No, Mr. President, the Protesters Don’t Have a Point

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President Joe Biden, in his Chicago swan song, offered a sop to the forces that seek to spoil the Democratic National Convention. In a section of his speech calling for a ceasefire in Gaza, Biden said, “Those protesters out on the street, they have a point. A lot of innocent people are being killed on both sides.” 

Really? Maybe some protesters are genuinely concerned with the toll the Gaza war has taken on both Israelis and Palestinians. But the leaders of the organizations trying to cause trouble this week are concerned only with the casualties on the Palestinian side. We know this because the groups behind the agitations since October 7 have praised the bloody massacre that kicked off the war. 

To take one of dozens of examples, just peruse a letter sent to Columbia University’s administration on October 9 from its chapters of Jewish Voice for Peace and Students for Justice in Palestine. It said, “Yesterday was an unprecedented historic moment for the Palestinians of Gaza, who tore through the wall that has been suffocating them in one of the most densely populated areas on Earth for the past 16 years.” 

That’s certainly one take. But most American voters after October 7 felt nothing but contempt and scorn for the perpetrators of the mass murder of 1,200 people in Israel that day. In this respect, it’s just wrong to say the masked troublemakers screaming about “genocide” in Gaza are anti-war. They are not. They want Hamas to win. 

Then there is the issue of the ceasefire proposal itself. The protesters are not asking for a negotiated agreement whereby Hamas returns the hostages (or those who are still alive) in exchange for a period of calm, which has been the approach of Biden’s administration. They seek an end only to Israel’s actions in Gaza and have not made any demands of Hamas, the terrorist group that started the war on October 7. 

Biden himself, in his remarks in Chicago, even acknowledged that Hamas is “backing away” from its earlier acceptance of a ceasefire deal, something this terrorist group does every time an agreement seems near. Perhaps the president can dispatch one of his aides to ask the river-to-the-sea crowd whether it would protest the embassy of Qatar, a country that has been one of the most important patrons of Hamas in recent years, instead of Israel’s consulate in Chicago. We all know what the answer would be. 

It’s not even clear if the DNC spoilers would ever be enticed to support Kamala Harris in November. As our own Olivia Reingold reports from the convention, many of the anti-Israel shouters are not trying to change the next administration’s policies so much as heap scorn and shame on a government they see as complicit in a genocide. Many are self-described “communists” and “anarchists.” So even if Biden or Harris changed America’s policy on the war, there is no guarantee these malcontents would actually end up voting for the Democrats come November. After all, before he dropped out of the race last month, this crowd called the president “Genocide Joe.” 

Now the anti-Israel mob, which showed up outside the Israeli consulate in Chicago on Tuesday, has a new target: “Killer Kamala.” The dozens of protesters, thirteen of whom ended up arrested, spontaneously broke out into chants of “fuck Kamala” while a masked man waved a Samidoun flag and others held up signs declaring Biden and Harris were “different heads, same beast.”

In their more than hour-long confrontation with the police, the protesters told at least three entities to “go to hell”: Israel, the DNC, and the Chicago Police Department. They burned an American flag in the street. As rows of police stood about twenty feet away, their batons at the ready, activists were told to take to the microphone and “speak your bitter, speak your venom.”

A man in yellow latex gloves, with his entire face concealed, told the cops: “Fuck every single one of you until you quit your jobs.”

They called this a march for Gaza, but this could hardly be a march for anything—only against. Against the Republicans, against the Democrats, and against America. If they have one point, Mr. President, it’s that they are not worth listening to.

Eli Lake is a Free Press columnist. Follow him on X @EliLake, and read his piece “The Difference Between the Clinton and Trump Hacks.”