Kai Wright: It's Notes From America. I'm Kai Wright, and you are listening to our pop-up election series, On The Call. Each week, I'm just calling up somebody who I think can help me process this now lightning speed campaign. On The Call this week, Aymann Ismail from Slate. He writes about a lot of different stuff there, but he's been following the conversation within the Democratic Party about Gaza and the administration's support for Israel. We're going to talk about that and some of what he saw when he went to the Republican National Convention, which seems like 8 million years ago at this point even.

Hello, and thanks for coming on.

Aymann Ismail: Hey, thanks for having me on, Kai. Thanks for the introduction.

Kai Wright: Let's lead with the lead. Last week, Kamala Harris was in Michigan, obviously a battleground state, also a place with a particularly important and influential Arab American community. First, let's talk about the rally for people who missed the news of what went down at the rally. Can you just break down what happened at that Harris campaign rally?

Aymann Ismail: Sure, yes. One of the headlines that drew my attention was that Kamala had shouted down or outwardly dismissed the pro Palestine protesters who many thought represented the large Uncommitted Movement there. For people who don't know, over 100,000 voters voted Uncommitted in the Michigan primary. That ended up being 13% of the vote. Since then, that movement snowballed and became a nationwide phenomenon. Now, to date, it's over 650,000 uncommitted voters.

Kai Wright: Oh, wow. I didn't know that number.

Aymann Ismail: Yes. Places like Massachusetts, it's 9%, but in places like Minnesota, that number could be 19% of the primary voters went uncommitted, which underscores a pretty big weakness if you're a Democratic pollster, but not outright defeat. I think that's really important because after I saw the headline, I talked to one of the people who were there, one of the leaders of the Uncommitted Movement. Her name is Layla Elabed. She's a Palestinian American. She lives in Dearborn, Michigan. I was surprised to hear that, she told me that before all of that had happened, she was invited to go and be there and take pictures with her, and hang out backstage and be part of the who's who.

Kai Wright: The meeting, that was at the rally itself?

Aymann Ismail: That was backstage at the rally.

Kai Wright: Just to fully flesh this, at the rally, there were protesters. They started chanting, I forget what the chants was, but it was something about let's have an arms embargo and a ceasefire.

Aymann Ismail: Totally.

Kai Wright: She was gracious at first, and then it kept going. She was like, "If you want to elect Donald Trump, say that. Otherwise, I'm talking." Then everyone cheered, and a lot of people were pissed off about it afterwards, depending on [unintelligible 00:03:02]

Aymann Ismail: At fist she was like, "Everybody's voice matters, but I'm speaking now." Then afterwards, she was like, "If you want Donald Trump, then just say it. Otherwise, I'm speaking." She's trying to make the I'm speaking thing happen. Before all that, backstage, she met with two of the founders of the now National Uncommitted Movement, Abbas Alawieh and Layla Elabed. Before all of that happened, they had shaken hands and they both made their emotional pleas. They were saying, "Hey, look, tens of hundreds of the relatives that we have in this our community who are living Gaza, they're watching them all just get wiped out. We need some kind of lever, some kind of option or signal so that we can go back and say, hey, we should vote for Kamala." Until that happens, I kind of feel for them. They want to support Kamala, is the impression that I'm getting. They do not want a Donald Trump presidency. Or maybe we don't know, but he has a much stronger relationship with Israel than I think some people in the Democratic Party expect.

Kai Wright: [unintelligible 00:04:03]

Aymann Ismail: They do want to vote for Kamala, but they want something in return. They want something to say to those people who are losing family members in Gaza to say, "Hey, look, we're trying to use our political currency here. We're trying to use our voting power to try and get some movement on our end to ease the suffering in Palestine. Just give us something." I think that meeting has actually been really helpful for them on that end.

Kai Wright: You talked to Layla and wrote a piece that was your Q&A with her. One of the things I got from that, I mean, it was a really emotional meeting for her, it sounds like.

