Did the DNC Make the Right Call on a Palestinian Speaker?

Should there have been a Palestinian speaker at the Democratic National Contention? That was the question on everyone’s mind last week, and frankly, the answer seems obvious — yes. 

To say that there shouldn’t be “a Palestinian speaker” is like saying that there shouldn’t be a Black speaker, or a Jewish speaker, or a gay speaker. Whosoever would oppose a speaker’s presence at the DNC solely on account of their race or eth-nicity would seem to have no place in the party. 

And yet, this framing of the question is misleading and incomplete. The Uncommitted Movement — the main Democratic caucus pushing for a Palestinian speaker — does not exist in a political vacuum. Their main goal is to steer the Democratic Party towards a radical arms embargo on Israel.

And so a more honest question would have been: Should the Democratic Party put a promoter of a cruel, misguided, and reckless policy on the main stage at the most important party event of the year?

A more honest question would have been: Should the Democratic Party put a promoter of a cruel, misguided, and reckless policy on the main stage at the most important party event of the year?

From where I sit, the answer is no. 

Israel is still under attack by an alliance of malign actors shared by the United States as enemies. These include Iran and its many proxy armies such as Hezbollah, Hamas, and the Houthis in Yemen, whose slogan, lest we forget, is “God Is the Greatest, Death to America, Death to Israel, A Curse Upon the Jews, Victory to Islam.” 

Let’s not misinterpret what an arms embargo means. Those who want an arms embargo are those who want to see Israel defenseless against enemies sworn to its destruction; who want the Iron Dome to run out of ammo as Hezbollah rockets continue to destroy buildings in the north and push farther towards Tel Aviv; who long to see what would have happened to the Jewish state if the Jews were too weak to repulse Hamas’ invading army on Oct. 7.

Let’s not misinterpret what an arms embargo means. Those who want an arms embargo are those who want to see Israel defenseless against enemies sworn to its destruction.

On Sunday we woke up to news that Israel had thwarted a major Hezbollah attack that could have caused serious damage and loss of life for innocent Israelis. Those who want an arms embargo are those who wish Sunday’s headline was different, telling of death and destruction instead of resilience and self-defense. 

Most Democrats, to their great credit, still find such a policy abhorrent.

One Palestinian speaker pushed by the Uncommitted Movement was Georgia State Rep. Ruwa Romman. Her undelivered speech was published in Mother Jones. 

In it, she refers to the war in Gaza as “the massacres in Gaza.” Obviously, this is a mischaracterization of the war itself. It is also a slap in the face to Joe Biden, who endorsed and shaped that war, and to Kamala Harris as well. Are we shocked that they didn’t want to platform this perspective at an event designed to drum up enthusiasm for the VP-turned-presidential hopeful? 

In a pathetic imitation of evenhandedness, Romman calls to “free all the Israeli and Palestinian hostages.” But Israel has no hostages, which are definitionally people seized for the purpose of extortion. Israel has prisoners. Many of them are guilty of perpetrating the most gruesome of Oct. 7’s crimes. Hamas has hostages. Young women, children, elderly, and the disabled. According to Romman, Yahya Sinwar himself would be considered a freed hostage. 

When Rachel and Jon Goldberg-Polin, parents of the Israeli-American hostage Hersh Goldberg-Polin, took the stage at the DNC, they were right to acknowledge the great tragedy that this war has brought upon the people of Gaza, and right to pray for the war’s speedy end. 

The suffering of Palestinians is not to be ignored, and it was important to make space for it at the DNC. But as for empowering the Uncommitted Movement — a group that openly despises the policies of the current candidate and her predecessor — it seems fairly obvious that saying no was the right and only choice for the Democrats to make.

Matthew Schultz is a Jewish Journal columnist and rabbinical student at Hebrew College. He is the author of the essay collection “What Came Before” (Tupelo, 2020) and lives in Boston and Jerusalem.