Can Kamala Harris Wipe the Blood Off Her Hands?
While the likely Democratic nominee does not have Joe Biden’s 50-year history of support for Israeli militarism, her record indicates she would maintain a staunch pro-Israel policy.
Within hours of Joe Biden announcing he would not seek reelection, the Democratic Party’s power elite began consolidating their support for Vice President Kamala Harris to head the ticket to defeat Donald Trump. Among Harris’s challenges if she secures the Democratic nomination will be to win back support from voters outraged at the Biden administration’s facilitation of Israel’s genocidal war against the Palestinians of Gaza. In the critical state of Michigan alone—where a devastating poll from the Detroit Free Press on Sunday morning showed Biden down 7 percentage points to Trump across the state—there were over 100,000 “uncommitted” primary voters.
Notably, the mayor of Dearborn, Michigan, Abdullah Hammoud, did not immediately come out in favor of Harris. Instead, he posted, “Dems have an opportunity to be bold this convention. To nominate a candidate who can usher historic policy domestically AND abandon the genocidal course charted in Gaza and beyond. America needs a candidate who can inspire voters to come out to the ballot box this November.”
Harris is in an unusual historical position. The White House press team has promoted an image of Harris as more sympathetic to the humanitarian plight of Palestinians even while she backs Biden’s agenda in the region. As a candidate for president, she could explain to voters ways in which she may have internally dissented in the discussions surrounding the Gaza war. As the sitting vice president, however, such moves would cause problems for Biden.
The truth is that, like most Democrats, Harris has supported Biden’s policies, even if she has raised tactical objections or expressed moral unease with the horrifying death toll. While Harris is not Biden—and does not have a half century of overwhelming support for Israel’s brutality and militarism fueling her positions—she does have her own record of hardline support for Israel, both as a senator and as vice president.
Soon after being elected to the Senate in 2016, Harris earned a reputation as an ardent defender of Israel. She spoke two years in a row at AIPAC conferences and co-sponsored legislation aimed at undermining a United Nations resolution condemning Israel’s illegal annexation of Palestinian land. One of her first international trips as a senator was to Israel where she met with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in 2017. “I support the United States’ commitment to provide Israel with $38 billion in military assistance over the next decade,” Harris told an AIPAC conference that year. “I believe the bonds between the United States and Israel are unbreakable, and we can never let anyone drive a wedge between us. … As long as I’m a United States senator, I will do everything in my power to ensure broad and bipartisan support for Israel’s security and right to self-defense.”
Harris has compared building support for Israel to the coalitions forged during the U.S. civil rights movement and embraced President Donald Trump’s Abraham Accords, a series of normalization agreements between Israel and Arab states that circumvented demands for an independent Palestinian state. Harris co-sponsored legislation that called the agreements a “historic achievement.” In a 2016 interview Harris charged, “The boycott, divestment and sanctions movement is based on the mistaken assumption that Israel is solely to blame for the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.” She added, “the BDS movement seeks to weaken Israel, but it will only isolate the nation and steer Israelis against prerequisite compromises for peace.”
At a private AIPAC conference in 2018, Harris was asked why she is so adamant in her support for Israel. “It is just something that has always been a part of me,” Harris said. “I don’t know when it started, it’s almost like saying when did you first realize you loved your family, or love your country, it just was always there. It was always there.”
“Her support for Israel is central to who she is,” Harris’s campaign communications director, Lily Adams, said in 2019 when Harris was running for the Democratic nomination.
In March 2019, amid calls from Democratic Party activists to boycott that year’s AIPAC conference, Harris joined other candidates including Sens. Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren in skipping the gathering. Instead, she tweeted that she had met privately with “California AIPAC leaders to discuss the need for a strong U.S.-Israel alliance, the right of Israel to defend itself, and my commitment to combat anti-Semitism in our country and around the world.”
While Harris generally speaks in favor of Palestinian self-determination and a two-state solution—in line with broader Democratic Party policy positions since the 1993 Oslo Accord—she has simultaneously opposed efforts to impose consequences on Israel for its flagrant violations of international laws.
Harris set a tone for her posture on Israel as a senator when she co-sponsored legislation in 2017 condemning former President Barack Obama’s decision to abstain from vetoing a UN Security Council Resolution critical of Israel. The resolution, which was adopted in December 2016, stated that “the establishment by Israel of settlements in the Palestinian territory occupied since 1967, including East Jerusalem, has no legal validity and constitutes a flagrant violation under international law and a major obstacle to the achievement of the two-State solution and a just, lasting and comprehensive peace.” Harris and her senate colleagues charged that Obama’s refusal to block the UN resolution was “inconsistent with long-standing United States policy.” They said U.S. policy should be aimed at preventing the UN from actions that “further isolate Israel through economic or other boycotts or any other measures” and urged future administrations “to uphold the practice of vetoing all United Nations Security Council resolutions that recognize unilateral Palestinian actions including declaration of a Palestinian state or dictate terms and a timeline for a solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.”