Aymann Ismail: Yes, she cried. This is the thing I think people don't really understand about the Uncommitted Movement. First, I think the biggest misconception is that this is just a bloc of Arab and Muslim voters. It's much more diverse than that. I think they more strongly identify as anti-war and pro peace. A big subset of these uncommitted voters are actually Jewish Americans. I think it's wrong headed to think of them as just Arab or Muslim voters, that's not what we're dealing with here. What we're dealing with are people who are watching videos come out from Gaza on a daily basis, video after video of some of the most horrific things that I can't even describe to you because it's so graphic.

I would recommend listening to some of the doctors that have come back on their medical missions. I think they can give a much better account of what's actually happening there on the ground. These voters are confronting on one end, some of the most horrific images, the aftermath of 2,000-pound bombs being dropped in residential buildings, or, in some cases, tents or open fields where kids are playing soccer. We're asking those people to think more politically and less emotionally. I think that's a much more difficult thing to do than some people act like it is.

Kai Wright: Right. On the emotional piece of it, before we get to the policy stuff that happened in that meeting, I got the vibe, like you said, so it was emotional and that Layla felt an empathy, or they felt good about the meeting itself, which empathy isn't policy. We're going to talk about policy in a minute, but just on that piece, did you get the sense that it really was a meaningful thing, to her at least, that Kamala Harris was willing to meet with them before the rally?

Aymann Ismail: I think so. Another thing to remember is that these people aren't rookie politicos. Layla Elabed is actually the younger sister of Rashida Tlaib, the congresswoman from Michigan. Before all of this started, they were buddy buddies. They were political activists. They were running and gunning for the Democratic Party on the ground. These are the same people that we're dealing with here, where they might be a little bit more privy to being politically played. I think they understand the politics better than the average layman.

I think what she's saying, when she met with me after the meeting, what she was trying to say was, "Look, I felt something. There's some movement there, there's some opportunity there." She was maybe directly contrasting it to the kind of opposition they got when they were dealing with the President Biden, who was on the record saying, "Hey, look, before November, these people are going to realize that the other option is Trump."

Kai Wright: He never talked to anybody from that movement, right?

Aymann Ismail: No.

Kai Wright: Am I wrong about that?

Aymann Ismail: That's correct, yes. I think they were asking for meetings and they were just never responded to. That's a different political strategy we can get into if you wanted to. It shows a lot of movement already. The fact that she's inviting these people to her campaign events backstage so that they can do a meet and greet directly, the fact that she promised Layla a more comprehensive meeting later, I think that itself gave her the feeling that she was dealing with an entirely different kind of administration already.

Kai Wright: It's interesting because we talked to Jamilah King from Mother Jones a couple weeks ago about Kamala in general. One of the things that Jamilah talks about is this relationship that Kamala Harris has with Black Lives Matter activists and other racial justice activists, that she hasn't given them what they are asking for, but for some reason, this going back to DA days, they felt differently about her because she was willing to meet with them and listen to them, which, I don't know, it feels, on some level, I'm like, how is that enough? This seems similar, that there's something about her that she manages to get people-- Just the act of empathy does seem to mean something to some of these activists.

Aymann Ismail: Totally. Part of what the activists have been so frustrated about was this unwillingness to take them seriously. I think from the very beginning, some media outlets have written these people off as being just blanketly antisemitic. Sometimes they've just been labeled violent just for some of the rallies that they've had. They apply this blanket condemnation for more than half a million voters across the country, which I think is politically dangerous to do. I think what they've already done versus what they're asking for now, it doesn't seem like it's that much. They just want to be taken seriously. They just want the Democratic Party to receive the message that their votes aren't to be taken for granted, and that they want to be given the dignity of having their votes be earned. I don't know if that's too much to ask personally.

Kai Wright: Right. Aside from dignity, there is a policy ask. As I understand it, the clear question on the table is a US embargo on arms shipments to Israel. Did you get a sense of what exactly that needs to-- Because that's a broad statement, too, what that would need to look like for at least the folks in Uncommitted, for Layla to feel good about it. What would that need to look like?

Aymann Ismail: I think for them, the ask is clear and that they want to see some kind of pressure applied by the United States government to protect civilians on the ground. I think that's the sum of it all. For people who don't know, since October, the United States has shipped 14,000 2,000-pound bombs, 6,500 500-pound bombs, 3,000 precision guided bombs. All this in the context of the fact that the Israeli government has dropped approximately 70,000 tons of bombs on Gaza already, just in a six-month period, just until April. In that context, it really feels like there's no pressure being applied considering that over 10,000 kids have been killed by Israeli warplanes, and more.

