Near midnight last week, Democratic delegates with the Uncommitted movement sat in protest outside Chicago’s United Center. Elected by hundreds of thousands of primary voters who oppose President Joe Biden’s response to the war in Gaza, the delegates were sent to the DNC “uncommitted”—not pledged to support any candidate at the convention. Earlier in the week, the group did what they were elected to do by calling for a permanent ceasefire and immediate arms embargo. They also continued a simpler request they’d started making before the convention: a spot for a speaker on the main stage to talk about Palestine.
On Wednesday evening, the DNC and Harris campaign finally told them that no Palestinian American would be allowed to speak from the main stage of the convention. Here was their last ditch effort. They hoped a sit-in—and the Civil Rights history it evoked—would push party leaders to change their minds.
Despite being a group of staunch Democrats working to affect change from within the party, the Harris campaign—and many Democrats—mostly treated Uncommitted and their allies as outsiders ruining a party at the DNC. And, often, it seemed without even understanding what they were saying or where agreement could be had. The result was a four-day convention that managed to find space for seemingly everyone on the main stage except those willing to speak personally about what is happening in Palestine.
This stems back to the whole “unsinkable aircraft carrier in the Middle East” rhetoric from back in the 60s. It’s frankly outdated in the modern day, when the US has military bases of its own sprinkled throughout Iraq and Syria, as well as strong alliances with countries like Saudi Arabia.
Israel did not even participate in the fight against ISIS. The idea they’re some useful weapon in the ME is just inaccurate.
For the most part I agree that in the long term Israel has not been super helpful to US interests. The people running our society had their veiws of foriegn policy formed in the 70s and this is the result.
In general they only fight Hamas and Hezbollah, 2 groups that they created with their invasions. The only thing I can think of is their intelligence operations against Iran, but it’s not clear why they need to be the ones to do it.