The protests of thousands of American demonstrators who reject the Israeli aggression on Gaza, and who gathered a few days ago in Chicago in front of the Democratic Party Convention Center, pose a crucial question to presidential candidate Kamala Harris and her deputy Tim Walz. Can they bridge the widening gap that divides the American street and the political establishment on the issue of the Israeli occupation of Palestine? Most likely, they cannot.

In her showy speech during the conference in which she officially accepted her party's nomination, Harris was fully in favour of ending the aggression on Gaza, but she repeated the American-Western tune that Israel has a right to defend itself. Harris said: "I am working with President Biden around the clock because the time has come to reach a prisoner exchange agreement and a ceasefire, but I will always defend Israel's right to defend itself, and I will ensure that it is able to do so."

Harris did not forget her "duty" to condemn the resistance and Hamas, and then indirectly acknowledge the extent of Israeli brutality against Palestinian civilians. She said: "At the same time, what has happened in Gaza over the past 10 months has taken many innocent lives, left tragedies and hungry people fleeing in search of safety, and made the scale of suffering heartbreaking. President Biden and I are working to bring this war to an end so that Israel is safe, the hostages are released, and the suffering in Gaza ends and the Palestinian people can achieve their right to dignity, security, freedom, and self-determination."

However, the few words that were issued on this subject at the conference were not convincing to Democrats who want to see an end to the aggression against the Palestinians, or at least for their country to stop contributing to the massacre in Gaza.

Senator Bernie Sanders was the only progressive on the stage of the Democratic convention who gave this issue the attention that the demonstrators thought it deserved, although he did not go so far as to call for an arms embargo on Israel.

As the writer and anti-war activist Norman Solomon points out, Harris "has stuck to the line of support for Israeli aggression that President Biden has followed, although she has sometimes expressed sympathy for the civilian victims in Gaza. Nonetheless, her words are just nonsense, and her sympathy has not translated into opposition to sending weapons and ammunition to the Israeli occupation army, which continues to slaughter Palestinian civilians."

Although the protesters against Israel's crimes did their best to establish their presence and make their voices heard, they were prevented from speaking on behalf of Palestine on the official conference platform. According to the Washington Post, many Democratic leaders "were afraid to give Palestine an official speech at the conference lest it affect the Democratic unity show that was being broadcast live on television."

All in all, the Democratic conference platform was resounding with America's "firm" commitment to the Zionist state. Moreover, even the Harris/Walz nomination was marketed based on their commitment to "Israel's security, its qualitative military edge, and its right to defend itself."

Nevertheless, Representatives Ilhan Omar and Cori Bush held a press conference, attended by two members of Doctors Without Borders who witnessed firsthand the Israeli brutality in Gaza and raised their voices outside the conference centre.

"It is impossible for me that the Biden administration has done everything it can to end the war on Gaza, and at the same time it is continuously sending billions of dollars of American money and weapons to Israel," said one protester from Jewish Voices for Peace, who came from New York to Chicago. "Am I optimistic that our protest will achieve its goals? No, I am not, but silence about what is happening in Gaza is complicity in the crime."

Fox News guests describe the demonstrators and protesters as terrorists and sympathizers of Hamas, and that their position and movement are populist and extremist, even though opinion polls, the latest of which was conducted by CBS News, indicate that 61 percent of Americans oppose sending "weapons and supplies to Israel."

The division among Democrats at their conference in Chicago gives the occupying state of Israel enough time to complete the genocide against the Palestinians in Gaza.

Photo: by Adobe