.” He welcomed us. He welcomed our groups around the country into the party. He came to our big gathering that we do. We used to do it every January and it was the first time any party chair had ever come to an Arab American event. He spoke about the fact that he had been threatened by people. He was told, if you attend these events, you’ll lose financial support for the party. But he came. He stayed with us the four years he was on. Then when he was leaving, he appointed me to an opening on the DNC.
That was the end of 1992 going into 1993 and I’ve been on the DNC ever since.
There’s been a lot of discussion in recent weeks about what Kamala Harris’s policy would be on this issue and whether or not there will be any shift from what Biden’s is now. Do you think Harris will be different on this issue ?
I do. It’s unclear how different or what the actual result in policy will be, but she is different.
The first time I testified before Joe Biden was in the mid-70s, he was a year in the Senate. It was on the secret Kissinger Accords, where the United States had promised not to negotiate with the PLO or support Palestinian self-determination.
He was as stubborn on everything then as he is now. He grew up in a certain school. I mean, it wasn’t a surprise to me when I read that he was mentored by [Senator] Frank Church. That’s where neo-conservatism started. All the folks from Democrat Frank Church’s office migrated over to Reagan and became a cornerstone of that movement in politics. Biden didn’t leave the party, but if you listen to his rhetoric about Ukraine and Russia, listen to his rhetoric about Israel. It’s neo-conservatism. The Manichean view of the world, where conflict is inevitable and our values will triumph and whatever.
Biden’s rhetoric now is like Bush’s during the Iraq war. He just hasn’t used the term “Axis of Evil,” but he comes awful close.
That’s not where Harris is from. I don’t know how it translates into policy. She is a woman of color; she’s profoundly aware of that, and it means something to her. I think her instincts will be different. It’s not just rhetoric. It’s where she’s coming from and I’ve spoken with her about it. And she’s been very clear about the difference.
So I do think that there’s something there, but the question is, like I said, how does it translate? And what do we do with it? Walking away or giving up is reckless. That will yield no good results. It’s like a teenager who gets upset and goes into a room and locks himself, and says they’re not coming out. We can’t afford that. We have responsibilities to ourselves and our community, to our children, but also to the folks that we’re fighting for in the Middle East.
We see poll after poll showing that Democratic voters have grown very critical of Israel. They want military aid conditioned. They want a ceasefire. You say people should continue to engage with the Democratic party, but do you envision a tipping point where we see actual policy shifts? What’s it going to take for them to change ?
We’re already in a better place than we’ve ever been. When [Senator Chris] Van Hollen can get 19 Senators on board [for an amendment that requires U.S. military aid to comply with international law]. When we can have resolutions in Congress that have doubled the number, tripled in some cases. When we have 350 cities do ceasefire resolutions. We’re moving in the right direction.
And oh, by the way, when AIPAC has to spend $20 million combined with its allies to defeat [Rep.] Jamaal Bowman and $10 million to defeat [Rep.] Cori Bush and more than $100 million in all total on races around the country, it means that they’ve become hysterical in their panic that they’re losing on this.
I believe that not only will there be a tipping place for us, but I think there will be a tipping point for them. They won a race, they won two races. However, they actually lost a bunch, incidentally. They don’t like to talk about the ones that they secretly compete in or can’t compete in. They either ignore them and hope that people will forget, or they say, oh, we had nothing to do with them. If they had nothing to do with [Rep.] Summer Lee’s race, then what was [GOP mega-donor] Jeffrey Yass doing spending in it? That’s why they stayed out of it, because they didn’t have to.
They try to do the old mafia thing where you shoot a dog dead and leave it on the front steps so everyone will get the idea and be afraid, but they’re not getting away with it right now. They’re hysterical and I think their weakened position is causing them to make mistakes. I don’t think the Jewish-Black relationship will be the same after this past election because of Jamaal and Cori. Yeah, there’s going to be an accounting for that. AIPAC has become a Republican tool. They’ve dug a hole for themselves and I don’t think anyone can rescue them.
We just need a few more wins and to give them a few more losses and I think there will be some change. Most members of Congress just have one thing on their minds. How do I win my next election? I remember one time saying to [Rep.] John Conyers, “How can they do all this, it goes against the national security interests of the United States?” He laughed. He said, “Zogby, what you don’t understand yet is that for most members here, the national interest of the United States is synonymous with their reelection.” That’s what they care about and that’s what we have to focus on.
Michael Arria is the U.S. correspondent for Mondoweiss
