Chicago:

Disappointed Pro-Palestinian activists said Kamala Harris’ speech to close the Democratic convention in Chicago failed to demonstrate any break from the status quo, after a week in which the most divisive issue facing the party was mostly ignored.

Under pressure to respond to critics of US support for Israel’s war in Gaza, the vice president used her Thursday night speech to repeat earlier calls for a ceasefire and a hostages deal. She said she supported Israel’s right to defend itself while also favouring the Palestinian right to self-determination.

Abbas Alawieh, co-founder of the Uncommitted National Movement that mobilised more than 750,000 voters to protest US policy on Israel, said Harris missed an opportunity to win over those people, many of whom live in battleground states such as Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania and Arizona.

“What’s needed in this moment is courageous leadership that breaks from the current approach,” Alawieh told Reuters shortly after Harris formally accepted the party’s nomination.

Uncommitted delegates and their allies had pushed unsuccessfully for a prime-time speaking slot at the Democratic National Convention (DNC) to address the latest bloodshed in the decades old Israeli-Palestinian conflict, which began on October 7 when Hamas attacked Israel, killing about 1,200, according to Israeli tallies.

Israel’s assault on Hamas-governed Gaza, with the aid of US support, has since killed 40,000 Palestinians, Gaza health officials say, along with displacing nearly its entire 2.3 million population, causing a hunger crisis and flattening almost the entire enclave.

Rima Mohammad, an Uncommitted delegate from Michigan, said the speech added to disappointment over the DNC’s refusal to let a Palestinian speak, and offered nothing to assuage the concerns of her progressive, diverse community in Ann Arbor.

“I’m actually more concerned now,” Mohammad said. “This is just a bad look. You’re going to lose Michigan.”

A campaign spokesperson declined to explain the decision not to schedule a speech by a Palestinian speaker at the DNC. The decision was made by DNC organisers in close consultation with the Harris campaign, sources familiar with the discussions said.

Party insiders fear the Gaza war could cost Harris needed votes in battleground states such as Michigan, which is home to large Muslim and Arab American populations and college campuses that have been the site of Gaza protests.

The convention was held in Chicago, home to the United States’ largest Palestinian community, according to the Arab American Institute.

The DNC faced pro-Palestinian protests each day in Chicago, including thousands of demonstrators on Thursday night ahead of Harris’ speech. Dozens of arrests were made during the week.

Protesters carried banners that read “No Embargo No Vote” and “No Ceasefire No Vote,” while thousands chanted “Ceasefire now,” and “Long live Palestine.”

“Leading with Israel’s right to defend itself in the wake of 40,000 massacred Palestinians is absolutely tone deaf,” said Hatem Abudayyeh, spokesperson for the Coalition to March on the DNC and National Chair of the US Palestinian Community Network, who said Harris simply repeated President Joe Biden’s positions.

“Harris said nothing new,” he said. “We continue to demand that the US and Harris implement an arms embargo and stop sending weapons and all other aid to Israel.”

Mohammad, Alawieh and other Uncommitted delegates spent the previous night on the sidewalk outside the convention to protest the DNC’s rejection of their request for a Palestinian speaker.

They welcomed a call for a ceasefire and the return of hostages by the parents of one US hostage held in Gaza – Rachel Goldberg and Jon Polin – on Wednesday night, but said they should also have been given a chance to speak.

Pro-Palestinian protesters and delegates said they were heartened by messages of solidarity from the United Auto Workers union and the Movement for Black Lives, a network of over 150 leaders and organizations. Muslim Women for Harris-Walz said on X it would cease operations after the DNC decision.

Ruwa Romman, a Georgia state legislator and delegate who spent the night outside the DNC, said Uncommitted organizers had negotiated with the Harris campaign for weeks and provided a list of possible speakers, only to be rejected.

Prior to Harris’ remarks, only a handful of speakers even addressed the war, including Biden, Senators Bernie Sanders and Raphael Warnock, and Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.

One major Harris campaign donor, who requested anonymity to be candid about their private conversations with the campaign, said they worried that without a near-term ceasefire deal and clear statements from Harris about ending the war and protecting civilians, campus protests could flare again when universities resume classes in coming days.

