Kamala Harris Will Not Get a Pass on Gaza

“Our plans to march on the DNC have not changed because there’s a genocide still happening in Palestine,” said Faayani Aboma Mijana, a member of the Chicago Alliance Against Racist and Political Oppression and spokesperson for the March on the DNC, a protest expected to bring tens of thousands to Chicago as the Democratic Party hosts its nominating convention this August. President Joe Biden’s decision to step aside and cede the Democratic presidential nomination to his vice president, Kamala Harris, was a new detail for the organizers, but far from a game changer. 

“This isn’t just about Joe Biden as an individual, or Kamala Harris as an individual, but it’s about the party that they represent,” Aboma Mijana said. “They uphold the order of the Democratic Party leadership that is funding and aiding the genocide. And so we’re still marching.”

The March on the DNC is pushing for an end for the U.S.’s unconditional weapons aid to Israel and its complicity in Israel’s genocide against the Palestinian people in Gaza. These are positions that President Biden and his likely successor as the Democratic presidential nominee, Harris, have not indicated they are about to adopt. 

But Harris, at least rhetorically, has been more pointed in her assessment of Israel’s war and the humanitarian catastrophe it is creating in Gaza. That has made the switch from Biden – who, besides pausing some bomb shipments, has not broken with Israel – to Harris feel like a fresh opportunity for a U.S. policy change. It also gives Harris a chance to define her own foreign policy and potentially reset a relationship with a swath of voters alienated by the administration’s current stance. What can be, unburdened – anyway, you’ve got it by now.

A lot is still uncertain in Harris’s approach. So is how voters, grassroots organizers, and pro-peace activists will respond, which are far from a monolith in their demands and strategies, even as they seek an end to the carnage in Gaza. This week feels a little bit critical in all of that. Harris’s fresh candidacy has brought relief and energy to Democratic voters. Some have expressed a cautious hope that they can engage with Harris on Gaza and move her toward a more humane U.S. policy.

Tariq Habash, a former Biden political appointee who resigned in January over the administration’s Gaza policy, said, with Biden’s decision to step aside, “maybe there is a slight opportunity to reunite the party, and do so in a way that it humanizes Palestinians, that it actually calls for peace, and takes real, tangible policy steps to enact that peace by stopping the flow of weapons to at least some degree, and using whatever leverage we have.”

People are hopeful, but also cautious, he added. “How much is she actually going to break off from the existing policy?” Habash said of Harris. “And is she just going to wait until she gets elected to enact that policy or is she going to use her leverage as both the vice president and the presumptive nominee of the Democratic Party to ensure that voters can see that the policy is changing?”

This new momentum coincides with a visit to Washington, D.C. from Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Harris declined to preside over Netanyahu’s address to Congress on Wednesday, though the stated reason was that she already had plans, yet Harris met with Netanyahu on Thursday, where she pressed him on a hostage and ceasefire deal, and declared it was “time for this war to end.” Harris reiterated her “unwavering” commitment to Israel. She also expressed “serious concern about the scale of human suffering in Gaza.” 

“What has happened in Gaza over the past nine months is devastating,” Harris said. “The images of dead children, and desperate hungry people fleeing for safety, sometimes displaced for the second, third, or fourth time. We cannot look away in the face of these tragedies. We cannot allow ourselves to become numb to the suffering, and I will not be silent,” Harris said in a brief speech Thursday after the meeting.

It was perhaps a tougher tone from the administration, but also sidestepped fully rebuking Israel for its role in “what has happened” in Gaza. In the hours after Harris’s meeting with Netanyahu, Israel’s bombardment of Gaza continued, but Harris said she would not be silent. Exactly what that means could have the power to reshape the presidential race, and maybe months of relentless war in Gaza.

Harris Is Seen as More Outspoken Against Israel’s Assault, but She’s Still in the Biden Administration

Even before her post-Netanyahu speech Thursday, Harris had been viewed as one of the top officials most forceful in her public criticism of how Israel has conducted its war, though she never outright contradicted or broke with the administration. 

