Biden's DNC speech highlights the party's struggle with Israel-Gaza conflict balance - analysis

Israel and the war in Gaza took up only a tiny fraction of US President Joe Biden’s speech to the Democratic National Convention in Chicago on Monday night – 126 words out of a 4,869-word speech, to be exact.

But his carefully crafted six sentences on the matter revealed the balancing act the Democratic Party is attempting: keeping its anti-Israel progressives satisfied while avoiding alienation of its Jewish base. This Jewish constituency has been a cornerstone of the party since Franklin D. Roosevelt was revered by many American Jews as a demigod in the 1930s and 1940s, despite his abandonment of European Jewry.

The party needs the Arab Americans and anti-Israel progressives to vote in November in Michigan and Wisconsin and not stay away to protest Biden’s support for Israel. However, it also needs Jewish voters, strategically located in key battleground states like Pennsylvania, Georgia, and Arizona, to continue voting Democratic in typical numbers to secure an election victory. For instance, the loss of five or ten percent of the Jewish vote in Pennsylvania could make the whole difference in this election.

So the party is walking a tightrope. Biden, on Monday, tried to walk that tightrope but did not do it particularly well.

He gave the anti-Israel elements what they wanted: a shout-out to the demonstrators outside chanting not only for a ceasefire but for an end to Israel. But he did not do much to assuage the concerns of some Jewish voters that the party is being overly influenced by its left-wing fringe.

'These protests have a point'

“Those protesters out in the street, they have a point,” Biden said. “A lot of innocent people are being killed on both sides.”

This comment was particularly jarring, coming just minutes after he started his speech by saying that one reason he chose to enter the presidential race in 2020 was the Charlottesville riots of white supremacists three years earlier.

“I ran for President in 2020 because of what I saw in Charlottesville in August of 2017,” Biden said. “Extremists coming out of the woods, carrying torches, their veins bulging from their necks, carrying Nazi swastikas, and chanting the same exact antisemitic bile that was heard in Germany in the early ’30s. Neo-Nazis, white supremacists, and the Ku Klux Klan, so emboldened by a President then in the White House that they saw as an ally. They didn’t even bother to wear their hoods.”

At that time, Biden said, “Hate was on the march in America. Old ghosts in new garments, stirring up the oldest divisions, stoking the oldest fears, giving oxygen to the oldest forces that have long sought to tear apart America.” Biden then quoted then-president Donald Trump’s infamous comment when asked about those riots, “There are very fine people on both sides.”

Trump said there are “fine people on both sides” in 2017. In 2024, Biden said that the anti-Israel, anti-Zionist, often anti-Jewish protesters in the streets “have a point.”

Identifying that point

Which point, exactly, and which demonstrators? Are they the ones with their faces covered by keffiyehs chanting “We don’t want two states, we want 1948,” or the ones waving Hamas and Hezbollah flags?

Biden talked about the hate at the riot in Charlottesville, and he was correct, including noting the veins bulging from the necks of the participants.

Yet has he looked at the demonstrators outside the convention, whom he says have a good point? Has he looked into some of their hate-filled eyes or listened to their antisemitic rhetoric? Not all of them are antisemites or don’t think Israel should exist; some are genuinely motivated by concern for the loss of civilian life. But there are enough antisemites and vehement vein-bulging Israel haters and Hamas supporters among them to warrant the president of the United States calling them out.

Hate was on the march in America, Biden said of Charlottesville. But today, at the anti-Israel, pro-Hamas protests, can we not also see hate on the march? Is this not – in his own words – “stirring up the oldest divisions, stoking the oldest fears, giving oxygen to the oldest forces?”

Yet these demonstrators, he claims, “have a point.”

This is not the first time he used those very words. Back in March, at a campaign event in Raleigh, North Carolina, where he was being heckled for his support for Israel, and one of the protesters shouted, “Ceasefire now,” Biden said: “They have a point … we need to get a lot more care into Gaza.”

“They have a point,” therefore, seems to be the catchphrase drawn up for him to acknowledge the grievances of the Palestinians in a way that he hopes will not alienate any of his Jewish base.

Biden’s wink to the anti-Israel protesters on the street was not the only problem with Biden’s brief comments on the war.

Beating around the Hamas bush

“And we’ll keep working to bring hostages home and end the war in Gaza and bring peace and security to the Middle East. As you know, I wrote a peace treaty for Gaza. A few days ago, I put forward a proposal that brought us closer to doing that than we’ve done since October 7,” he said.

“We’re working around the clock, my Secretary of State, to prevent a wider war and reunite hostages with their families and surge humanitarian health and food assistance into Gaza now, to end the civilian suffering of the Palestinian people and finally, finally, finally deliver a ceasefire and end this war.”

The missing piece in these words was any mention of Hamas.

After he said that the administration would keep working “to bring hostages home and end the war in Gaza and bring peace and security to the Middle East,” he might have wanted to remind everyone of why there is a war in Gaza and who and what triggered it.

Another point where he should have mentioned the terrorist organization that attacked Israel on October 7 and murdered, raped, plundered, mutilated, and pillaged like it was the Middle Ages was when he said that his administration is working tirelessly to “surge humanitarian health and food into Gaza now, to end the civilian suffering of the Palestinian people and finally, finally, finally deliver a ceasefire and end this war.”

To mention the humanitarian crisis and suffering in Gaza without mentioning Hamas’s responsibility for it is like talking about the need to aid Japanese civilians after Hiroshima without mentioning Pearl Harbor and the atrocities of Imperial Japan during World War II.

None of this is to suggest that Biden is not a strong supporter of Israel; he most definitely is, and the country will miss him and his deeply felt empathy for Israel and Zionism when he is no longer in office.

Biden’s speech was carefully written for him, reflecting the delicate balance the party is trying to maintain. Instead of standing in front of the DNC and unashamedly espousing his support for Israel – even mentioning the name “Israel” – he tiptoed around the issue to avoid antagonizing the party’s radical left-wing flank.

The Jewish base of the party needs to let it be known that it, too, has feelings and expectations. One such expectation is not over the top: that the president and party leader not Wink at those marching in America’s streets who denounce Israel and call for its end, intimidate Jews, and foster an anti-Jewish sentiment not seen in the country for decades.