Pro-Palestinian protesters vow massive showing at Democratic convention

BRIDGEVIEW, Ill. - The scenes and stenches that greeted Hamza AbdulQader when he crossed Egypt’s border into Gaza in mid-March were far worse than the devastating videos he had watched as war raged in the territory.

AbdulQader, a critical care nurse and resident of “Little Palestine” — a community outside Chicago that is home to one of the country’s largest concentrations of Palestinian Americans — volunteered in Gaza after watching videos of children suffering and dying there. But he said nothing could prepare him for what he saw: overcrowded hospitals, destitute people lying in the streets, tent cities as far as the eye could see.

“You’re just staring out the window as if you were in a postapocalyptic movie,” AbdulQader recalled of the car ride into Gaza. “We didn’t have soap. We didn’t have basic hygiene supplies. … We would have to literally give Tylenol for explosive injuries and burns.”

That experience, along with 10 months of anger at the Biden administration’s handling of the war, has left AbdulQader and many other Little Palestine residents determined to protest in large numbers outside the Democratic National Convention in Chicago on Aug. 19-22. Organizers say tens of thousands will show up, creating scenes of fury and dissent at a moment when Democrats will be working to project unity.

Democratic leaders hoped that Vice President Kamala Harris’s ascent to the top of the ticket would shrink the protests, since she was not the architect of President Joe Biden’s Gaza policies and has been more vocal in challenging Israel and voicing empathy for Palestinians. But to many activists, Harris has not done nearly enough.

“We don’t expect any changes — we’re still anticipating that there will be tens of thousands of people in the streets,” said Hatem Abudayyeh, national chair for the U.S. Palestinian Community Network and a spokesman for the Coalition to March on the DNC, an amalgamation of more than 200 advocacy groups and community organizations. AbdulQader added, “Unless she clearly takes a stance and says this is not okay … that door is shut.”

The night that Biden dropped out of the presidential race on July 21, more than 80 people logged in to the coalition’s weekly Zoom meeting, Abudayyeh said, and organizers said they were moving ahead as planned even though it looked like Harris would soon become the Democratic nominee. They asked if there were objections, and no one raised concerns.

The same night, the coalition put out a statement saying, “Democratic Party leadership switching out their presidential nominee does not wash the blood of over 50,000 Palestinians off their hands. When it comes to the genocide in Gaza there is no difference between Biden, Harris, or any of the likely candidates for the nomination.”

At least one pro-Israel group is also seeking to organize a demonstration at the convention to show solidarity with Israel, although it is likely to be much smaller than the pro-Palestinian protests.

Some of the protests across the country related to the conflict in Gaza have included vandalism, and both activists and city officials have worried they could become violent during the DNC.

Israel launched its war in Gaza after Oct. 7, when Hamas militants stormed through a border fence and killed 1,200 people, hunting down civilians and taking about 250 people hostage. Since then, Israel’s military assault in Gaza has killed nearly 40,000 Palestinians, according to the Gaza Health Ministry, and its siege of the enclave has unleashed a humanitarian disaster and catastrophic hunger.

Many pro-Palestinian activists contend that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza, and South Africa has brought a case at the International Court of Justice accusing Israel of committing genocide against Palestinians in Gaza. Israel strongly rejects the allegations, arguing that Hamas started the war and that the high death toll is an unavoidable consequence of Hamas’s tactic of embedding its fighters in civilian areas.

Some Democrats have argued that Harris has distinguished herself from Biden and does not bear the same level of responsibility. They have also said scenes of large demonstrations could hurt the party’s ability to project unity and defeat Donald Trump in November.

In Little Palestine, the Israel-Gaza war has remained front-and-center even as it has faded from the front pages and the Democratic Party has largely coalesced around Harris. Many residents have direct ties to Gaza and the West Bank, and have lost family members or heard stories of loved ones facing repeated displacement.

