Democrats continue to put Wisconsin’s ceasefire advocates in a tough position

Two ceasefire delegates talk about being sidelined by the “big tent” party.

For Wisconsin Democrats, two conventions have come and gone—the WisDems 2024 State Convention on June 8 and 9 in Milwaukee and the Democratic National Convention (DNC) from August 19 to 22 in Chicago—with little to no change in policy or rhetoric on the genocide in Gaza. This puts Muslim Americans and Palestinian Americans, particularly those who worked to elect President Joe Biden in 2020, in a difficult position. 

I covered the “Listen to Wisconsin” campaign pressuring Democrats to change course on arming Israel and the UW-Madison campus protests calling for the university to divest from defense contractors and Israeli companies. All the pro-Palestine activists I’ve spoken with understand the importance of preventing Donald Trump from retaking the presidency. But to tell them to “vote blue no matter who” is to ask them to vote for candidates who have repeatedly sent weapons to Israel that are then used to murder Palestinians in Gaza. For some, those Palestinians are friends and family. 

Their disillusionment with the Democrats is not based in disengagement. In fact, it’s the opposite. For months, organizers for ceasefire and divestment from Israel have been using all the democratic tools they can to push the party towards a stance that actually acknowledges and intervenes in Israel’s campaign of destruction and loss of life in Gaza. Some even went to the conventions, and left with different takeaways from the experience. 

Heba Mohammad, a Palestinian American from Milwaukee, is a familiar face in Wisconsin’s Democratic political circles. She’s worked on campaigns for the Democratic Party of Wisconsin (DPW) since 2016, and in 2020 she was the digital organizing director for Biden’s 2020 campaign in Wisconsin. 

But all of that was before Hamas launched a major attack on Israel on October 7, 2023, and before Israel retaliated by escalating its indiscriminate bombing of civilian targets in Gaza to the level of a full-on genocide, which has killed an estimated 40,000 people. Since November, Mohammad has been organizing to draw attention to the genocide in Gaza, and advocating for the Democratic Party and the Biden administration to stop delivering aid to Israel and push for a permanent ceasefire. 

Earlier this year, Mohammad was involved in the “Listen to Wisconsin” campaign, which prompted more than 48,000 Wisconsin Democratic voters to vote “uninstructed” in the April Presidential primary as a protest against the Biden administration’s policies on Israel and Gaza. In May she and 500 former Biden campaign staffers signed an open letter to the President, stating that “[t]he very same values that motivated us to work countless hours to elect you demand that we speak out in the aftermath of the recent explosive violence in Israel and the occupied Palestinian territories, which is inextricable from the ongoing history of occupation, blockade, and settlement expansion.”

When she arrived at the WisDems 2024 State Convention, she felt she was getting the cold shoulder.

“I felt very ostracized, because none of [Democratic leadership] even approached me or acknowledged my presence there,” Mohammad says. 

During the DPW state convention, Mohammad helped organize an effort to add a ceasefire resolution to the DPW’s platform:

WHEREAS, 66 Congress members called for immediate ceasefire in Gaza, with Representative Pocan “warning that without one, this war leads to further loss of civilian life and risks dragging the U.S. into unwise conflict”;

WHEREAS, 28,000+ Palestinians have been killed, majority being women and minors;

WHEREAS, collective punishment of Palestinians is an egregious violation of humanitarian law and is, according to South Africa’s ICJ case, genocide; and,

WHEREAS, the U.N. Secretary General, General Assembly, WHO, Jewish Voice for Peace, and 80% of Democrats, according to polls, support an immediate ceasefire;

THEREFORE, RESOLVED, DPW calls for an immediate, unconditional ceasefire.

The party’s Platform and Resolutions Committee recommended the party reject the resolution. Mohammad said that when ceasefire advocates asked the chair of the committee why they recommended rejecting the resolution, he said “that members of the committee felt that the resolution was biased against the Jewish community.” The resolution ultimately passed, but it was during the debate over whether it should include the word “genocide” that Mohammad felt particularly ostracized by party leadership.

“At the end of the day, this is a resolution that calls for an end to the violence, and appropriately names the scale of devastation Palestinians are facing right now,” Mohammad says. The DPW’s convention rules require resolutions to be 100 words or less. Including the word “genocide” served both brevity and accuracy. “We wanted to name that this is a genocide,” Mohammad says. “This is a scale, and this is what we want, which is a permanent, unconditional ceasefire.”

