A coalition of Massachusetts activists is calling on delegates to the Democratic National Convention to press the Harris/Walz campaign to call for a ceasefire in Gaza and halt arms shipments to Israel.
Speaking during a Tuesday online press conference, the activists outlined their demands to the Democratic Party — including calls for a ceasefire and arms embargo in this year’s party platform, a meeting between ceasefire advocates and Vice President Kamala Harris to discuss the demands, allowing a ceasefire delegate speaker to address the convention and a physical space at the convention for a ceasefire delegation vigil.
The activists have in less than a week collected more than 1,500 signatures from Massachusetts Democrats in support of their demands.
“This is a genocide in every sense of the word, and we need to do everything we can to stop it so we can start rehabilitation of the survivors,” said Boston-based Dr. Karameh Kuemmerle, who returned from Gaza Monday, speaking during the press conference.
According to statistics from the Gaza Ministry of Health, more than 40,000 people have been killed since Israel began bombarding Gaza in October. The death toll is thought to be much higher, as more than 10,000 people are believed to be trapped under the rubble of the more than 156,000 buildings in Gaza that have been damaged or destroyed by bombs Israel has dropped on Gaza.
Additionally, more than 90,000 people have been wounded by Israeli strikes. Because Israeli forces are preventing most water, medical supplies and food aid from entering Gaza, diseases and infections from wounds and amputations are spreading in the territory, said Kuemmerle, a member of Massachusetts Health Care Workers for Palestine.
“There is a humanitarian duty on all of us to stop this, to stop sending weapons, call for an immediate ceasefire and call for an immediate rehabilitation of every single child, every single woman, every single man, and every one of us who have been witnessing this for the past 10 months,” she said.
Jara Jirmanus, a Boston doctor and member of the Vote No Preference Coalition, noted that a majority of voters — 62% — support conditioning aid on Israel’s compliance with international law, as do 70% of Democrats. Yet while the United Nations has accused Israel of war crimes including use of heavy weapons in civilian areas, starvation of a civilian population, arbitrary detention of Palestinians and the killing of tens of thousands of children, the Biden administration has sent over $21 billion in unconditional military aid to the country this year, including a $3.5 billion shipment of armaments last week, just hours after Israel bombed a school, killing more than 100.
“The scale of destruction that we’ve seen in Gaza has been absolutely unacceptable,” said David Seaton, a Tufts University sophomore who is a delegate to the national convention. “I stand here as a delegate and as someone who has invested in the Democratic Party for years. I’m here to say, that our stance on the crisis has not been strong enough in any sense, we need to stand for a permanent ceasefire.”
Antiwar activists first made a push to pressure the Democratic Party to support a ceasefire during the presidential primaries earlier this year, urging voters to remain uncommitted to the Democratic ticket. In Massachusetts, more than 60,000 Democratic voters marked their ballots “no preference” during the March 5 presidential primary. In Michigan, a key swing state with a large Arab American community, 100,000 primary voters turned in uncommitted ballots. Biden won Michigan by 145,000 votes during the 2020 election.
Seaton said Harris can win back uncommitted voters and young voters who refused to vote for Biden if she takes a strong stand in favor of a ceasefire and conditioning military aid to Israel on compliance with international law.
“There’s one way to win these voters back,” he said. “It’s to listen to them, to hear what they’re saying, and it’s to work to actually find solutions.”
Whether Democratic officials agree to support a ceasefire or limit arms shipments to Israel, they will likely face demonstrations as their convention begins in Chicago this weekend. There, anti-genocide demonstrators are planning an Aug. 19 march to the United Center, where the DNC main events will be held.
Locally, activists are planning demonstrations in Boston, Springfield and other Massachusetts cities and towns for Aug. 18. During the Tuesday press conference, Somerville City Councilor Willie Burnley said it will be critical for Democratic activists keep up the pressure on the Harris campaign.
“It is so, so crucial that other elected leaders, even at the highest levels of power, such as Vice President Kamala Harris, use the full totality of the United States’s financial, political, diplomatic and material leverage to bring this massacre of Gaza to a close and to create a just and lasting peace,” he said.
