On Monday night, the Democratic National Convention officially kicked off, headlined by speeches from US President Joe Biden, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, Senator Raphael Warnock and NBA coach Steve Kerr among others. Meanwhile, pro-Palestinian protesters took to the streets of Chicago, demanding an end of arms deliveries to Israel.

(Article republished from SputnikGlobe.com)

The Democratic Party of the United States is hoping that its base is gullible enough to fall for their claims that Biden and Harris are, as Biden claimed during his speech on Monday, “working around the clock” to “finally deliver a ceasefire and end this war,” human rights lawyer and peace advocate Dan Kovalik told Sputnik’s The Final Countdown on Tuesday.

“Of course [Israel] murdered Hamas’ chief negotiator while he was in Iran. I mean, Israel could not make it more clear they don’t want a deal,” Kovalik explained. “But[…] they want at least the American people to think they want a deal. And now, they’re going to say this is Hamas’ fault [that] there’s no deal. And again, the Democrats are going to hope that their base is gullible enough to say ‘Oh, well at least you’re trying, so I’ll vote for you.’ But, we’ll see if it works.”

Hamas rejected the latest proposal, noting that it does not include a ceasefire or a complete troop withdrawal from Gaza and would give Israel control of the Netzarim Corridor, which splits Gaza’s north and south, the Rafah border with Egypt and the Philadelphi Corridor which also borders Egypt.

“So there’s all these poison pills apparently that have been inserted by [Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin] Netanyahu to make sure that Hamas could not accept the deal. And I think that’s probably what happened.”

Hamas said it wants to return to the May 31 proposal that Biden described as an “Israeli proposal” but which Israel never agreed to. Hamas has accused the United States of “merely buying time for Israel to continue its genocide.”

“[The Biden administration has] announced a ceasefire deal or being close to a deal multiple times in the past months And this time as well [it] appears there is not a real deal,” Kovalik recalled.

Ahead of the convention, the Democratic Party released its official platform. Obviously edited from a document originally written while Biden was still presumed to be the nominee because references to his second term were not entirely edited out, it laid out Harris’ position on Palestine as perfectly in line with Biden’s. Consequently, it includes a condemnation of sexual violence allegedly perpetrated by Hamas but does not condemn Israel, even as the Israeli Knesset openly debates if anal rape is an acceptable weapon of war against Palestinian prisoners after guards were caught on video allegedly gang-raping a prisoner.

“President Biden and Vice President Harris have unequivocally denounced Hamas’s brutal attack on Israel on October 7, condemned the gruesome violence – including conflict-related sexual violence – demonstrated by Hamas and made clear that the United States wants to see Hamas defeated,” the party platform reads.

There has yet to be a confirmed case of rape carried out by Hamas on October 7.

Kovalik, who is currently in Chicago and attending the protests, said he hopes they push the Democrats to work harder for a peace deal, but he is not optimistic. “I fear that largely all [the protests do] is change the rhetoric. I mean to be perfectly honest, are they going to keep standing with Israel? I mean, it’s hard to think they won’t,” Kovalik explained. However, he believes it is still important to keep pressuring the Democrats as long as the genocide continues.

“If you oppose this genocide, and I think people with a heart should do that, you’ve got to at least try. And I think putting pressure on the [Democrats] – this is a Democratic war, first of all. We have to be honest about that, and therefore this is probably the best moment we have to try to change their policies. So that’s all we can do, is try,” explained Walz, though he said he is most likely to vote for Green Party candidate Jill Stein and he thinks a lot of the protesters in Chicago will as well, or else stay home in November.

It was an opinion reflected by protesters in Chicago. “If we continue to tell ourselves that we’re stuck between the healthier of Pepsi and Coke, we will only have the healthier between Pepsi and Coke. But if we don’t threaten to [not] vote, if we don’t say ‘no embargo, no vote, no sanctions, no vote,’ right, we will never be able to leverage any real political accountability,” Sana Wazwaz told the Due Dissidence podcast on Monday. “When we tell ourselves that is our standard, we will only be stuck in this bind between two options, and in years and years to come our children and grandchildren will be told they have to vote Democrat, they will have to vote for unconditional Zionism just because it’s ‘Not as Zionist as the other guy,’ slaughter, but better slaughter.”

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