I think what they want is pressure. They want the Israeli regime to feel like there is some incentive to start thinking more critically about how they're going to protect and mitigate suffering on the ground, which so far it doesn't seem like it's been that strongly convincing, particularly with the restrictions of aid, with the entire siege which restricts medical supplies. Part of what makes this such a difficult environment to work in, as a doctor working in Gaza, is that some of the people that they are dealing with are going to be suffering chronic illnesses for the rest of their lives, or basic infections that could be treated with a simple shot they don't have access to. Those are turning into bigger cases, and often amputees.

It's about mitigating the suffering more than it is about anything else. If they can use an arms embargo to put pressure on Israel, especially when it seems like a regional war is on the horizon, that might give them what they want, essentially, to just put more pressure and say, hey, look, these civilians matter. We shouldn't just be willy-nilly supporting this regime and providing political cover for them on the international stage and saying, hey, do whatever, there's no wrong you can do. If the ICJ comes after you, we're going to criticize the court. If the UN passes a resolution, we're going to discredit the UN. Both of those things have already happened with the Biden administration. I think what their hope is, is that the United States will use their arms leverage a little bit more to protect civilian lives and to mitigate suffering.

Kai Wright: Now we get fully into the world of speculation. Neither of us is at the table in these conversations. In an arms embargo, it feels like there's a growing consensus around that particular piece of policy as a way, as something for the administration to do, the existing Biden administration or the future Harris administration. It's not actually that difficult. It's enforcing existing US law. Biden himself has called the bombing indiscriminate multiple times. That makes it in violation of US law for us to continue giving weapons. It's not like a big, huge policy pivot in reality, outside of this particular politics of support for the state of Israel.

I'm trying to think how could Kamala Harris get there. One of the things that did strike me in reading your interview with Layla, and I noticed elsewhere, is talking about Netanyahu instead of Israel. It felt like she kept saying Netanyahu's government. I don't know, did that strike you? I wonder if that is a pivot that we could see from Kamala Harris that would allow her to then be like, "I'm not opposing state of Israel. I'm opposing Netanyahu's far right government."

Aymann Ismail: Yes, it did strike me. I think it's politically smart given that Netanyahu's favorability globally is in the toilet.

Kai Wright: In Israel.

Aymann Ismail: In Israel, they hate him. In the United States, they hate him. Both Trump and Biden have both made statements about Netanyahu, and even Clinton. Anybody who's dealt with him has pretty much had nothing nice to say about Netanyahu after the fact. I think it's really smart politically. I think it also helps people who strongly believe in Israel's right to defend itself through and through, to accept and digest some of the current claims and the current asks and wants coming out of the Uncommitted Movement.

They're thinking about the here and now. That's why I think talking about the threat of a Trump presidency has been largely ineffective with this group because they are in direct communication with people on the ground in Gaza, who are family members of people in their community, who are telling them firsthand accounts of what it's like to live under a siege where there are 20 bombs dropping an hour. I think it's 21 bombs being dropped every hour. It's just an unprecedented level of bombardment, an unprecedented level of human suffering. We're asking these people to think, hey, politically, X, Y, Z.

It's been really, really critical, in my opinion, to stop thinking about the Uncommitted Movement as being just this political football. There's an emotional element here that's stronger than anything else. I think if more people were to start thinking about it that way, these are voters who are suffering, these are people who are mourning the loss of family members, I think maybe it'll be politically more viable to work with those people rather than just dumping them off somewhere and being like, hey, look, we can win this without them. I don't think that's the case in some of these states where the margins are pretty significant.

Kai Wright: Listen, it's impossible to imagine-- not impossible, but it's very difficult to imagine Kamala Harris winning the presidency without winning the state of Michigan. That's certainly the place where we have seen this to have the most political consequences for the Democratic Party.

All right, let's take a break, and when we come back, talk about what you saw and experienced at the RNC.

Aymann Ismail: Yes, with pleasure. I can't wait.

Kai Wright: I'm talking with Aymann Ismail, staff writer at Slate. Stay with us.