“Based on my conversations with the Platform & Resolutions Committee, it is my understanding that committee members heard a number of concerns from members about the ceasefire resolutions as drafted, to include that the resolutions did not include a condemnation of Hamas for the atrocities of October 7th,” DPW spokesperson Joe Oslund tells Tone Madison via email. 

“While the Committee is able to make technical corrections, it does not have the power to amend the resolutions for content, so they ultimately opted to recommend against adoption—anticipating a full debate at convention with substitute amendments and additional resolutions addressing the war offered from the floor, which is indeed what we saw,” Oslund writes. “Democrats—from President Biden on down—are committed to ending this conflict. As Chair [Ben] Wikler said in his opening remarks at convention, Democrats ‘hope deeply for a ceasefire, the return of hostages, a flood of humanitarian aid, a just and enduring peace, and safety, security, and self-determination for Palestinians and Israelis alike.'”

Oslund’s comments frame the conflict over the ceasefire resolution as a matter of process snags playing out against a sympathetic backdrop. However, that was not Mohammad’s feeling while at the convention. 

“I stand up here in support of this resolution as likely the lone Palestinian still in the WisDems because others have left the party,” Mohammad stated publicly at the convention. “I don’t blame them when the party has been actively silent on the genocide of our people.”

She tells Tone Madison she felt “ostracization, alienation from party leadership, throughout this entire process from the [Milwaukee] county board level, all the way up to [DPW convention weekend] where I just felt like I was being watched as a Palestinian.” 

When she says “watched” she means literally, by security at the DPW convention. 

“There was security following me around during portions of the convention, for no apparent reason,” she says. “I actually tried to get information about why I was being followed and no one has followed up with me yet to provide that information. But it was very clear to me that that was like a strategy that they had eyes on me. And I’m sure I had everything to do with this resolution.”

“It’s an issue that they’ve tried to avoid addressing at all up until this point and so I felt like that was something that they didn’t want to talk about,” Mohammad says.

Tone Madison asked the DPW in an email about Mohammad being followed at the convention, but did not receive a response.

Still, Wajiha Akhtar, a Muslim American living in Madison and one of Wisconsin’s 99 “at-large”  Democratic delegates (delegates who represent the state as a whole, rather than a specific district), went into the Democratic National Convention in Chicago cautiously optimistic that she and other organizers would be able to push the needle. Since she moved to Wisconsin in 2017, Akhtar has worked within South Asian and Muslim communities to help voters get registered and turn out for elections. She wants to do the same in 2024, but that’s difficult with the Biden administration’s current policies on Israel and Gaza.

“I’ve been excited to see how other communities around me are excited about [Vice President and Presidential candidate] Kamala Harris, and I hope to be able to find that, you know, within my own communities as well,” Akhtar says. “So for me, going to the DNC was a place for us to continuously build pressure on the current administration and the party to turn the page and demonstrate a different policy on Gaza… I was hopeful that I could then come back to Wisconsin and get to work—getting the vote out, getting people to come out and vote.”

For a lot of ceasefire organizers, Akhtar says, “there was a bit of disappointment in how things played out.” They’re particularly frustrated that DNC organizers ignored their request that a Palestinian speaker be included. The exclusion felt especially glaring given that the parents of Hersh Goldberg-Polin, an American-Israeli whom Hamas took hostage during the October 7 attack, addressed the convention on August 21, as delegates in the crowd chanted “bring them home!” 

But Akhtar seems to be focused on the areas where the movement gained ground. In her closing-night keynote address, Harris said that Palestinians have a right to “realize their right to dignity, security, freedom and self-determination.” The DNC’s decision not to include a Palestinian speaker at the convention became a talking point in the news cycle, and that in itself indicates the debate is shifting in ways the party can no longer ignore.

“I think that’s really important—that the movement continued the conversation post-DNC,” Akhtar says. At the same time, she recognizes that, for many Palestinians and Muslims, those changes may not be enough.

“At the end of the day, unless there is some sort of policy change on how we fund arms, it’s going to be really hard for us to see a lot of our Wisconsin voters coming out, at least within my community,” Akhtar says. “I think about all the people in my circle who have lost dozens of people in their family. How do I expect them to wake up one morning and go out to the polls?”

That doesn’t mean Akhtar has given up. Quite the opposite. She plans to vote for Harris in the Presidential election and continue to push the Democratic administration to change its stance toward Israel.

“I think the key difference with the Trump administration and the Harris administration is that Harris’ administration does have that commitment to democracy, human rights, and the rule of law. And all of these are key components of democratic values, but also would be valued in ensuring that we’re saving innocent Palestinian lives,” she says. “I’m still in the school of thought that we should continue pressuring our policymakers to get to change.”