“We need every vote,” the donor said.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)

“Kamala Harris will deliver crime, chaos, mayhem, and death to the U.S.,” presidential candidate Donald Trump has said, intensifying his attacks on his Democratic rival as the 2024 presidential election campaign entered a critical final 100-day stretch. Vice President Kamala Harris, 59, is the new presidential candidate of the Democratic party after incumbent President Joe Biden, 81, withdrew from the race.

Mr. Trump, a former U.S. president and the 2024 Republican presidential candidate, along with his running mate Senator J D Vance, painted his new chief rival, Ms. Harris, as worse than President Biden at a rally in Minnesota on July 27.

“Ultra-liberal Kamala Harris will deliver crime, chaos, mayhem, and death to our country. I will restore law and order, and justice in America,” Mr. Trump, 78, said.

Mr. Trump said on his very first day back in the White House, that he would terminate every single open border policy of the Biden-Harris Administration.

“And we will seal the border and we will stop the horrible invasion into our country. No person in American politics has been more of an open border zealot than Border Czar Harris,” he said.

He slammed Ms. Harris’ political record, saying she “destroyed San Francisco” during her time as county district attorney.

“Kamala Harris was the original Marxist district attorney. She destroyed San Francisco and she will destroy our country,” he alleged. “This November, the American people are going to reject Kamala Harris’s crazy liberal extremism in a massive landslide. We’re not going to let her turn the United States into communist San Francisco,” he said.

“Harris is so extreme and unhinged that she has even declared the terms ‘illegal alien’ and ‘radical Islamic terrorism’ to be forbidden and unacceptable,” he alleged.

Describing her as a “radical left lunatic“, Mr. Trump alleged that Ms. Harris is “the most incompetent, unpopular, and far-left vice president in American history, probably the most far-left person in American history.” Mr. Trump went after Ms. Harris on topics that included abortion, gun policy, climate change, entitlement programs and inflation.

In a less substantive dig, he also mocked Ms. Harris’ laugh, claiming that the media was trying to portray her as a “Margaret Thatcher”, referring to the late British prime minister, but that “it’s not gonna happen”, because “Margaret Thatcher didn’t laugh like that.” “A Kamala Harris presidency means four more years of extremism, weakness, failure, chaos, and probably World War III,” he claimed.

“Kamala wants to be the president for criminals and illegal aliens. I want to be the president of law-abiding Americans of every race, religion, colour, and creed. Harris is so extreme and unhinged that she has even declared the terms illegal alien and radical Islamic terrorism to be forbidden and unacceptable. You’re not allowed to use those terms, but that’s what it is,” he said.

“If Harris is elected, she will flood our country with refugees from the Hamas-controlled terrorist epicentre in Gaza,” he said.

“Kamala Harris’s deadly destruction of America’s borders is completely and totally disqualifying for her to be president. You can’t have a person like this as president. No person who deliberately releases these kinds of savage criminals to prey on our youth and our people, not just youth, elderly people too, are tremendous targets, should ever be trusted with power. She has no clue. She has no clue. She’s evil,” Mr. Trump said.

Harris for President spokesperson Ms. Sarafina Chitika slammed Mr. Trump for his speech in Minnesota.

“Tonight, in Minnesota, a bitter, unhinged, 78-year-old convicted felon kept clinging to his lies about the 2020 election he lost being ‘rigged’, rambled about his former opponent and golfing and made excuses for why he’s afraid to debate Vice President Harris. Donald Trump said that if he loses, our country is ‘finished’, Yesterday, he promised the end of our democracy if he wins,” Chitika said.

“Trump has made his goals clear: he’s determined to drag us backward, undermine our democracy, and enact his Project 2025 agenda to rip away our freedoms. But as he said tonight, ‘a criminal is a criminal, they generally stay a criminal’ – voters will unite to reject the politics of hatred and division, grow the middle class, and make sure convicted criminal Donald Trump doesn’t get anywhere near the White House,” she alleged.