Okay, Aymann, the RNC.

Aymann Ismail: Fun.

Kai Wright: You went, you wrote a bunch of pieces, including about Israel. Let's start there, because you talked about the fact that, the question of US policy in relationship to Israel is actually quite divisive in the MAGA movement as well, which is something we don't talk about. What happened for you there that brought that to mind?

Aymann Ismail: Before the RNC, I've noticed some friction already, particularly in the America first camp, who don't want to see part of their tax money going to Ukraine, going to Israel or anywhere else where the United States is involved. You remember this from the first presidential debate with Vivek Ramaswamy saying that he did support cutting aid to Israel, and then having to walk it back because of how furious some people in the Republican base were with him. I think that might have been the first hint at how politically dangerous it was to go against Israel and the Republican Party, but at the same time, there being this desire and this urge to want to be more conservative and take a more conservative approach on foreign policy.

When I went to the Republican National Convention, that was at the top of my mind. I have a way of spotting Muslims as a Muslim person myself, and they just appear for me. The first person I spotted was, she was a little bit hard to miss, her name is Rola Makki. She was there as a guest, but she is part of the Michigan Republican Party. She's based out of Dearborn as well. I've interviewed her before when I've been to Dearborn to write pieces there. She wears this hijab, and so she's really hard to miss. While we were talking, I was essentially asking her one of the days that the RNC was specifically about protecting Israel and beating up on the Biden campaign for not being hard enough on the student protesters who were protesting against Israel on campus. I asked her about that, and she's like, "Let's actually take a step in this direction," because right behind her were people holding up Israeli flags. She had already tried to talk to them beforehand, and they were really mean to her. She said, she was like, "Oh, hi, I like your flags. Where are you from?" That kind of thing, trying to be nice. They were like, "Florida," and that was it.

Then we take a few steps to the side and we start to talk. I'm trying to put pressure on this point, and I'm trying to ask her how she makes sense of that as somebody who feels very strongly about Palestine, and at the same time, supporting the Republican Party who says that the Democratic Party is actually not supportive of Israel enough. Her family's from South Lebanon. South Lebanon is also being bombed by Israel. It's not to the same degree as Gaza, and definitely Hezbollah has been fighting a little bit harder on that end, but it's in conflict there, and she has family there. We ended up with her saying, "Hey, look, I know how I feel, but we have to work with what we've got." That was the same kind of rhetoric that I got from other Muslims at the RNC that I had spotted and spoken to.

It was actually very different than the kind of language that was being used by people who were very pro Israel, who when I would try to talk to, I spoke to those same women who Rola was standing next to, and I asked them, "Are you interested in building a coalition with people who are pro Palestine if it means securing the border, if it means putting in more fiscal conservative policies here domestically?" Not one person, not one person I could find would say, "Yes, we should build a coalition with them." They're like, "No, I don't see how that's possible. There's no way." One guy who I spoke to who was actually a delegate from Illinois, so he had spotted me and figured I was a Muslim, because I guess maybe the way I look, I don't know.

Kai Wright: You're famously Muslim. [unintelligible 00:20:39]

Aymann Ismail: I don't know if he was a Slate reader. We ended up talking about it, and while we were talking, two other Muslim delegates from New York who I had met up before, and I told them to meet me at a certain location where I was going to be, they just walked into each other. I hadn't planned it that way, but it became this conversation among delegates who are on opposite ends of the Palestine question. They were not seeing eye-to-eye on the issue at all. One side was saying, "Hey, look, we care about kids. We want to see the suffering of the kids to end." The other side was saying, "Hey, look, the only solution to this is to airlift all of the people out and move them somewhere else." In which I asked him, "Oh, isn't that ethnic cleansing?" He said, "Yes, that's what I support."

Kai Wright: "Yes, indeed. Yes, sir, I would like the ethnic cleansing."

Aymann Ismail: When the conversation turned to the border, then they were all just on the same team. The Muslims felt a lot better about it, saying, "Hey, look, we care about the border. These are our issues. We need to focus on our issues as American voters." Then when I caught up with the pro Israel delegate later on in the arena, he would again reiterate what I've already heard from the women from Florida, saying, "There's no way we should build a coalition with these people. We should cast them out." I think that should be, in my opinion, a point of tension that could come out even bigger in the future.

