As election nears, US-Palestinians grapple with Democrats' Gaza 'betrayal'

Demoralised by the Biden administration's handling of the Israeli genocidal war in besieged Gaza, Palestinian American Samia Assed found in Vice President Kamala Harris' ascension — and her running mate pick — "a little ray of hope."

That hope, she said, shattered during last month's Democratic National Convention, where a request for a Palestinian American speaker was denied and listening to Harris left her feeling like the Democratic presidential nominee will continue the US policies that have outraged many in the anti-war camp.

"I couldn't breathe because I felt unseen and erased," said Assed, a community organiser in New Mexico.

Under different circumstances, Assed would have revelled in the groundbreaking rise of a woman of colour as her party's nominee. Instead, she agonises over her ballot box options.

For months, many Palestinian Americans have been contending with the double whammy of the rising Palestinian death toll and suffering in Gaza and their own government's support for Israel in the mass slaughter of some 41,000 Palestinians — a conservative estimate, according to many experts.

Alongside pro-Palestine allies, they've grieved, organised, lobbied and protested as the killings and destruction unfolded on their screens or touched their own families. Now, they also wrestle with tough, deeply personal voting decisions, including in battleground states.

"It's a very hard time for Palestinian youth and Palestinian Americans," Assed said. "There's a lot of pain."

Without a meaningful change, voting for Harris would feel "like a jab in the heart," she said. At the same time, Assed, a lifelong Democrat and feminist, would like to help block another Donald Trump presidency and remain engaged with the Democrats "to hold them liable," she said.

"It's really a difficult place to be in."

She's not alone.

'Betrayed and neglected'

In Georgia, the Gaza bloodshed has been haunting Ghada Elnajjar.

She said the war claimed the lives of more than 100 members of her extended family in Gaza, where her parents were born.

She saw missed opportunities at the DNC to connect with voters like her. Besides the rejection of the request for a Palestinian speaker, Elnajjar found a disconnect between US policies and Harris' assertion that she and President Joe Biden were working to accomplish a ceasefire and hostage deal.

"Without stopping US financial support and military support to Israel, this will not stop," said Elnajjar, who in 2020 campaigned for Biden. "I'm a US citizen. I'm a taxpayer ... and I feel betrayed and neglected."

She'll keep looking for policy changes, but, if necessary, remain "uncommitted," potentially leaving the top of the ticket blank. Harris must earn her vote, she said.

While Harris' recent rhetoric on Palestinian suffering has been viewed as empathetic by some who had soured on Biden over the war, the lack of a concrete policy shift appears to have increasingly frustrated many of those who want the war to end.

Layla Elabed, a Palestinian American and co-director of the Uncommitted National Movement, said the demand for a policy shift remains.

Nationally, "uncommitted" has garnered hundreds of thousands of votes in Democratic primaries.

Elabed said Harris and her team had been invited to meet before September 15 with "uncommitted" movement leaders from key swing states and with Palestinian families with relatives killed in Gaza. After that date, she said, "we will need to make the decision if we can actually mobilise our base" to vote for Harris.

Without a policy change, "we can't do an endorsement," and will, instead, continue talking about the "dangers" of a Trump presidency, leaving voters to vote their conscience, she added.

Some other anti-war activists are taking it further, advocating for withholding votes from Harris in the absence of a change.

"There's pressure to punish the Democratic Party," Elabed said. "Our position is to continue taking up space within the Democratic Party" and push for change from the inside.

'Bargaining tool'

Nada Al-Hanooti, national deputy organising director with the Muslim American advocacy group Emgage Action, rejects as unfair the argument by some that traditionally Democratic voters who withhold votes from Harris are in effect helping Trump.

She said the burden should be on Harris and her party.

"Right now, it's a struggle being a Palestinian American," she said. "I don't want a Trump presidency, but, at the same time, the Democratic Party needs to win our vote."

Though dismayed that no Palestinian speaker was allowed on the DNC stage, Al-Hanooti said she felt inspired by how "uncommitted" activists made Palestinians part of the conversation at the convention.

Activists were given space there to hold a forum discussing the plight of Palestinians in Gaza.

"We in the community still need to continue to push Harris on conditioning aid, on a ceasefire," she said. "The fight is not over."

Some voters want to send a message.

"Our community has given our votes away cheaply," argued Omar Abuattieh, a pharmacy major at Rutgers University in New Jersey.

"Once we can start to understand our votes as a bargaining tool, we'll have more power."

For Abuattieh, whose mother was born in Gaza, that means planning to vote third party "to demonstrate the power in numbers of a newly activated community that deserves future consultation."

A Pew Research Center survey in February found that US Muslims are more sympathetic to the Palestinian people than many other Americans are and that only 6 percent of Muslim American adults believe the US is striking the right balance between the Israelis and Palestinians.

Nearly two-thirds of Muslim registered voters identify with or lean toward the Democratic Party, according to the survey.

But US Muslims, who are racially and ethnically diverse, are not monolithic in their political behaviour; some have publicly supported Harris in this election cycle. In 2020, among Muslim voters, 64 percent supported Biden, and 35 percent supported Trump, according to AP VoteCast.