“I believe that when any organization delegitimizes Israel, we must stand up and speak out for Israel to be treated equally,” Harris later said of her vote.
During the 2020 presidential race, the New York Times asked Harris if she thought Israel meets international standards of human rights. “Overall, yes,” she replied.
In Harris’s first call with Netanyahu after becoming vice president, on March 3, 2021, she told the Israeli leader that the U.S. was opposed to the International Criminal Court investigating alleged Israeli war crimes against the Palestinians. Harris and Netanyahu “noted their respective governments’ opposition to the International Criminal Court’s attempts to exercise its jurisdiction over Israeli personnel,” according to a White House readout of the call.
Harris, October 7, and the Genocide in Gaza
After the October 7 Hamas-led attacks in Israel, Harris adopted a public position that rhetorically diverged from Joe Biden’s. While advocating for U.S. military, financial, and diplomatic support for Israel’s war, Harris frequently emphasized that Israel must follow the laws of war, protect civilian lives, and allow the delivery of humanitarian aid. In comparison to Biden, Harris more frequently highlighted the suffering of Palestinian civilians. “Israel, without any question, has a right to defend itself. That being said, it is very important that there be no conflation between Hamas and the Palestinians,” Harris told CBS’s “60 Minutes” on October 29, 2023. “The Palestinians deserve equal measures of safety and security, self-determination and dignity, and we have been very clear that the rules of war must be adhered to and that there be humanitarian aid that flows.”
In late 2023, people close to Harris began leaking to the media that the vice president had been pressing Biden to become “tougher” in his stance on Netanyahu and for the administration to be more public in its expressions of concern over Palestinian civilian deaths. At times, Biden and other senior officials did publicly criticize “indiscriminate” Israeli bombings and issued calls for Israel to show more restraint in its tactics. By early 2024, it became apparent that the Biden administration recognized that its support for Israel’s war was likely going to cause major challenges to the re-election campaign. It launched a series of meetings with Arab American leaders in an effort to attempt to stanch the bleeding and began empowering senior U.S. officials to become more outspoken about the plight of Palestinian civilians, though always accompanied by an assertion that Israel had a right to defend itself.
On March 3, after months of massive Israeli bombardment of the Strip and more than 30,000 Palestinians killed, Harris took the lead in advocating for a conditional six-week ceasefire in Gaza. “What we are seeing every day in Gaza is devastating. We have seen reports of families eating leaves or animal feed. Women giving birth to malnourished babies with little or no medical care, and children dying from malnutrition and dehydration,” Harris said. “Our hearts break for the victims of that horrific tragedy and for all the innocent people in Gaza who are suffering from what is clearly a humanitarian catastrophe. People in Gaza are starving. The conditions are inhumane.” The following day, a Washington Post headline read: “Harris takes more public role criticizing Israel’s actions in Gaza.”
While many Democrats hope that Biden dropping out of the race will open the door for a reset, Harris’s political history indicates that she will continue to pursue the U.S. government’s overarching bi-partisan agenda on Israel and Palestine, including policies that aided and abetted the deaths of more than 40,000 Palestinians in nine months.
The reality is that the Gaza war is not the central issue in the 2024 campaign, though in a race where every vote counts, it could cause substantial damage to the Democrats. The Democratic Party is banking on the hope that voters disillusioned with the war are so terrified of Trump’s return to the White House that they will set aside their outrage over Gaza and coalesce around a candidate that is not Joe Biden. The question will be if voters hold Harris responsible for the administration’s Gaza policy or would be content with Biden’s retirement from the ticket.
"For months, we've warned that Biden's support for Israel's assault on Gaza would hurt his electability," said Layla Elabed, a leader of the Uncommitted movement, which called on Biden to end U.S. supplies of weapons to Israel. "By funding a government committing human rights abuses, we undermine our party’s stance against far-right extremism and contradict our commitment to democracy and justice. It's time to align our actions with our values. Vice President Harris can start the process to earn back trust by turning the page from Biden's horrific policies in Gaza."
Schuyler Mitchell contributed research.
If she doesn't turn it around and come out against genocide she won't get my vote. Shit ain't complicated. There isn't wiggle room on this one. Even from a purely sociopathic political angle, the zionists have aligned themselves with Republicans and Trump. You can't oppose Trump without opposing genocide. This should be a no brainer.
Harris' unconditional support for the rogue state of Israel alone, should result in her defeat if one reads the dissatisfaction of the public with Bidens' stand on Israel, accurately. Too many are sick and tired of being told by party hacks like Pelosi, that "we have an "unbreakable bond" with Israel" or that we have a "special relationship" with this apartheid, genocidal, band of land thieves. WE DO NOT! "The people" DID NOT VOTE on either of these two 'manufactured claims'!!!