Kai Wright: Which, I think for a lot of listeners, begs the question of just starting with the premise in this story of the Muslim delegates at the RNC and why are they there. Not to be reductive, but it is an environment where you have people who are like, "You're categorically not part of my coalition. I'm for ethnic cleansing." What is it? Is it border politics? If so, why? What is it, of the Muslim delegates, that you talk to? What draws them to that movement?

Aymann Ismail: It's easier to understand when you look back to the early 2000's and you see how many Arab American voters went for George W. Bush in the Republican Party. The Republicans won the Muslim vote by a 72% margin. It was a huge, huge margin.

Kai Wright: I did not know that.

Aymann Ismail: Yes. One of the people that I spoke to in doing a piece specifically about the Republican gains being made in a place like Dearborn, Michigan, which by percent has the largest concentration of Arab Americans in the country, he told me that he was a Democratic operative at a time where being a Democrat and a Muslim made you a social pariah. In that context, it's not that difficult to see why Republicans lost gains with Muslim voters after Dick Cheney and George Bush and the war on terror and the Patriot Act made this country insufferable towards Muslims.

I have many stories from me growing up in which my mosque was surveilled, and dealing with FBI, and my brother being on a no-fly list. Every Muslim you speak to in this country has stories like this. Those policies are supported by only one party, really. That transition happened in one generation. It was just like a flip that got switched. Now what we're seeing is, particularly on the issue of LGBT books being available in public schools or public libraries, that marked the beginning of this larger movement, a larger trickle, I should say, of Republican gains being made with Muslim voters. There's also the sense where they, Arabs in particular, like somebody who is financially, or at least appears to be financially well off.

Kai Wright: I was going to say be careful here. Supposedly. [unintelligible 00:24:31]

Aymann Ismail: Supposedly, at least an image, right?

Kai Wright: Right.

Aymann Ismail: Some people buy into the fact that Trump is this big, successful businessman, and they might think of this country as being a business that needs a new CEO. Trump might make that appeal with certain voters, too. There's been a few holes in the figurative canoe in which Muslim voters are starting to trickle away and they're being lost by the Democratic Party. This happened before the war, but I think since the war in Gaza, everything has just been dialed up to 11. I think particularly when it comes to Biden repeating things like the beheaded babies and saying that the Israeli government and the American government are one and the same, and they will always be together, I think all of that pushes more and more on the button in which the Democratic Arabs and Democratic Muslims are wanting to flee the party.

I do think it's important to say that right now in this moment, with the Uncommitted Movement, that those voters aren't gone forever. Some of them might be, especially ones who have lost family members in Gaza, but some of those voters are there for the pickings. I think what they want right now, and which I think is achievable for Kamala, is for some kind of signal to say, "Hey, look, we're taking you seriously. We are willing to come to the table and see what your demands are at the very minimum." I think that'll do enough to win her enough support, earn it, at least stop the plugs so that more and more those voters don't continue to flee from the Democratic Party.

Kai Wright: Well, and maybe have a greater impact than that, too. This conversation will be in our podcast feed on Thursday morning. That's the day that the multiparty negotiations are supposed to resume around a ceasefire. New York Times has reported that Netanyahu has added conditions to the negotiations that even senior Israelis, officials in his own delegation, think are there specifically to tank the negotiations, because, just to spell it all out for people, that his government depends upon a small fraction of the far right that will only stay if there's no ceasefire, and if he has a ceasefire, he will lose power.

All of which is to say that it does not seem like there is any road to ending this, or any solution to this absent significant pressure from the United States, which means that we're also on the road to regional war. I wonder about Kamala Harris's effort, if she could change the narrative in the campaign, whether that would also impact negotiations. Yes, we have one president at a time, blah, blah, blah, but I wonder about her sending signals that would change the politics in Israel.

