“I Will Not Be Silent:” Democratic Strategist on Harris’ Israel-Gaza Stance

HARI SREENIVASAN, CORRESPONDENT: Bianna, thanks. Waleed Shahid, thanks so much for joining us. Just recently after Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu addressed Congress, Vice President Harris met with him and she said that she had expressed and pressed him on the humanitarian crisis in Gaza. She publicly emphasized the need for a ceasefire and the protection of Palestinian civilians. Do you think that this is going to translate in a tangible policy difference as she runs for president?

WALEED SHAHID, CO-FOUNDER, UNCOMMITTED NATIONAL MOVEMENT: We don’t know yet. I think that many of the uncommitted voters, many people who’ve been opposed to Netanyahu’s war in Gaza, welcomed the step in the right direction from Vice President Harris in terms of using rhetoric that empathized with Palestinian families in Gaza that showed some humanity. But on the policy substance level, we’re not sure what her governing vision is for foreign policy and for the war in Gaza and we’re still waiting to hear what that might be. We’re excited. We’re excited that she might turn the page on Biden’s – what’s been Biden’s disastrous policy on Gaza as it’s fractured the Democratic party and the coalition. And we’re looking forward to Vice President Harris coming out against more American weapons for Netanyahu’s war, for the Israeli government’s war. But right now we don’t know what her foreign policy vision is.

SREENIVASAN: You’re one of the co-founders of The Uncommitted Movement, and that’s 700,000 Americans who voted uncommitted during the Primaries. For people who might not be that familiar with it, tell us a little bit about the origins, how it came about, what the goals are?

SHAHID: So it came about because during the fall, after the war in Gaza started, many voters in Arab and Muslim communities across the country, many young progressive Democratic party voters, felt extremely angry that the primaries were starting and there wasn’t an option for them in the, on the ballot to suggest that they were against Biden’s policies as it pertained to funding Israel’s war and occupation against Palestinians. My own father, a lifelong Democrat, has voted Democrat his whole life, told me over Thanksgiving holidays that he couldn’t bring himself to vote for Biden because Biden had just crossed a, crossed a line for him. Those voters were being invisibilized in our democratic process. And the uncommitted movements started in Michigan in order to give all of those democratic voters of vehicle to express their deep dissatisfaction with Joe Biden’s policy on Gaza, while remaining in the Democratic party camp. We wanted to show that these voters were serious, that the party was leaving them, the party was betraying their values, and that the party wasn’t standing up for its own values of peace and human rights and justice.
And now we have 30 delegates who will be at the Democratic National Convention at the end of August in Chicago, who will be bringing those communities and those demands for an end to the war, for a ceasefire and for an end to us weapons to Israel, all to the Democratic Party and hoping to be embraced.

SREENIVASAN: So what are the steps that Vice President Harris would have to take in order to gain those 30 delegates, and really, just more than 30 delegates, the support of the uncommitted movement?

SHAHID: So the uncommitted national movement, those 30 delegates are requesting a meeting with Vice President Harris and her campaign to talk about the pain and anger of the communities that we all represent that people have felt in terms of Biden’s foreign policy decisions with respect to Palestinian human rights. We want to see Vice President Harris come out against us weapons for Netanyahu’s war. We wanna see an end to this war, an exchange of hostages and captives, Israelis and Palestinians, and a just solution for all Israelis and Palestinians that we can move toward.

SREENIVASAN: Let me reference a couple of the things that she said. She said, after the meeting with Netanyahu, “What’s happened in Gaza over the past nine months is devastating. The images of dead children and desperate hungry people fleeing for safety, sometimes displaced for the second, third, or fourth time. We cannot look away in the face of these tragedies. We cannot allow ourselves to become numb to the suffering. And I will not be silent.” So Vice President Harris says this, but how much of this do you think is kind of political positioning in what she needs to do right now as the candidate for the Democratic Party? And how much of it do you think is sincere?

SHAHID: Vice President Harris is from a different generation of Democrats than President Biden, and I think she’s responding to the genuine shift in the Democratic Party and in the American electorate that a majority of Americans, a majority of Democrats, are not supportive of Israel’s war and occupation of Palestinians and are definitely not supportive of American bombs or American taxpayer money going to Netanyahu’s far right extreme government. I think she recognizes that the party has changed and she’s trying to balance how to address that while still being the Vice President to President Biden.

SREENIVASAN: Staying with the after effects of the speech or the aftermath of the speech. I mean, you sent out a tweet saying “the most important thing you should know, in 2015 about 50 Democrats in Congress boycotted Netanyahu’s speech to Congress. Today it was 136 Democrats. Netanyahu and AIPAC are losing the Democratic Party.” Explain.

