Uncommitted Co-Founder Abbas Alawieh on U.S. Election & Family in Lebanon Fleeing Israeli Bombs

AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, “War, Peace and the Presidency.” I’m Amy Goodman, with Juan González.

Less than three weeks from the election, Kamala Harris is campaigning in Michigan. Will she lose votes over the Biden administration’s support for Israel’s war on Gaza and expanding war on Lebanon? Republican candidate Donald Trump has opened a new campaign office in the swing state.

For more, we’re joined by Abbas Alawieh. He is co-founder of the “uncommitted” movement, which grew out of concerns by Democrats over President Joe Biden’s policy toward Israel and Gaza. Abbas Alawieh is a former Capitol Hill chief of staff for Democratic Congressmember Cori Bush of Missouri, before that, former longtime congressional staffer. In recent weeks, his relatives in Lebanon have had to flee their homes over Israeli airstrikes.

Abbas, welcome back to Democracy Now! It’s great to have you with us. We also saw you at the Democratic convention leading the sit-in overnight, or sleep-in, if you will, outside the DNC, demanding a Palestinian American voice be heard on the stage, which the DNC did not agree to. But first, tell us about your family. Tell us what’s happening in Lebanon to your grandmother and everyone else there.

ABBAS ALAWIEH: Thank you so much, Amy. It’s great to be on with you and Juan.

On my way in, I was on the phone with my family. These days, when it’s as hard as it is for Dr. Sidhwa and others to have the very — the kernels of truth that we can get from Gaza exposed, I’m finding myself relying more and more on the firsthand accounts of my family members on the ground to really understand what’s happening, because I think what gets lost in the thousands and thousands and thousands, the numbers of humans, of people, of universes, of people we know and love that are being harmed and killed, they’re not numbers. They’re real people.

I’ll tell you about my grandmother. My grandmother is an elderly person. She’s in her eighties. She has numerous health conditions. Her mobility is severely impaired. She’s been forced to flee four different times now since the increased aggression by the Israeli military against Lebanese civilians. She loves being in her home. She loves going out to the stoop, the few steps that she’s still able to take, so that she can enjoy the breeze. Right now she’s in a foreign place. She’s someone who feels like she’s at the end of her life. And she fears that maybe she won’t get to die in the home that she knows and loves. She’s in a foreign apartment, just sitting there waiting, as a lot of people are.

But that’s not the only experience we’re having. On my way in, I was talking to my aunt. My uncle had gone to Nabatieh. He’s a first responder. And at the top of your show, Amy, you were talking about the municipal building in Nabatieh, where my family is from, that was targeted by the Israeli military today. In that building, the mayor of Nabatieh was killed, as were numerous city officials. And my uncle was in that building. We couldn’t get a hold of him for a little bit. And we were able to get a hold of him. Some of his friends died, were killed. And this isn’t the first time he’s had friends killed as a first responder. As a first responder, five of his colleagues recently, as they were trying to administer — or, as they were trying get humanitarian aid out to people, they were seeking shelter in a church in Daraya in Lebanon, and the Israeli military bombed the church, that had only first responders in there.

You know, my family has very extensive experience — indeed, expertise — at surviving Israeli military violence. You know, southern Lebanon was occupied from 1982 until 2000. And so, I have family members who have endured the torture, the abuse, the targeting. What my family members are reporting now is a level of inhumanity, of violence, of belligerence that we haven’t seen before. People are afraid to show up to the sites that have been destroyed, because what the Israeli military is doing now is they’ll bomb whoever shows up to pull bodies out from under the rubble. And that’s what my uncle is. He’s a first responder whose job it is to show up and pull out the bodies from under the rubble. And now even people like him are being targeted, not once or twice, but systematically.

And so, I’m an American. I feel like I have a specific responsibility in the world, since my country is the one that is sending the weapons that are being used systematically to harm and kill civilians. And the best that I’m being told my government can offer is this leaked letter that you just referenced, the Biden administration officials warning the Netanyahu government that if they keep blocking that humanitarian aid, in 30 days they’ll strongly consider what happens with the weapons that we’re sending. Our leverage over the Israeli government is not about humanitarian aid. Our leverage with the Israeli government is about the weapons. The more weapons we send them, the more babies they kill. That’s just how it works. And so, stop sending the weapons.

What the folks in that municipal building where my uncle was in Lebanon, what they were doing is they were having a meeting about two trucks of humanitarian aid that had just gotten to Nabatieh. And they were — it was volunteers and first responders and city officials meeting, thinking together: How are they going to get this aid out? What happened? The people administering the aid were the ones targeted and harmed and killed and traumatized.

And so, our leverage with the Israeli government is not in how many humanitarian trucks get in. It’s in how many 2,000-pound bombs we send them to obliterate entire societies. I think our government would do better at actually using the leverage that it has.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And, Abbas, I wanted to ask you, in terms of the displacement, an estimated 1.2 million people just in a few weeks: Where are these folks supposed to go as Israel continues to advance into Lebanon?

ABBAS ALAWIEH: Yeah. Thank you for the question, Juan.

Virtually everyone I know in Lebanon has been displaced. Most of my family lives in south Lebanon or in the southern suburbs of Beirut or in Beirut, the city proper. You know, it’s a situation where in the immediate aftermath of the very intense escalation, we had family members, friends with literally nowhere to go, staying on whatever is available of the Beirut beach, you know, just staying there waiting, waiting for the bombs to stop.

You know, people are in these really weird situations where they’re trying to find somewhere else in Lebanon to go, and they’re being asked for a month’s rent — or, sorry, a year’s rent in advance if they are able — in order to be able to seek shelter. This is a country that, prior to this specific inhumane escalation by the Israeli military, was already in a state of economic freefall. Most of the people being harmed are people who either live in poverty or live with, you know, the complexities of human life.

