I WAS in the neighbouring city of Milwaukee during the 2024 Democratic National Convention (DNC) that took place in Chicago on August 19–22.

We all knew that Kamala Harris would be the Democratic Party’s presidential candidate in the November 5, 2024 US election and that she would give a candidacy acceptance speech before the DNC delegates.

From various US cities, a large block of uncommitted delegates — largely composed of anti-genocide and pro-justice groups from all backgrounds — flocked to Chicago with two purposes in mind:

1. to attend the convention and
2. to voice their concerns about Israel’s mass atrocity and genocide in Gaza (and now in Lebanon).

They were very hopeful that, using the DNC platform, they would be able to record their dissatisfaction with the US government’s handling of the crisis.

The uncommitted delegates were in conversation with the convention organisers. They demanded their protest against the US unconditional support for Israel be heard, and initially they saw a ray of hope that they would have a slot at the convention to speak their minds.

Unfortunately, the DNC eventually turned down their request without providing a satisfactory explanation. Conversely, it rightly allowed among others parents of an Israeli hostage in Gaza to use the convention rostrum to make ‘moving remarks.’

This act of inclusion and exclusion sent a clear message that voices of justice for the Palestinians or votes of Palestinian Americans didn’t matter to the Democratic Party.

This is despite the fact that the Cook County where the venue of the convention — the United Center — is located has the largest Palestinian community in the US.

Moreover, from early October 2023 to the convention date, Israel had slaughtered over 40,000 Palestinian babies, children, women and men in addition to hundreds of journalists, healthcare providers and UN aid workers (the numbers are now much higher). All the gruesome images coming out of Palestine didn’t seem to move the Democratic Party establishment to sympathise with the plight of the Palestinians.

Betrayed and frustrated, peaceful anti-genocide protesters staged a sit-in outside the United Center. Inside the convention, Israeli voices were given a monopoly to tell the audience their version of the decades-long Israel-Palestine conflict.

A Palestinian voice was denied the platform to self-represent and make the sufferings of the Palestinians heard and acknowledged. A push for a cease-fire in Gaza and for a US arms embargo on Israel was out of the question.

On the last day of the convention (August 22, 2024), Kamala Harris stepped onto the stage to deliver the nomination acceptance speech and to mark the end of the convention. In her address, she provided an autobiographical sketch of her early life. She shared her childhood memories of joy and struggle. In her reminiscences, she recalled that her father Donald J Harris taught her to be fearless. He once said to her:

‘Run, Kamala. Run. Don’t be afraid. Don’t let anything stop you.’

Kamala Harris paid a greater tribute to her mother Shyamala Gopalan Harris for the understandable reason that the latter mostly raised the former. Harris told the convention that her mother taught her ‘to never complain about injustice but do something about it, DO SOMETHING ABOUT IT.’

Given the content of her DNC speech in Chicago, Kamala Harris failed to be an obedient daughter on account of the precious advice she claimed she had received from her parents.

She failed to be brave and courageous on the question of Israeli apartheid and settler colonialism. She apparently let the unmatched power and influence of the Israel lobby in America ‘stop’ her from telling the truth about Israel’s gross human rights violations.

Being a politician and legal scholar, Harris is very much aware of Israel’s violations of international laws including the Geneva Convention and the Convention on the Rights of the Child. An honest lawyer cannot regurgitate the Israel’s-right-to-defend cliché and keep their mouth shut about the crimes committed by the apartheid state.

Harris’s mother taught her to do something about injustice. As the 49th and the first female vice president of the US, Harris holds certain powers and prerogatives within the country’s federal administration. An unavoidable question that arises is:

What has she done to end the ongoing Israeli injustices?

On this issue, undoubtedly, Harris betrayed the Palestinians and disobeyed her parents. She offered only platitudes and lip service regarding the importance of sending humanitarian aid to Gaza but did nothing to stop the bombardment and slaughter of Gazans and UN aid workers. Worse, she is part of an administration that has continued supplying armaments and military equipment to Israel for killing and destroying an infinite number of Palestinian (and now Lebanese) lives.

On Kamala Harris’s watch, the supporters of justice for Palestine have been marginalised within the Democratic Party. On multiple occasions, she refused to break away from President Joe Biden’s policy of aiding and abetting Israeli intransigence and war crimes.

The Biden-Harris administration even didn’t put pressure on Israel to let US and other journalists enter Gaza and report what has been happening there. Nor did it use its power to force Israel to allow the airlifting of the injured from the genocide site for treatment purposes.

In her attempt to court female voters, Kamala Harris often brought up gender issues in her speeches and portrayed herself as a champion of women’s rights. But she showed no regard for the rights to life and dignity of Palestinian women and their children and husbands. Thus, the question of Palestine has exposed the hypocrisy of ‘feminists’ like Kamala Harris.

Kamala Harris thought that caricaturing, denigrating, mocking and satirising Donald Trump alone would win her the election. She proved wrong and lost it to him.

In a nutshell, by ignoring the plea for justice for the Palestinians, she insulted the intelligence of conscientious people in the US and around the world. She should have reassured the electorate that she would uphold human rights and justice both at home and internationally. That would have inspired a multitude of people to rally around her and could have won her the election.

On a final note, I hope, after entering the White House as the 47th president of the United States, President Donald Trump will take emergency measures to rein in Israel’s genocidal behaviour and will not repeat Biden-Harris’s mistakes.

Dr Md Mahmudul Hasan is Professor of English at International Islamic University Malaysia. He is the editor-in-chief of Asiatic.