SHAHID: So one major thing that the uncommitted delegation wants to do at the convention is to ensure that President Biden is the last AIPAC aligned Democratic nominee for President. AIPAC is a lobbying group in the United States that tries to ensure there’s no daylight between the United States government and the Israeli government. No matter how extreme or far right the Israeli governments under Netanyahu have become. The doubling of the amount of Democrats who did not attend Netanyahu’s speech from 2015 to a week ago is a huge step forward in terms of the Democratic party rejecting AIPAC’s influence in a party that’s dedicated to freedom and justice and human rights for all. Senator Schumer, Hakeem Jeffries, allowing Netanyahu to speak, made a mockery of our party’s claim to be against MAGA extremism to be against far right politics, because what Netanyahu has done to democracy for Israelis and Palestinians is like MAGA on steroids. And so we think it’s a step, major step forward. And a reason Vice President Harris’s rhetoric has shifted is because the party below her, the party beneath her, has also shifted. That speech was a propagandistic pro violence, hateful, racist speech directing all sorts of bigotry toward Palestinians and violence against Palestinians. And so I was ashamed as, as a Democrat myself, that Democrats allowed Netanyahu to speak, but I was very optimistic that so many in our party did not attend.

SREENIVASAN: Is it fair to equate the policies that the prime minister of Israel is carrying out with the viewpoints of AIPAC, which has for a long time had the support of and given support to the Democratic party?

SHAHID: AIPAC has spent historic amounts of money this election cycle to keep progressive Democrats in line and by challenging people like Jamal Bowman and Cori Bush, spending ad money against people like Summer Lee and Rashida Tlaib, in order to discipline and punish progressive Democrats from questioning unrestricted weapons aid, a blank check to the Israeli government. That is the number one thing that they care about because it’s symbolic for them. Once the United States starts putting restrictions or conditions on weapons that we provide the Israeli government, just like we do for any other country, that becomes a slippery slope for them.  And in many ways, AIPAC can be compared to the NRA. The NRA was a part of the Democratic party a dec – two decades ago. There were many Democrats who were, embraced the NRA, had endorsements from the NRA. But slowly over time, the NRAs brand and form of politics became toxic within the Democratic Party electorate. So now there’s maybe only one or two Democrats in all of Congress who have the endorsement of the NRA. I think APAC over time will slowly go the way of the NRA and become a Republican party organization. Most of their donors are Republicans. Most of their donors have backed Donald Trump. And I think that, that they, that slowly what we’re gonna see is that the foreign policy hawks who are wanting to send unrestricted weapons aid to Israel will slowly drift into the Republican party over time.

SREENIVASAN: Tell me, what about the VP pick? How does that factor into the uncommitted voters?

SHAHID: I think a lot of uncommitted voters are watching the VP pick. They want to make sure that the VP pick aligns with their views on foreign policy, on human rights. You know, there are many picks out there that could be beneficial and balance the ticket. I think some voters are concerned about Governor Josh Shapiro, not only because of Gaza. He’s a supporter of charter schools, which teachers unions tend to oppose. He is alleged to have mishandled a sexual harassment case. He went to battle with a progressive district attorney, Larry Krasner dividing the justice reform community and the civil rights community in Pennsylvania. And on top of all of that, he has used very escalated rhetoric to compare student protestors to the Ku Klux Klan, white, extreme violent white supremacist groups. Whereas, you know, Governor Beshear, Tim Walz, they’re a little bit more of a blank slate, I think, and have taken less controversial positions in the last few years that divide the electorate deeply.

SREENIVASAN: Arab Americans are only about 1% of the population, but they’ve been very influential in this specific group, the uncommitted. And I wonder, especially when you look at a population like in Dearborn in Michigan, which is as important as any other community, maybe more so because it’s a battleground state, what do you think the outcomes are here? Is this going to come down to this single issue for Michigan?

SHAHID: So in recent polling of both Arab Americans and Muslim Americans – before Vice President Harris took over the ticket – a plurality of Arab and Muslim Americans were not going to vote for Joe Biden. That would’ve been the first time that Arab and Muslim Americans didn’t vote for the Democratic presidential candidate since the year 2000. I think people because of Donald Trump have this kind of misguided view of the Arab American and Muslim American vote, that it’s democratic BUT you know, I think there was a big inclusion of Muslim Americans and Arab Americans because of Donald Trump’s racist and Islamophobic rhetoric and advocacy for the Muslim ban that brought, solidified some of that vote. But I think the partisan loyalty to the Democratic Party is pretty thin. People want some sort of recognition of their humanity and their policy demands in exchange for their votes. I will also say that in terms of the uncommitted votes, we’ve seen data from Minnesota and Michigan that most of the uncommitted votes came from precincts that were dominated by voters under 40, not necessarily just Arab and Muslim communities. So I think this is a very diverse big tent coalition that obviously includes Muslim and Arab Democrats, but also just young Democrats of all backgrounds.

SREENIVASAN: Yeah, I should remind the audience of, look Arab is not necessarily synonymous with Muslims. The majority of Arab Americans are in fact Christian and several of those vote Republican and have voted Republican. And it’s also something that the Trump campaign is trying to reach out to this audience as well. I mean, his daughter Tiffany, her father-in-Law is an Arab American, and he’s trying to get out on the stump. I mean, do you think that there, those inroads are working from the Trump campaign, campaign seeing that there is this opportunity and this possible weakness of, if this constituency is not gonna automatically ally with the Democrats, can we peel off a small percentage here? A small percentage there?