Aymann Ismail: I think it's also important to look at who is in power in Israel, because many of the people who are part of that far right coalition have made explicit demands that they want to colonize Gaza. It's not so much that they want the war to end or they want Hamas to be eradicated. They want colonies, they want settlers to move in and take that land, and they're already selling that land in some cases. It's incredibly frustrating when you put those demands that the Israeli government is making alongside the demands that people in the Uncommitted Movement are making. It almost feels like there shouldn't be any of this existential crisis or moral crisis being had with the Kamala or the Democratic Party. It seems like it's obviously a bad thing to support the ethnic cleansing of people. What we would like to see is to see some of that pressure, but at this point, that almost feels like it might not be enough to get everybody. If you really want everybody, you need to make a moral stand. I think part of the reason why Biden became radioactive on that part of the Democratic Party, and why he was dubbed genocide Joe, was because of a flat unwillingness to say anything negative about Israel, at all.

Kai Wright: That's right.

Aymann Ismail: Also to provide just an insane amount of cover on the international stage, while at the same time, Netanyahu snubbing him over and over again. I think people started to see him as this true believer in Israel, and Israel's mission to colonize and take over Gaza like they did with the West Bank and the Golan Heights in the past. What I think what they've deemed with Kamala Harris and with Tim Walz, is this opportunity to change course, at least in this fundamental, forget policy for a second, but just in a moral grounding. They want to see a presidential candidate who will not do everything in their power to create cover on the international stage for the Israeli government. If they can see just a little bit of pressure, a little bit of pressure, and I'm not here to negotiate on their behalf, but I would love to see Kamala Harris start to take their demands seriously and make common sense decisions when weighing who is more important, the Israeli government or her own constituents. I would like to see her prioritize those constituents more.

Kai Wright: Yes, I'm kind of having an epiphany listening to you because I have spent months being like, the problem with the Biden administration is they think they have a political problem, and they actually have a policy problem. It's true. Part of it is that he, and it maybe just be this is where he was really old, his idea of a moral stance is I am morally behind Israel no matter what. That's not the world we live in, certainly not the world of the Democratic Party at this point.

Aymann Ismail: Unfortunately.

Kai Wright: That's just not an appropriate moral stance.

Aymann Ismail: Right. I think providing cover for the Israeli government and the Israeli military machine, while at the same time, his own supporters and the people that helped elect him into the office are losing family members, and are watching bombs being dropped on aid workers and schools of kids playing soccer. Just today, there was a story about a father who just had two newborn babies that were alive for four days before he left to go get them birth certificates. When he came back, the house was gone and his kids were killed. It's stories like that multiple times a day, every single day.

I think there needs to be a serious conversation had, not just at the levels of government, but also as voters in the country where we need to ask ourselves, at what point do we say, hey, look, where is the moral, who is responsible for this killing. I think Kamala and everybody else in the political sphere need to figure out how do we create a mutual language where we can first talk to these voters, and how do we win those supporters back. I agree with what you said earlier, it's very difficult to see how they win this election without their support.

Kai Wright: Closing thought, do you think she's going to do it? Obviously, again, your role is not political pundit or prognosticator. I don't know. Or maybe let me put it this way, is your vibe from Layla and some of the activists you talk to that like, "Actually, I think we might be headed in the right direction with her," or is it just like, "Well, maybe we'll see."?

Aymann Ismail: It's hard to say. Even Layla, when I asked her that question, I was like, "Do you see things going in the right direction for you?" She's like, "The jury's still out. We don't know." I think we will learn a lot at the DNC, where there will be multiple uncommitted delegates who have unfitted access to the entire arena, where there will likely be pro Palestine events or events sympathetic with Gaza. I'll be surprised if there isn't at least one candlelight vigil inside of the DNC complex. I'm eager to see how those play next to what some of the current policy is as far as unconditional aid to the Israeli government, including giving them more 2,000-pound munitions, which Israel has shown zero discretion, zero discretion for mitigating civilian deaths. I'm very excited to go to the DNC this year.

Kai Wright: You're going to be there?

Aymann Ismail: I'm going to be there. I'm not going to miss it. I'm very excited to see how those two collide.

Kai Wright: Well, I will wait to see how you write about it, and maybe we'll talk to you about it again. Aymann Ismail is a staff writer for Slate where he writes about all kinds of stuff, but including this ongoing debate about US policy in relationship to Israel inside the Democratic Party. Thanks a lot for this, Aymann.

Aymann Ismail: Thanks, Kai.

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