Washington, DC – The Uncommitted National Movement, a grassroots movement in the United States seeking to pressure the Democratic Party to change its policy toward Israel amid the Gaza war, says it cannot support Kamala Harris for president.
The group said Thursday that Harris’ team had not responded to its request to meet with representatives and families of Palestinians killed in the Gaza Strip by a Sept. 15 deadline.
The movement is pushing for Harris, the US vice president and 2024 Democratic presidential candidate, to agree to suspend US arms transfers to Israel during the war, which has killed more than 41,000 Palestinians since early October.
But with less than 50 days to go before the election, Harris has repeatedly dismissed the prospect that she would support conditional military aid to Israel, dashing hopes that she represents a significant pivot from Democratic President Joe Biden’s policies, the group said.
“Our movement cannot support the vice president,” Abbas Alawieh, one of the leaders of the Uncommitted National Movement, said during a virtual press conference Thursday morning.
“Right now, our movement is opposed to a Donald Trump presidency, whose agenda includes plans to accelerate the massacres in Gaza while intensifying the repression of anti-war organizations,” Alawieh said.
“And our movement does not advocate third-party voting in the presidential election, especially since third-party voting in key states could inadvertently help secure Trump’s presidency, given our country’s broken Electoral College system.”
The group’s leaders made clear that they were not calling on voters to withdraw from the presidential race altogether.
Still, political analysts say the non-endorsement could spell trouble for Harris, who must mobilize a broad base of Democratic voters in an election expected to be decided by a razor-thin margin.
It also underscores the alienation not only of Arab and Muslim voters in key must-win states, but also of progressive activists who have proven their ability to turn out to vote.
Layla Elabed, a nonpartisan leader and sister of Palestinian-American Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib, said the group would not use its vast network to mobilize voters for Harris, even as they continue to advocate for Palestinians and other important issues.
“An endorsement is a very specific thing,” Elabed said during the virtual press conference. “It would mean that we would go out and mobilize thousands of voters.”
Months of advocacy
Thursday’s announcement is the latest chapter in a months-long campaign that began in the weeks leading up to Michigan’s Democratic primary in February.
Democratic voters were urged to go to the polls and select “uncommitted” on their ballot to send a message to Biden, then the presumptive 2024 Democratic nominee, that they opposed his staunch support for Israel during the Gaza war.
The effort expanded to other primaries – notably in the key Midwestern states of Minnesota and Wisconsin – with a total of 700,000 voters casting uncommitted ballots during the primary season.
It remains unclear, however, how many of them did so in protest against Biden’s Israel policies.
The turnout spurred the launch of the National Nonpartisan Movement, which eventually sent 30 protest delegates to the Democratic National Convention in August.
Movement leaders had expressed cautious optimism about Harris, who took over the party after Biden withdrew from the race in July. Her choice of Tim Walz, the Minnesota governor who had spoken sympathetically about uncommitted voters, also bolstered that hope.
But the group’s demand for a Palestinian-American to speak at the Democratic Party convention went unheeded. In anger, the group staged a sit-in outside the convention center in Chicago, Illinois.
At the same time, Harris has repeatedly refused to condition aid to Israel. The United States provides its main Middle East ally with $3.8 billion in military aid annually, and the Biden administration has green-lighted additional support during the Gaza war.
More recently, in a debate with Trump this month, Harris said she would “always give Israel the ability to defend itself.”
Harris added that she would continue to work for a ceasefire in Gaza and a two-state solution “where we can rebuild Gaza, where Palestinians have the security, self-determination and dignity that they so richly deserve.”
“Completely disappointed”
It is not yet clear what impact Thursday’s announcement will have on the November elections.
Recent polls have shown that a significant percentage of Americans – and Democratic voters in particular – oppose continued arms transfers to Israel in the context of the Gaza war, which has plunged the Palestinian enclave into a humanitarian crisis.
Polls also revealed widespread disenchantment among Arab-American voters, a relatively small but important demographic in key swing states.
A report released this month by the Council on American-Islamic Relations found that support for third-party candidate Jill Stein has outpaced support for Harris or Trump among Muslims in several key states.
Arshad Hasan, a progressive Democratic strategist, said that by not engaging with the National Uncommitted Movement, Harris’ campaign had failed on both a human and electoral level.
“This is a group of people who are generally ideologically aligned (with Democrats) and are energetic, and it costs the Harris campaign nothing to meet with them and meet with the affected families, which is what they have been asking for,” he told Tel Aviv Tribune.
“I am totally disappointed in the Harris-Walz campaign,” Hassan said. “And I say that as a supporter.”
Sally Howell, director of the Center for Arab American Studies at the University of Michigan in Dearborn, said Democrats are taking a “huge hit” with Arab voters.
The non-support of the Non-Commitment Movement could prove particularly damaging to voters “who are not in the progressive camp and who were already struggling with the (Democrats),” she told Tel Aviv Tribune.
“It certainly weakens progressive Arabs in their own community, even though they are appreciated for their courage and frankness on this issue,” she said.
“Court people like Dick Cheney”
In a sometimes emotional virtual press conference, leaders of the Uncommitted National Movement recounted their personal struggles in figuring out how to vote as they watched their own families struggle to survive in the occupied Palestinian territories.
Elabed, a Democrat, told his family in the occupied West Bank: “I cannot make the decision to vote for Vice President Harris when she is at the top of the ticket.”
“But I would never vote for someone like Donald Trump,” she said.
Lexis Zeidan, another leader of the movement, said she felt the Harris campaign was “courting people like Dick Cheney” while alienating key segments of the Democratic base.
Cheney, a former Republican vice president under President George W. Bush and a key architect of the U.S. “global war on terror” in the 2000s, recently endorsed Harris for president.
Meanwhile, Zeidan said Harris’ campaign is “siding aside these disillusioned anti-war voices, even pushing them to consider voting third party or not participating in this incredibly important election.”
Alawieh echoed those comments, saying Harris’ campaign had put many voters in an impossible situation. But he stressed that the group’s advocacy would not stop.
“Our organizing around the presidential election has never been about supporting any particular candidate,” he said. “It’s always about building a movement that saves lives.”
