President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris after Biden delivered the keynote address on the first day of the Democratic National Convention in Chicago on August 19. Photo by Robyn Beck / AFP / via Getty Images

By Jodi Rudoren August 20, 2024

CHICAGO — The words “Israel” and “Gaza,” “ceasefire” and “hostages,” were mentioned only a handful of times from the main stage during the opening night of the Democratic National Convention on Monday, but a protester managed to briefly unfurl a large banner reading “Stop Arming Israel” inside the arena as President Joe Biden began his nearly hour-long speech.

Convention delegates raised their “We ♥️ Joe” sticks to block the banner and the man who held it was quickly removed from the hall. He wore a black cowboy hat and black button-down shirt, and afterward handed out business cards that identified him as Liano Sharon, an “organizer, democratist and consulting philosopher” from Michigan,

The first major speaker to mention the war was Rep. Alexandria Ocasio Cortez of New York, who declared that Vice President Kamala Harris is “working tirelessly to ensure a ceasefire in Gaza bringing the hostages home.” Later, Sen. Raphael Warnock of Georgia went off-script from his prepared remarks to invoke the Middle East as part of a riff on people’s interdependency.

“We are as close in our humanity as a cough,” Warnock told the crowd to roars of approval. “I need my neighbors’ children to be OK so my children will be OK. I need all of my neighbors’ children to be OK. Poor, inner-city children in Atlanta and poor children in Appalachia.

“I need the poor children of Israel and the poor children of Gaza,” continued Warnock, a Baptist preacher who had poked fun of former President Donald Trump’s brandishing of a Bible on Jan. 6, 2021, saying as a refrain, “he should try reading it!”  “I need Israelis and Palestinians — those in the Congo, those in Haiti, those in Ukraine. I need Americans on both sides of the tracks to be OK, because we are all God’s children.”

Warnock and Ocasio-Cortez were two of the night’s most successful and popular speakers, receiving roaring ovations along with Rep. Jasmine Crockett of Texas, who wiped tears as she told a personal story about how meeting Harris shortly after Crockett’s 2020 election inspired her. The biggest eruptions in the crowd, though, came when Harris herself made a surprise appearance, entering to Beyonce’s Freedom; and for the night’s headliners, and prior two nominees, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Biden, who waited out several minutes of “”We ♥️ Joe” and “Thank you, Joe!” chants before starting his stemwinder.

A smattering of attendees wore yellow-ribbon lapel pins in support of the Israeli hostages. Others sported kaffiyehs, the symbol of the Palestinian national movement, or simpler neck scarves with their signature black and white checkered patten and the words “Democrats for Palestinian Rights.”

Biden’s speech, about 50 minutes long, dragged through virtually everything he had done over the last four years. He repeated his oft-told rationale for deciding to run for president because of Trump’s response to the 2017 “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville, saying attendees were  “carrying Nazi swastikas and chanting the same exact antisemitic bile that was heard in Germany in the early 30s,” and  were “emboldened by a president then in the White House that they saw as an ally.”

He also repeated a line from “American Anthem,” a 1998 song by the Jewish librettist Gene Scheer that Biden popularized when he cited it during his inauguration in 2021.

“America,” Biden said, “I gave my best to you.”

It was deep into the speech that Biden mentioned that Secretary of State Anthony Blinken was in Israel Monday and had secured the prime minister’s approval of the U.S.-framed ceasefire deal, promising that “we’ll keep working to bring the hostages home and end the war in Gaza and bring peace to the Middle East.”

“Those protesters out in the street have a point,” he added. “A lot of innocent people are being killed on both sides.”

The remarks came nearly 12 hours after several thousand Pro-Palestinian activists had indeed marched through the streets a few blocks from the convention, perhaps a 10th of the number organizers had predicted. Stacks of placards reading “Victory to the Palestinian Resistance” lay unused on the ground.  A few dozen protesters broke away from the march and managed to penetrate the convention’s security perimeter, leading to four arrests and long delays entering the arena.

The program ran more than an hour behind schedule, leaving Rabbi Michael Beals, who is known as “Joe Biden’s rabbi,” to deliver his benediction at 11:20 p.m. Central time. Beals belted out the three-part priestly blessing in Hebrew, dedicating the first part, gratitude, to “my fellow Delawarean” (Biden); the second, joy, to Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, the vice presidential nominee; and the third, celebrating light, to Harris.

Beals and his wife, Elissa, had been at the convention hall for some six hours, each assigned a “handler” to keep them company. Beals had been told to keep his prayer to 1 minute 50 seconds, and had submit it to DNC leaders in advance for vetting. It was not just the rabbi’s first time at a political convention, his wife told me, it was Beals’ “first time using a teleprompter.”

“It was very, very exciting being the last word,” Beals said at an after-party hosted by the feminist Zionist group Zioness. “It was really late, past my bedtime.” He said he’d hung around backstage with Biden’s daughter Ashley, and her Jewish husband Howard Krein, heard about their chuppah and wished them a belated mazel tov.  “So really l’dor vador, from generation to generation,” he said.

“It’s like watching the end of a saga, 50 years of service,” Beals said of the elder Biden. “He should live to be 120.”

Jacob Kornbluh, senior political correspondent of the Forward, as well as Ron Kampeas and Ben Sales of JTA, contributed reporting from Chicago.

Correction: An earlier version of this article misidentified where Tim Walz is governor; it is Minnesota. The original article also mispelled the surname of Ashley Biden’s husband. It is Krein, not Klein. 

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