Still, Harris has very directly addressed the humanitarian catastrophe in Gaza. “As Israel defends itself, it matters how,” Harris said in December, after a meeting in Dubai with leaders from the United Arab Emirates, Jordan, and Egypt. “Too many innocent Palestinians have been killed.”

In March, she evoked the suffering Gaza during a speech in Selma, Alabama. “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,” she said. 

She also said that “community humanity” compels us to act and said there were “no excuses“ for Israel to restrict aid. She added that the threat Hamas posed to the people of Israel “must be eliminated,” but urged an immediate six-week ceasefire. Reports suggested that administration officials had watered down this speech, though the vice president’s office denied it at the time.

“Harris always had the most forward-leaning language when it came to the issue,” said Hala Rharrit, an American diplomat who resigned after 18 years of service over the administration’s Gaza policy. “We looked towards her speeches. But now is a time for her to go from her language was a bit better than the rest of the administration to ‘let’s take action.’  She really has a huge opportunity. She has an opportunity to unify the Democratic base.”

That opportunity began with Harris’s meeting with Netanyahu on Thursday. Again, Harris said she urged Netanyahu to get a ceasefire deal to free the hostages. “It is time for this war to end, and end in a way where Israel is secure, all the hostages are released, the suffering of Palestinians in Gaza ends, and the Palestinian people can exercise their right to freedom, dignity, and self-determination,” Harris said.

She said she told Netanyahu to get the deal done, and then spoke directly to those angry with the administration’s policies. “To everyone who has been calling for a ceasefire, and to everyone who yearns for peace: I see you and I hear you,” Harris said.

Harris concluded by urging people to see Gaza in more than just binary terms. “Let us all condemn terrorism and violence. Let us all do what we can to prevent the suffering of innocent civilians, and let us condemn, antisemitism, Islamophobia, and hate of any kind,” she said.

Harris’s comments and tone were pointed, and her emphasis on the complexities of the situation seemed like a plea for nuance in a presidential election that probably won’t have a lot of it on any subject. But her address didn’t include any huge shifts in policy, like a threat to condition weapons. And it may not satisfy a fractured Democratic base, including progressives, Arab-Americans, younger voters and everyone else among the hundreds of thousands who protested through “uncommitted” or write-in votes during the primaries over Biden’s handling of Israel’s war.

“People want to find a way to support her,” Habash said, if Harris is the nominee. “But it’s not our responsibility to support you, no matter what. It’s your policies. You are running. You have to earn our votes.”

What Will It Take?

The same day Harris met with Prime Minister Netanyahu, progressive activists in Pennsylvania launched a “#NoCeasefireNoVote” campaign. This movement is emerging from the state’s Uncommitted campaign. About 60,000 Pennsylvania voters chose the write-in option during the state’s April Democratic primary. Biden won Pennsylvania in 2020 by about 80,000 votes.

“We believe that the Vice President’s best chance of winning the election is if she takes action for an immediate permanent ceasefire, including pressuring the Biden administration to impose a full arms embargo on Israel now, and committing to publicly to imposing an embargo if she’s elected,” said Reem Abuelhaj, a spokesperson for the campaign, which is gathering pledges from voters that they will not vote for Harris unless they see these specific policy commitments.

That would not be a subtle shift in U.S. policy, but a transformation. It is just one campaign’s demands, but it reflects the anger and distrust of the Biden administration among some progressive groups. With Biden now out of the presidential race, Harris inherits all of it. 

As former officials like Rharrit and Habash pointed out, the White House could have avoided this by enforcing its own laws on weapons transfers. The substantial evidence that Israel is violating international law should have prompted the conditioning of military assistance; instead it became politicized. For Rharrit, as a former U.S. official, she said the first thing Harris would need to do is actually apply U.S. law and regain her – and the U.S.’s – credibility. 

