Jonah Valdez
The Intercept / August 30, 2024
In her first major TV interview during her campaign, Vice President Kamala Harris signalled no change from Biden on Israel policy.
When president Joe Biden bowed out of his re-election bid and endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris, a wave of enthusiasm for a new face on the presidential ticket spread across the electorate. Boosted by memes and “Brat” tweets that portrayed Harris as a different kind of leader, many expressed hope that she would differ from Biden in her stance on supplying arms and diplomatic support to Israel for its war in Gaza.
When Harris chose progressive Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz as her running mate, who previously bent a listening ear to “Uncommitted” delegates who called for an arms embargo on Israel, cautious optimism grew, but questions remained.
But when Harris sat down for an interview with CNN’s Dana Bash on Thursday, her first since the start of her campaign, the vice president seemed to shut the door on the possibility of change.
When asked whether Harris would “do anything differently” in her approach to ceasefire talks and withholding weapons shipments to Israel, Harris, with Walz by her side, doubled down on her “commitment to Israel’s defense and its ability to defend itself.”
“And that’s not gonna change,” she said, after evoking scenes from the October 7 attacks in Israel. Harris added the caveat that how Israel defended itself mattered, saying, “Far too many innocent Palestinians have been killed.” She then called for the end of the war and that the U.S. has to “get a deal done.”
When Bash pushed Harris for an answer on a change in policy in military aid to Israel, Harris said “No,” before repeatedly saying, “We have to get a deal done.”
Harris ended her remarks on Israel by calling for a two-state solution, “where Israel is secure and in equal measure … the Palestinians have security and self-determination and dignity.”
Her comments were largely unchanged from her speech at the Democratic National Convention last week, where she also spoke of Palestinian suffering but affirmed Israel’s right to defend itself.
The way that Harris has referred to Palestinian suffering mostly in the passive voice has caught the ear of many supporters of Palestinian rights, including Matt Duss, executive vice president at the Center for International Policy and former foreign policy adviser for Sen. Bernie Sanders.
“When she talks about what Israel has experienced on October 7, it’s very specific: ‘Hamas attacked, slaughtered Israelis,’ that’s appropriate, that is what happened,” Duss said. “And yet when she turns to Palestinians, we still see this very passive ‘What has happened in Gaza,’ ‘Far too many civilians being killed’ — well, by whom? This is not a natural disaster, this is not a flood or a tornado. This is a bomb that the United States supports and subsidizes, dropping weapons that we are giving them. That is what is killing ‘too many’ Palestinians.”
At the DNC in Chicago, her campaign and DNC officials notably snubbed demands for a Palestinian American elected official to speak on the main stage. At the convention, 30 “Uncommitted” delegates, along with more than 200 Harris delegates, pushed Harris to express support for conditioning military aid to Israel. The Uncommitted movement drew support from progressive Reps. Rashida Tlaib, Cori Bush, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, and Ilhan Omar, who joined an overnight sit-in with uncommitted delegates pressing for a Palestinian American speaker.
Advocates of the arms embargo point to the Leahy Law, a 1997 law that prohibits U.S. assistance to any military unit that is known to commit “a gross violation of human rights.” Evidence of human rights violations continue to mount in Israel’s operations in Gaza, including bombing civilians and civilian infrastructure such as hospitals, blocking aid, and torturing and abusing Palestinian detainees in its prisons. Israel’s leaders face war crime charges from the International Criminal Court, along with an ongoing genocide case within the U.N. International Court of Justice.
Supporters of conditioning aid also point to a June poll by YouGov, published by CBS, showing that 61 percent of Americans oppose weapons aid to Israel in its war in Gaza, with 77 percent of Democrats rejecting the military aid.
Duss said polling from Democrats on the issue has been consistent and the Harris campaign should listen and begin “staking out a bolder and more courageous vision” for her Israel policy.
“But it shouldn’t be seen as bold and courageous for a nominee for president to simply say, ‘I will uphold and enforce existing U.S. law,’” Duss said. “That is what I think a lot of us just want to hear — that shouldn’t be asking too much.”
As ceasefire talks drag on, an Israeli strike on a humanitarian aid convoy killed five people in Gaza on Tuesday, and Israel continues to expand its offensive in the occupied West Bank, where its military has conducted strikes and raids that have killed at least 16 people. The Israeli military also restricted civilian movement and issued evacuations for parts of the northern West Bank, mirroring displacement of Palestinians in Gaza.
Jonah Valdez is a journalist and poet based in Los Angeles