SHAHID: The Republican Party and Donald Trump campaign are definitely trying to make inroads into the Arab and Muslim American community. I think that Donald Trump thrives in an environment of cynicism. And so what Donald Trump’s campaign is doing is trying to breed cynicism in our communities by showing that Democrats and Joe Biden and Kamala Harris don’t care about people like you. And it’s a lot easier when you’re not the incumbent to just make a case that you need to punish the other side, that you llneed to get rid of the other side and trust someone new, trust someone a little bit more chaotic, a little bit more different that might be able to give you what you want. I’ve also seen a lot of misinformation and disinformation peddled by Republican party organizations and Trump affiliated social media networks that use clips of Donald Trump in interviews where he signals that he’s against Netanyahu’s war or he’s you know, wants to, he’s no longer for a Muslim ban. These kinds of things, which I think are deliberately trying to mislead people of Trump’s views. Donald Trump, his former ambassador to Israel, David Friedman, his son-in-Law, Jared Kushner, they have said very clearly that their policies on Palestine are to turn Gaza into real estate for, and expel Palestinians from Gaza, to increase settlement expansions so that Israel can finally annex the West Bank. And JD Vance in particular has talked about cracking down on Palestinian American, Muslim American progressive civil society in the United States in order to take away funding status, legal status this is part of Project 2025. They have, if you read Project 2025, they’ve included their plan for Palestinians civil, civil civil society advocacy. And I think people should be very well aware of what, Trump is no friend to the Palestinian people, Muslim people, Arab Americans, or anti anti anti-war progressives.

SREENIVASAN: A question that I would ask almost any single issue voter – whether it is about climate change or it’s about reproductive rights or about Israel and Palestine – is sure, in a vacuum you should absolutely vote with that interest and only that interest in mind. That said, when there are so many people that are concerned about a whole host of issues that they think might slip through the cracks and have a devastating consequence, how do you, how do you tell those voters to say, okay you really should be concerned most about Palestine and maybe withhold your vote even if Donald Trump becomes president.

SHAHID: I think what we’re trying to communicate to those voters is that we’re taking it to the Democratic Party Convention to get a shift in policy and that it’s incumbent on Vice President Harris to listen to these voters and earn their support. We have 700,000 voters who voted uncommitted who wanna see, wanna see something, and that they’re 10 months of activism, they’re 10 months of organizing their 10 months of an protesting this war has been recognized by this Democratic party. It’s been recognized by the candidate that she sees these voters as part of the Democratic party and not antithetical to it. I think many people feel very alienated from President Biden. I think elections are essentially about choosing what organizing terrain you wanna be involved in. Obviously no one expects the president to align completely with their views on every single topic, but I do think that it’s about who you’re, who you’re advocating against, who you’re pressuring. And I think Vice President Harris would be more open to that pressure than Donald Trump and JD Vance. The last thing I’ll say is when people, the amount of human suffering that young people have seen on their social media for the past 10 months, when Muslim and Arab Americans see people with faces and names like theirs, completely dehumanized; children with limbs falling apart; women wailing for their husbands and, and children. I think people’s spirits are very, very in need of some healing and repair and I hope that Vice President Harris can unite people around a vision for the country and for the world that speaks to that pain that people are feeling.

SREENIVASAN: What if she says back to you, okay, I hear what you’re saying, but you know what, I’m still not the president. What would you also like Joe Biden to do between now and then? And what if Kamala Harris says, I will try to make this a priority once I get into office, right, versus somebody who can say, let me do something about this right now.

SHAHID: I think people are willing to hear what the vice president has to say. I think people are willing to have an exchange of ideas and thought process. But what I would say back to her is, look, after the convention, this delegation and the 700,000 voters it’s accountable to, could tell people that we had a meeting and you know, while we oppose Trump, Vice President Harris didn’t meet the things that we wanted her to meet. OR they could go out to their communities and say, Vice President Harris heard us and I think she would do a lot to change the conditions for Palestinians on the ground and Palestinian Americans in the United States. And she will move, move toward having a balanced approach toward Israel in which we don’t send unrestricted weapons aid. Just this week Keir Starmer’s government was – the Times of Israel reported this – in the United Kingdom, the new labor government has said they’re moving toward an arms embargo in Israel themselves. This is the United States biggest ally. I don’t think it’s far-fetched for the United States to follow what the United Kingdom is expected to do in the coming weeks. So I would tell Vice President Harris, she has a chance to excite people, to give enthusiasm to voters that otherwise weren’t enthusiastic about voting for Democrats in this election. Or people will, you know, maybe be silent, maybe sit on their hands a little bit. They won’t vote for Trump, but they won’t go out there and knock doors in their communities in states like Michigan or Georgia.

SREENIVASAN: Waleed Shahid, Democratic strategists and co-founder of the Uncommitted National Movement. Thanks so much for joining us.

SHAHID: Thank you.