Michigan Democrats decline to embrace all-or-nothing Palestinian movement

Making political headway within the Democratic Party as a pro-Palestinian supporter has become like yelling into a vacuum.

Nobody hears you ...  except those chanting the same message.

Following a week of scoring exactly zero headline speakers at the Democratic National Convention, and having their underwhelming Chicago protests yield perfunctory media coverage, Palestinians swung and missed at the Michigan convention Saturday.

More than 500 University of Michigan students, progressives and Palestinian supporters crowded the Lansing Center to get activist Huwaida Arraf nominated to the University of Michigan Board of Regents.

Judging by the number of yellow-shirted Arraf supporters buzzing around the convention, you’d think she’d be a slam dunk. Her union-backed opponents weren’t showing their faces. She was.

As many blurry-eyed delegates made their customary appearances, fresh off spending the week in celebratory euphoria in Chicago, these Arraf supporters were present and determined to win.

But, alas, organized labor understood the intricate proportional voting system the Michigan Democratic Party uses at these things. Arraf’s forces really didn’t. 

The union candidates won. Arraf lost.

As the pro-Palestinian people demanded to see the math, the party had the convention’s lights shut off. The Lansing police showed up to show everyone to the exits. MDP Chair Lavora Barnes was nowhere to be found.

It’s another frustrating result for a community so driven by such rigid religious dogma, they become inflexible to the political realities that could win them more hearts and minds.

In this case, Arraf’s selling points were giving pro-Palestinian student groups a gateway to the administration and stopping the university’s hefty endowment from growing off companies that make money on Israel’s military campaign in Gaza.

To a small, vocal minority, these are big deals. But to the general public? These stances are political losers.

The pro-Palestinian visual demonstrations aren’t exactly inviting either.

Political encampments, like the ones at U of M and Wayne State University earlier this year, grab a few headlines and draw immediate attention to an issue ... until they become an unsightly, unsanitary magnet for the homeless and blight.

Nobody wants to see the people of Gaza’s lives devastated by war. Nobody wants orphaned Gaza children losing limbs from woefully inadequate medical facilities.

And yet pro-Palestinians can’t even convince the Democrats to collectively embrace their plight, because they fail to do the following:

— Apologize for or even recognize the horrific atrocities the Palestinian government, run by Hamas, committed on the Israeli people Oct. 7.

— Acknowledge that accepting a government run by terrorists puts their lives and those of their children in grave danger.

— Realize that chanting “From the river to sea, Palestine will be free” is at least passively calling for the dismantling of Israel.

— Offer anything resembling a compromise after a ceasefire.

Instead, Palestinian protesters are seen burning American flags and spraying graffiti on the Washington Monument.

Educated by Tik-Tok, today’s progressive Gen Zers blindly embrace the struggles of the political outcasts that even Arab countries like Egypt and Syria want nothing to do with.

They either don’t know or don’t want to know about the human rights atrocities committed by all-or-nothing religious zealots.

What’s it like to be gay in Gaza? You can use Google to find some answers.

As Americans scratch their heads at the irony of “Queers for Gaza,” political candidates in Michigan who embraced Palestine in the past primary election lost, with the notable exception of U.S. Rep. Rashida Tlaib, D-Michigan.

Congressional candidate Rabbi Mohammad Alam never made the ballot. Rima Mohammad, the child of Palestinian refugees who pushed for a Palestine-leaning ceasefire resolution at the Ann Arbor School Board, lost her state representative race by a 2-to-1 margin.

Layla Taha, Ziad Abdulmalik and others have been defeated. City Pulse readers know about Meridian Township Clerk candidate Mike McCurdy, whose sympathies for the Palestinians slipped into “antisemitic rhetoric.”

Building a successful coalition in politics can happen, but it requires give and take. Until pro-Palestinians are willing to give a little, they’ll keep getting “nothing” instead of the “all” they’re demanding.

(Email Kyle Melinn of the Capitol news service MIRS at melinnky@gmail.com.)