August 23, 2024

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CHICAGO – At Union Park on the city’s West Side, former Republican presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy arrived unexpectedly to survey the scene, strolling through the park, buying a paper from comrades in the Revolutionary Communist Party and absorbing the sights and scenes, when a balding, bearded man suddenly appeared in front of him, standing in his path.

As the Democratic National Committee closed its convention hours later, Kamala Harris accepting her party’s nomination for president, the park encounter provides a window into the next phase of political agitation that protestors are going to deploy: bird-dogging, which means to “dog” someone, confronting, questioning and shaming politicians, leaders, surrogates and, really, anyone, persistently and aggressively in public, to attempt to intimidate them and keep them on the defensive.

In recent days, the bird-dogging hit former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. “Madam Speaker, do Palestinian lives matter as much as Israel lives,” asked an activist reporter from Zeteo, a platform sympathetic to the anti-Israel activists. Now it was Ramaswamy’s turn.

“Are you a supporter of Israel?” the man asked Ramaswamy, stopping him in his tracks.

Like a tree falling in the forest, bird-dogging isn’t complete unless it gets into the media, and social media works. Soon enough, FreedomNews.TV, a media platform, published the confrontation, which an X user shared, calling the man an “anarchist,” the video going viral with 4.8 million views now, a sign of a successful bird-dogging attack. 

But the balding man wasn’t an anarchist. 

He was Hatem Abudayyeh, the chief organizer of the March on DNC coalition and co-founder of American Muslims for Palestine and Students for Justice in Palestine. Years ago, the FBI investigated him for alleged support of terrorist activities, though charges were not filed. His appearance in front of Ramaswamy wasn’t spontaneous—it was part of a well-coordinated campaign that will spread like wildfire over the next months until the election in November.

As this example illustrates, the activist going after a prominent Republican, the fight to shame anyone who supports Israel crosses party lines and is equal opportunity bipartisan. And it is important to understand the network that is fomenting anti-Israel and anti-Semitic hate.

These individuals are activated by a vast network that organized this past week to #MarchOnDNC and will now deploy to harrass Harris and her surrogates on the campaign trail. 

Shocked by the murder of my friend and Wall Street Journal colleague Daniel Pearl in 2002 for the alleged crime of being Jewish and a grandson of Israel, I’ve spent the past 22 years reporting on Muslim groups that are virulently anti-Israel and also anti-Semitic. Last year, I published a book, “Woke Army,” on the unholy alliance of far-left groups and Muslim groups, united in their hate for Israel, the U.S., and the West.

In a new investigation I am leading at the Pearl Project — a nonprofit journalism initiative named for my friend, I have identified 242 organizations listed as “members” and “supporters” of marches held this past week against the DNC. I put my findings into a public portal, the Malign Foreign Influence Index, with many of the organizations tied closely to adversaries of the U.S., including Russia, China, Iran, N. Korea and Cuba. Abudayyeh and his the groups he cofounded are in the network.

As I reported in a series, which can be found at JewishJournal.com/DispatchesFrom, the groups in the network don’t represent a battle between “progressives” and centrists within the Democratic Party. Instead, these protests are the product of a deeply coordinated effort by an alliance of three units — self-described socialist organizations, far-left groups, and anti-Israel Palestinian, Arab, and Muslim organizations — who represent an insidious dynamic coined malign foreign influence.

Out of the 242 organizations in my updated analysis, 34 openly identify as some form of socialism—ranging from “anti-revisionist Marxist-Leninist” to “Revolutionary Socialist” and even “building toward the creation of a new Communist Party” in the U.S. 

Another 166 groups are “socialist-adjacent” or pro-socialist, working closely with the openly socialist organizations and nations. 

Finally, 42 groups are Muslim, Palestinian, or Arab, many with sympathies for Hamas, like American Muslims for Palestine, Students for Justice in Palestine, the U.S. Campaign for Palestinian Rights and the U.S. Palestinian Community Network.

Abudayyeh was following classic bird-dogging tactics. One of the #MarchOnDNC lead organizers, the U.S. Campaign for Palestinian Rights, has a guide online for harassing lawmakers when they aren’t in D.C. The first action: “Birddog.” 

Another tipsheet, “Your guide to bird-dogging,” by American Friends Service Committee, a Quaker group and member of the #MarchOnDNC coalition, recommends: “Be in the candidate’s path.” Earlier this year, Rolling Stone magazine published an insider account of Jewish Voice for Peace, another #MarchOnDNC member, and other groups “bird-dogging Biden everywhere he goes,” including a fundraiser where “a succession of activists affiliated with Jewish Voice for Peace and several other groups takes turns shouting, chanting, or questioning Biden whenever he tries to speak,” stunning the “shell-shocked attendees.”

