Harris Dances on the Ropes of Genocide in Gaza: Our Weapons Are for “Israel” and Our Hearts Are with the Palestinians

With US Vice President Kamala Harris heavily involved in the election campaign as an alternative to current President Joe Biden, after he withdrew from the 2024 election race, Harris will find herself needing to further define her positions on key issues, especially regarding the ongoing Israeli genocide in Gaza.

In this case, the debate among experts, observers and the media will focus on whether Harris will continue to follow Biden’s disastrous political and diplomatic approach (which is destructive to both the party and the people) or whether she will have the ability to maneuver and thus take different and different steps that may prevent her from falling into the Gaza quagmire into which Biden has thrown himself.

Harris's ties to Israel and Jewish lobby groups 
Harris has long-standing ties to the American Jewish community and Zionist lobby groups in the United States, particularly the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), whose annual conference she addressed in 2017, shortly after being elected to the US Senate, saying that one of her first steps in office was to introduce a resolution opposing a UN Security Council resolution condemning Israel at the time. “I believe that the bond between the United States and Israel cannot be broken,” she added.

In addition, during her campaign to win the vice presidency in the 2020 elections, Harris received the support of major Jewish groups, including the Democratic Majority for Israel, J Street (an American organization that aims to promote policies that support security and peace for Israel), and the Jewish Democratic Council of America.

Harris, likewise, has a good working relationship with Israeli President Isaac Herzog, who shares her interest in climate issues. She has also been, according to White House spokesman John Kirby, “a full partner in our Middle East policies,” particularly toward Israel and the war in Gaza, and has participated in nearly all of the more than 20 phone calls between Biden and Netanyahu since the start of the offensive. Her Jewish husband, Doug Emhoff, has been at the forefront of the Biden administration’s anti-Semitism initiative since October.

When protesters outside Congress burned the American flag during Netanyahu's recent visit to Washington, Harris issued a statement condemning the act, and also denouncing "all individuals associated with Hamas, which is committed to the destruction of the State of Israel and the murder of Jews," Harris' statement said.

Harris and the politics of dancing on the ropes of the bloody war in Gaza 
Indeed, Harris’s approach to the Gaza war is akin to a high-wire act. On the one hand, she has not publicly deviated from Biden’s approach to the war, insisting that she remains a staunch supporter of Israel, having considered raising money to plant trees in the occupied territories when she was a young girl, and repeatedly endorsing what they call “Tel Aviv’s right to defend itself” against Hamas, insisting that “the threat the movement poses to Israel must be eliminated.”

But she has also expressed deep concern about some of Israel's behavior in its ongoing military campaign in Gaza, and has pushed the US administration to look more closely at Palestinian suffering, so she has always been the highest-ranking official to speak out categorically about civilian casualties.

In a high-profile speech last March, Harris became the first senior Biden administration official to call for an immediate, if only temporary, ceasefire, describing the situation in Gaza as a “humanitarian catastrophe.”

The Israeli government also demanded that greater efforts be made to increase the flow of aid to Gaza, without making any excuses.

The information indicates that the final version of the speech was toned down compared to the original draft, which criticized Israel more directly for obstructing the passage of aid trucks to Gaza.

Not only that, Harris did not hesitate to express her sympathy for the university student protesters who expressed their horror at the death and destruction in Gaza and tried to pressure their academic institutions to sever ties with Israel. Harris went further in her position, telling The Nation magazine: “They are showing exactly what human feelings should be in response to the situation in Gaza.” She added: “There are things that some of the protesters are saying that I completely reject, so that does not mean that I fully support their views. But we have to deal with it. I understand the feelings behind it.”

Harris and the indicators of dissimilarity with Biden's policies 
Harris has yet to announce her Gaza policy, but one early sign that she might not follow Biden’s lead in giving the Israeli criminal a “bear hug”—after Biden embraced Netanyahu on the tarmac at Tel Aviv airport last November as a symbolic gesture of his unwavering support for Israel—was when Netanyahu addressed Congress on July 24. She chose not to attend, citing a prior engagement in Indianapolis. A significant number of Democrats (not just progressives) in Congress boycotted the speech in protest of Netanyahu’s Gaza strategy.

Reflecting the shift in recent days in Washington, Harris, not Biden, has made public statements after each held bilateral meetings with Netanyahu, urging the Israeli prime minister to accept a prisoner deal. “Let’s get the deal done so we can get a ceasefire to end the war,” she told reporters in brief remarks at the White House on February 25. “Let’s get the hostages home and get the relief that the Palestinian people desperately need.”

In the same vein, the Wall Street Journal recently reported that if Harris becomes president, she is expected to replace some of the key architects of the Biden administration’s Gaza strategy, including National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan, Secretaries of State Antony Blinken, and Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin. The new president is also likely to want to appoint her own team, but any changes could open the door to a different approach.

Challenges Facing Harris 
Politically, Harris faces a dilemma over whether she should break with Biden’s record on Gaza, especially since she has a major electoral problem ahead of her: a large segment of progressive Democrats are vocally against Biden for not halting arms shipments to Gaza and for not putting more pressure on Israel to end the war.

Complicating matters further, more than 650,000 “uncommitted” Democrats voted in the primaries in protest of Biden’s policies. This in turn shows that the extent of opposition to Biden in the Midwest could tip the election in Trump’s favor in swing states including Michigan and Wisconsin.

Accordingly, the votes of these voters could pose a great danger to Harris, unless she succeeds in attracting them and appealing to their emotions again.

Ultimately, as was the case with Biden’s campaign promises, there is always a chance that Harris’s campaign statements will change once she takes office. It is not unlikely that she will erase the term “Palestinian civilians” from her vocabulary, thus allowing “Israel” to exterminate them completely. This is the case with all American presidents, and this is their habit.

Harris’s approach to the Gaza war is akin to a high-wire act. On the one hand, she has not publicly deviated from Biden’s approach to the war by supporting “Israel,” but she has publicly criticized some Israeli behavior toward civilians.