I have a cousin just a few days ago who showed up to my aunt’s house after where he lives, in central Beirut, was bombed, and he showed up to my aunt’s house covered in debris, with him — it was him and his wife and their two college-age children. Both he and his wife are people who are blind.

And so, you know, think about the complexities of human life that we try to account for. I’m a Democrat, so we talk about, you know, the care economy. We talk about wanting to support people as they age, wanting to support people in their disabilities. People in all of their complexities are living through the complexities of their everyday life, and, simultaneously, the walls around them are caving in on them, are slamming down on their heads. What are we even talking about, as Democrats, if we speak so much to the value of human life, of the dignity of workers, when our party’s official policy is to send more and more weapons to a fascist government that is on a killing spree, on a baby-killing spree?

And so, it’s the realities of being displaced. It’s not just sort of I’ll move from one apartment to another. It’s everything around you. Your entire existence is uprooted. It’s a violent, violent reality.

AMY GOODMAN: So, Abbas —

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And I wanted —

AMY GOODMAN: Oh, go ahead, Juan.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: I wanted to ask you: What do you — what have you asked, you and others in the “uncommitted” movement, of the Harris campaign? What’s been their response? And what do you say to people who say, “Well, let’s get Harris elected into office, because Trump is too dangerous, and we’ll work on shifting her position once she’s in the White House”?

ABBAS ALAWIEH: My message to every Democratic voter who’s voting for Harris, to every person who identifies as a progressive, to every person who believes in the sanctity of every child, the sacredness of every child, of every elder, of every worker, the time to say that you will hold Harris accountable is not after the election. It’s now.

If you intend on voting for Harris — you know, the great leader and Palestinian American scholar Noura Erakat came out with a thread yesterday on Twitter where she’s urging everyone who is voting for Harris: Don’t vote for Harris in private. State publicly that you are voting for Kamala Harris, and be specific about how you will be accountable to the people, the Palestinian Americans who are currently — who currently have family enduring a genocide. How will you be accountable to them? How are you insisting, even through your vote, that you will hold Democrats accountable to stop the weapons that are flowing to harm and kill civilians?

So, that’s my message to every voter hearing this. If you’re going to vote for Harris, if you believe — I believe that we’ve got to block Donald Trump. If you believe that, then state that publicly and say, “And once we block Donald Trump, here’s how I will hold Harris accountable, that during her first hundred days, she must achieve a ceasefire, and the way to achieve a ceasefire is to stop sending the weapons.” So, we have to state that publicly.

And we have been doing everything we can to offer Vice President Harris opportunity after opportunity to meet the community that is experiencing this immense level of pain where they are. It just so happens that Vice President Harris needs every vote she can get in a state like Michigan. And a lot of us in Michigan are currently in a state of mourning, of mourning. My friend’s father, Hajj Kamel Jawad, was someone who was, you know, like the people today in Nabatieh, trying to get humanitarian aid to people, and was killed for doing so by an Israeli military airstrike. He was an American. This is a community in a state of grief. And so, as we have been urging the vice president’s team, please, please, meet with people who are directly impacted. Meet with Lebanese Americans and meet with Palestinian Americans who have had family killed over there by the bombs that the vice president’s and the president’s administration is sending.

What we’ve been told repeatedly is, “You know, the vice president is very busy. She’s on the campaign trail. She can’t really be meeting, taking meetings like that right now.” And then, the next day, we’ll see the vice president has met — you know, they put out a release saying she met with Muslim Americans, Arab Americans. But she only meets with people who have endorsed her campaign. That’s an inappropriate posture to have at this moment. If you are going to Michigan and asking these people for their vote, you need to recognize that Arab American and Palestinian American communities right now are in a state of grieving. And you have an obligation, a responsibility to sit down and hear from them.

We’ve heard over the past year repeated reports of the administration prioritizing meetings with the families of Israeli Americans who have family being held hostage in Gaza. It’s important that the administration hear from those families. Why is it — why is it that the president, that the vice president have not taken the time to sit down with Palestinian American families who have family over there? I have asked this question repeatedly of the vice president’s team. I was told that, you know, she’s spoken to some families in the past. She’s had sit-downs in the past. But also I was told explicitly that she has not sat down with a single Palestinian American family who has family killed in Gaza this year, in the year 2024. What are you waiting for, Vice President Harris?

And, you know, Amy, you had Dr. Sidhwa here. Those doctors, those U.S. medical workers, they have been asking Vice President Harris to sit down with them. She won’t do it. President Biden won’t do it.

And so, in my estimation, it feels like Vice President Harris is not doing what it takes to be both humane and compassionate and sensitive to the political realities in Michigan that are necessary to engage with in order to beat Donald Trump. And so, we — you know, everybody who’s going to try and beat Donald Trump despite that needs to make a public commitment now that they’ll hold Vice President Harris accountable, especially during her first hundred days, to stop the weapons from flowing to Netanyahu’s killing spree.

AMY GOODMAN: Abbas Alawieh, I want to thank you for being with us, co-founder of the “uncommitted” movement.

Next up, we look at the election, Harris and Trump ramping up efforts to appeal to the Latinx community. Why are some of them moving to the right? Stay with us.

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AMY GOODMAN: Leonard Cohen’s “Hallelujah,” performed by Rufus Wainwright. Both Wainwright and the Leonard Cohen estate have criticized Donald Trump for playing the song during his town hall, that unusual town hall in Pennsylvania, when the former president stopped taking questions and turned the event into a dance party of sorts, playing music for more than 30 minutes. Wainwright said, quote, “Witnessing Trump and supporters commune with this music last night was the height of blasphemy.”