Ramaswamy was no longer a candidate but he was a surrogate for former President Donald Trump, a candidate. 

“Prepare your question. Make it brief, fact-based and direct,” the guide read.

Ramaswamy tried to answer the question: “I support the United States, and because of that, I support Israel and our relationship.”

Continuing, staccato-style, chopping the air with his hand, Abudayyeh continued: “Do you support a genocide that has killed 40 million Palestinians in the last 10 months?”

As Ramaswamy started to answer, Abudayyeh interrupted him, “I’m an organizer.”

After some back-and-forth, Abudayyeh continued: “I’m asking you that you have no right to be here if you are not in support of the Palestinian people.”

He wasn’t really asking a question, which is a classic bird-dogging style. And Union Park is certainly public property.

He accused Ramaswamy of being a “racist Zionist pig,” his voice dripping with contempt.

As Ramaswamy kept walking, Abudayyeh led the crowd in a chant of “Racist, go home! Racist, go home! Racist, go home!”

Another man in a black t-shirt continued the chant, wearing on his chest the logo of the organization where Abudayyeh is the executive director: the U.S. Palestine Community Network, another #MarchOnDNC coalition member.

The march continued on a route protestors followed on Monday and Wednesday. As the sun set and Kamala Harris accepted the Democratic nomination for president, a different kind of theater played out on the streets outside. A band of activists walked menacingly to the corner of N. Ashland Avenue and W. Warren Boulevard to walk the three blocks to the United Center to bird-dog delegates that would soon be leaving the convention hall.

An activist, full of bravado, rallied his “comrades” for a bum rush against the police, standing between them and the convention center. He had just come from leading a small sit-in on N. Ashland Avenue, where about 20 young people had gathered in a show of defiance, as most of the protestors from the last #MarchOnDNC headed home. 

One of them casually lit a joint, as if this was just another day in the park.

Back at the corner, the situation escalated. The police, in trained formation, barked their orders: “MOVE BACK! MOVE BACK!” 

A tussle followed. An activist banged on a pot.

The activist, consulting other leaders quickly, all of them realizing the futility of the situation, turned to their cue to get fellow comrades to listen: “Mic check!” 

“Mic check!” the crowd responded.

He continued: “Fall back! These people are being too aggressive. We’ll stand back and regroup. Y’all see how they just got violent? See that?…Step back!”

A senior police officer nodded his head and gave a thumbs up sign. 

The activist’s voice cracked with the reality of their position, far from the center of power. The curb was where they found themselves, literally and figuratively. In the background, one of the activists, a young woman, told me, “My mom will beat my ass if she sees me on TV.” 

With that, the activists retreated into the park, curbing their own activism with their ineffectiveness. A few of them moved to the sidewalk off N. Ashland Avenue to heckle the Democratic delegates now emerging, covering their faces with their “Kamala” placards. 

“Killer Kamala! That’s who you like. Killer Kamala,” said a young woman in camouflage green overalls, wearing a keffiyeh over a baseball cap, as her friend, beside her, carried a placard for Freedom Road Socialist Organization, twirling some strands of her hair, nervously.

Across the street, where the young cadre had retreated, a regular fixture from D.C. protests swung her hips to the music as she danced and chanted, “Stop funding genocide!” 

I last saw her in the summer of 2023 in front of the U.S. Supreme Court, where she protested along with students who opposed the decision to block anti-Asian discrimination at Harvard University.

Northward a block, a  young woman threw herself on the hood of a red Toyota four-door car driven by an Uber driver, trying to make a living on a high-traffic night.

Clapping between every word, she shouted: “Your. Tax. Dollars. Are. Funding. GENOCIDE!” 

Standing defiantly in front of the car, she flashed “V” for victory signs with both hands, as about 20 photographers and journalists circled the car, catching her every exclamation and gesture.

Earlier in the day, another scene was unfolding nearby, revealing how these protesters often curb their own impact by turning against even those within their own faith who challenge their narrative. Soraya Deen, a Muslim woman born in Sri Lanka, stood in the park with other Muslim women, including community organizer Anila Ali, and called out Hamas for its terror and sexual violence against women. 

“We had to ask the police to stay with us,” she said later on X. 

The hostility she faced underscored the contradictions within this protest movement. Deen lamented, “This whole ‘Protest Saga’ has drained our law enforcement. It’s colossal amounts of taxpayers’ money spent on law enforcement, a loss of our freedoms, promoting lethal hostilities between our people, impairing the safety and the security of our nation. And it’s downright a movement to destroy America and its values.”