Signs of the war dot this small suburb of less than 20,000 people, where many of the restaurants, bakeries, jewelers, coffee shops and other businesses are Palestinian-owned. (Bridgeview also includes many non-Arab residents.) At one strip mall, an LED sign shifts between various pro-Palestinian slogans or images: “Free Palestine,” “Ceasefire Now,” a Palestinian flag. Many residents wear kaffiyehs, the black-and-white checkered scarf that has come to symbolize solidarity with the Palestinian cause. On a busy interstate, residents have erected a large “Free Palestine” sign in bright red letters.

Little Palestine is about 15 miles from the United Center, where the Democratic convention will be held. Many of its residents immigrated to the United States after Israel’s founding in 1948, and another wave came in the 1960s and 1970s. Overall, the Chicagoland area has the highest number of Palestinian Americans in the United States.

Protest organizers have for months battled in federal court with the city of Chicago over how close they can get to the United Center and how long the marching route can be. The protesters plan to start in Union Park, about a half mile from the convention site, but organizers are still arguing with the city over the length of their route. For now, the city has agreed to a 1.1 mile route, while organizers are hoping for 2.3 miles.

The Hamas attack and the ensuing war have unleashed fears among Arabs and Muslims, as well as American Jews, of rising hate and bigotry toward their communities. Little Palestine was deeply traumatized by the killing of a 6-year-old Palestinian American boy, Wadea al-Fayoume, who was stabbed repeatedly by his mother’s landlord in October, authorities said. Al-Fayoume lived in nearby Plainfield, Ill., and his funeral was held at Little Palestine’s Mosque Foundation, one of the country’s largest mosques and the nucleus of this community.

Tammie Ismail, the principal of Aqsa School, an all-girls school comprised mostly of Palestinian American students, said her school received a death threat targeting its students shortly after al-Fayoume’s killing.

“We had a kindergartner who told me — she came to school and said, ‘My grandparents were killed,’” Ismail recalled. “Not only are you trying to grapple with the grief you’re feeling, but you’re also trying to be a source of comfort and support for children who are aware of the atrocities happening in Gaza.”

In interviews, several residents said they felt guilty about being able to partake in everyday activities while relatives in Gaza were suffering. With the convention essentially down the street from their homes, they see a unique opportunity to take their anger and grief directly to people they say can stop the war: Biden, Harris and other Democratic leaders.

Still, Harris’s rise has shifted the conversation among activists, since she is seen as more sympathetic to Palestinians than Biden. “The Israeli government must do more to significantly increase the flow of aid — no excuses,” Harris said on March 3, before Biden had taken a similarly tough tone. Harris also skipped Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s recent speech to Congress.

Before a rally in Detroit last week, Harris spoke briefly with organizers from Michigan’s “Uncommitted” movement, which had urged Democrats to vote “uncommitted” in the Democratic primary as a form of protest. The organizers wanted to discuss an arms embargo of Israel; Harris said she was open to talking about it, though her national security adviser later clarified that she did not support such a policy.

At the same time, Harris has signaled that she rejects pro-Palestinian protesters’ right to interrupt her events, as they have done with Biden. At the Detroit rally, as demonstrators refused to stop chanting, Harris shot back, “If you want Donald Trump to win, then say that. Otherwise, I’m speaking.” The audience cheered, but Little Palestine residents said they found her retort dismissive of their grief and anger.

Harris took a different approach to a rally in Arizona on Friday: When a pro-Palestinian protester interrupted her speech, she responded by calling for an immediate cease-fire and release of hostages, a deal the administration has been working to secure for months.

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, 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.”

Deanna Othman, who was born and raised in Little Palestine, said that one of her husband’s nephews was burned in a bombing in Gaza and she has been trying for months to evacuate her mother- and sister-in-law for medical reasons. She said she hopes the upcoming protests at the Democratic National Convention are comparable to those that engulfed the convention during the Vietnam War.

“I think people really need to see it as the equivalent of the 1968 DNC in Chicago,” she said.