“We are allowing them and enabling them to commit the massacres that they’re committing, and because we are not using any of our leverage, and we’re giving them all the military assistance they need, they are also able to block humanitarian assistance from going in,” Rharrit said. “We have not used any of our leverage to force them to let humanitarian assistance in. We’re not only complicit in actual killings, with U.S. bombs, of Palestinian civilians, but also in their starvation.” 

All administration critics have made clear the status quo is untenable. Right now it’s still a bit of a wait-and-see mode around Harris. Resignees like Rharrit and Habash are engaging with officials and lawmakers as much as possible, sending recommendations to Harris’s office and hosting public engagements. Rharrit helped arrange a talk between Israeli and Palestinian peace activists on Capitol Hill, counterprogramming to Netanyahu’s war-mongering address to Congress. At the same time, grassroots campaigns like #NoCeasefireNoVote are making clear they will not relent their political pressure. Thousands of activists still plan to protest in Chicago next month. 

All these different kinds of pressure underscore the very difficult task for Harris ahead. She is still the vice president, attached to the administration’s policies over these many months, and every day they continue.

Harris is also strongly tied to the Jewish community and to Israel, and has been throughout her political career. She’s already won the backing of mainstream pro-Israel groups, including the Jewish Democratic Council of America and J-Street. Halie Soifer, the CEO of the Jewish Democratic Council of America, who also served as Harris’s national security advisor in the Senate, told NPR this week: “The president and vice president have been in lockstep on the U.S.-Israel relationship. There really is no daylight between them.”

Soifer added that, before and after October 7th: “this White House, including the president and vice president, have stood strongly with Israel in its security, its right to self-defense, and the vice president has been a leading advocate for the release of hostages, as well as ensuring that humanitarian aid continues to get into Gaza.”

On paper, this should give Harris the ability to reconstitute a fractured Democratic coalition. Some of the behind-the-scenes reporting on her position at least suggests Harris sees U.S. policy as having space for both – strong support for Israel while also protecting Palestinians. It echoes the plea not to see Gaza as a “binary issue” that she made on Thursday. But the political discourse, especially during what, God help us, is probably going to a very nasty campaign, tends to thrive in extremes. 

No matter what she does, she’ll be attacked by Republicans for not be sufficiently supportive of Israel. They’ve already done this to Biden, and have already started on Harris. At a Wednesday rally, Donald Trump said she was “totally against the Jewish people,” despite the fact she is married to a Jewish guy, who has also lead the White House’s antisemitism efforts since 2022. But Republicans will weaponize this, because they want to paint Harris as a “radical-left lunatic.” 

That is not a case against a reset for a more just U.S. position on Gaza. About 80 percent of Democratic voters support a ceasefire according to Data for Progress poll from May (And a slight majority of Republicans, too). It is also in U.S. national security interests: Netanyahu’s war is spiraling out, threatening to engulf the entire region in even more chaos. The U.S.’s reputation abroad is shot, and Washington risks being increasingly isolated. The United Kingdom, a close ally, signaled this week it will withdraw objections to the International Criminal Court’s arrest warrant for Netanyahu.

This should be a wake-up call to Harris and the Democrats, as Labour’s wishy-washy stance on Gaza became a bigger issue than expected in the UK’s recent elections, and it cost Labour once-safe seats even in a landslide election for the party.

Harris, if she’s the nominee, or the Democratic Party, will almost surely not win in a landslide. She needs every vote she can get, but as many have pointed out, the Democrats first need to start acting like the party it says it is, the one defending democracy and the rule of law. “It’s the Vice President’s job, or whoever’s name is on the ballot, to convince [voters] that it is essential for them to exercise their right to vote, because they are the obvious better candidate,” Habash said. “And for some voters, they are single issue voters. Their issue is genocide.”

But as Aboma Mijana said, it has already been ten months without a ceasefire. This is why their focus is on the DNC protest. “If anything has to change, it’s not from sitting at the table across from them,” Aboma Mijana said. “It’s building our mass movement that puts so much pressure that they have no choice but to end U.S. aid to Israel. Power concedes nothing without a fight.”