Her frustration was evident, especially at the protesters’ selective outrage. “Never once do the protesters call out Hamas atrocities, the war on October 7th, the desecration of Islam by Hamas and the vacuum of leadership in Palestine. I wish some of these protest leaders would move to Gaza, organize Gazans, elect a decent leadership that abandons the perennial call for the destruction of Israel and the murder of Jews and build a future for the Palestinians without terror and hate, without violence and victimhood.”

As the evening progressed and delegates began to leave the convention hall, the activists, now on the sidelines, found new targets. 

They shamed and heckled the delegates, their frustration spilling into the streets. 

The activists, desperate for relevance, shouted them down with chants of “Shame! Shame!” 

But the contrast was clear—their anger clashed against the delegates’ celebratory mood, and the shaming fell flat. The delegates simply laughed it off, their enthusiasm untouched by the curbside vitriol.

A few blocks away, in front of the Democratic National Convention exit, activists from the Chicago chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine, one of the organizations that Abudayyeh helped launch, lined an exit route, their mission clear: to make their presence known. They heckled delegates as they departed, their chants sharp and unrelenting. I wasn’t immune either. 

Earlier in the week, on Tuesday night, one of the activists—a young woman with a “PRESS” badge dangling from her neck—had recognized me during a protest that turned aggressive in front of the Israeli consulate. 

She approached me then, her voice cutting through the crowd, asking, “Are you Asra Nomani?”

I said I was and answered her question politely about what I was doing there, although she had no grasp of my answer.

Then, on Thursday night, as I spoke to someone on her side whom I knew from work years earlier, she tried to escalate the confrontation. Turning to a computer scientist with whom I was speaking, she delivered her line with the precision of a rehearsed insult: “Did you know she is a Zionist?” 

It was meant to dehumanize me, to shame me into silence. But I didn’t flinch. I accept the state of Israel, just as I do the Muslim states of Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, and Qatar, with their manmade boundary lines, just like Israel’s.

Her attempt to shame me backfired, just as the curbside activist had become curb checked. The extremism of her argument revealed itself, as did another two students who followed me around and declared with unflinching certainty, “Israel should not exist.” 

“Do you support genocide?” one of the students asked me, in classic bird-dogging style of asking rhetorical questions.

These insults, far from achieving their intended effect, only highlighted the shortcomings of their tactics. Shaming, once a powerful tool in activism, had turned into a blunt instrument, alienating more than it persuades.

Inside the convention hall, Harris had just rejected their shaming of her. On the campaign trail, friends of these Chicago activists had pulled of a successful bird-dogging operation on her. Activists in a group, Students Allied for Freedom and Equality at the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor, made headlines by heckling Harris at a campaign stop in Michigan, yelling, “Kamala! Kamala! You can’t hide! We charge you with genocide!” 

In her speech, Harris expressed clear support for the existence of the state of Israel. Pundits immediately began to describe her as a “hawk,” her stance on Israel firm and unwavering. She had made her choice, aligning with military support and allyship for the Jewish state.

As the week drew to a close and the clock pressed toward midnight, the activists retreated into the night, the student activists at the DNC exit sitting on the curb, their shouts and jeers fading into the growing quiet of the night, the t-shirt vendors and rickshaw wallahs even heading home. 

The protests, the bird-dogging, the curbside confrontations — all were part of a larger, calculated effort that will continue to unfold across the nation in the coming months. 

As they sought to disrupt and shame, what the groups revealed more clearly was the growing divide between their radical tactics and the American mainstream. The Democratic delegates, like Harris herself, may have been heckled and harassed, but their resolve seemed only to strengthen in the face of such aggression. 

Meanwhile, the activists, so intent on shaming others, found themselves increasingly isolated — curbed, both literally and figuratively, by the very extremism they wielded. The question that remains is whether this strategy will gain them any ground or if, in the end, it will only serve to push them further to the margins of the political landscape.

For those of us, caught in the tussle, the scenes from Chicago are not just a dispatch from one week of protests but a harbinger of the battles to come as the country edges closer to the November election. We will continue to bring you more dispatches from college campuses and cities, adding names to the Malign Foreign Influence Index. 

The activists from Students for Justice in Palestine finally called it a night, the one student heckling me slipping into a taxi No. 429, cowardly hurling more insults at me, now from behind the comfort of her moving taxi, her chants like those of her fellow activists ringing hollow in the wind. 

Asra Q. Nomani is a former Wall Street Journal reporter and the author of a book, “Woke Army: The Red-Green Alliance That Is Undermining America’s Freedom.” She is a founder of the Pearl Project, a nonprofit journalism initiative that is building the Malign Foreign Influence Index, examining the groups fomenting anti-Semitism. She has an MA in international communications, with a speciality in the study of propaganda. She can be reached at asra@asranomani.com and @AsraNomani.