Harris on Gaza: The New Boss, Same as the Old
The coronation and ascent up the polls of Democratic Presidential Candidate Kamala Harris has been remarkable to witness. From out of nowhere, a person widely considered a relative dud of a Vice President, who received zero delegates during her primary bid in 2020 and zero votes in the 2024 primary (during which, of course, she was not a candidate), is now the woman chosen to beat Donald Trump. And if vibes and momentum are any indication, she may be well on her way to doing it. She has galvanized Democratic enthusiasm and is being celebrated by multiple factions of her party.
But it hasn’t all been smooth sailing for Harris and the liberal coalition. While the Republican opposition is flailing, unable to build a meaningful counter-narrative and falling back on their usual canard of hysterically painting every minimal reform as communism, on her left is a potentially more disruptive force: Americans who want their country to stop arming and funding Israel’s genocide of Palestinians in Gaza.
Here and there, there have been clues and gestures from Harris toward a policy change on Gaza. Even before she became the nominee, Washington rumors suggested she disagreed with Biden’s 100% tolerance of Israeli violence, though to what degree has never been clear. As a candidate, she said, “Now is the time to get a ceasefire deal.”
But so far there’s been little evidence of any real changes coming and increasingly, it’s looking like Harris’s policy toward Israel and Palestine will not be different from Biden’s. She uses more sympathetic language, but is always careful to reiterate her unwavering support for Israel and to couch her sympathies for Palestine in false equivalencies.
More important things: Or, how liberals learned to stop worrying and love bombing Gaza
Liberals have a number of ways of rationalizing the Gaza genocide. They say Donald Trump will be even worse, and they may be right (Trump has encouraged Netanyahu to “finish the job” in Gaza, which sounds eerily like a final solution). Liberals might argue they can push Harris on the issue once she’s in office (hasn’t worked so far). They might also claim that Harris’s hands are tied for any number of political reasons, though if that’s what’s holding her back it only demonstrates a lack of leadership.
For plenty of liberals, the issue is simply secondary to the more pressing concern of defeating Trump and saving democracy. But that framing sounds peculiar given the party’s treatment of its anti-genocide wing. The 2024 Democratic primary was somewhere between a formality and a sham, but as a result of it, voters sent a contingent of Uncommitted delegates to the DNC this year. Those delegates, elected representatives within the Democratic Party all, have been neglected, barred from entry, and relegated to protests in the hallways. Their simple demand to allow one pro-Palestinian perspective on stage during the DNC was denied. None of that sounds terribly democratic.
Other liberals simply don’t want to acknowledge that a genocide is happening. Outside the DNC in Chicago, some Democrats plugged their ears as they walked past protesters reading the names of children killed in Gaza. Both The Wall Street Journal and The Boston Globe argue that “It’s time to retire the word genocide.” It’s simply too controversial a term; sometimes nations would like to kill tens of thousands of children without all the nasty name-calling. If we stop using the word genocide, then there is no such thing and we can stop worrying about it.
It needs to be made clear: Israel’s actions in Gaza meet every sensible definition of genocide, as the rest of the world well understands. There are mountains of photo and video evidence, as well as Israeli soldiers’ and officials’ own declarations. It’s all but impossible to count the dead, dying, and wounded in Gaza. Almost every single one of the strip’s 2.3 million people has been maimed, relocated, starved, or killed. Most sources put the number of dead somewhere around 40,000, while the medical journal The Lancet estimates it could be as high as 186,000.
Why Harris should oppose genocide
Harris’s coronation has been a rousing political moment, but it’s severely tainted by the context in which it exists. Against the backdrop of an ongoing genocide, funded by the Biden/Harris Administration, the DNC’s week-long, celebrity-filled party of “joy” looks appallingly morbid, cynical and inhuman.
If this were a genocide we had nothing to do with, the moral calculus would be different. But every one of us bears some responsibility for what’s happening in Gaza. Our dollars fund it and our bombs blow entire families to smithereens. To demand a change is the only moral, sane, human reaction. The fact that there is no representative for that position on the ballot, or even allowed into the conversation, is a truly damning indictment of our politics.
Certainly there are plenty of good reasons to want Harris to defeat Trump. She is, domestically, a lesser evil on every count. But it’s just as understandable why people of conscience would not be able to support this party. It’s as if we’re choosing between A) genocide with reproductive health, voting rights, and some semblance of a safety net, or B) genocide without those things. For many voters, that’s an obvious choice, but it says something incredibly grim that it’s the only choice.
Harris has a real opportunity to do something important, and it’s hard to imagine it wouldn’t help her politically. Americans are currently divided on Gaza, with 48% disapproving of Israel’s actions and 42% approving. If Harris took a stand, that divide would almost certainly split down party lines, likely costing her little if anything in terms of public support. It would surely energize the party’s left wing and help her win the swing state of Michigan. But she apparently doesn’t want to do that — either because of political pressures, electoral paranoia, or personal views. None of these, reasoned though they may be, justify her inaction thus far.
Harris’s nomination for commander-in-chief is historic, but history will vilify those who enabled Gaza to be destroyed and ethnically cleansed from the earth. Activists must continue to pressure Harris, and there’s no need to wait until after the election to do so. She doesn’t have to do much — just pledge to stop sending the guns, bombs and money or, better yet, pressure President Biden to stop now. If we want to have any shred of faith in our system and our countrymen, we ought to be able to believe that doing the right thing is good politics. And unequivocally opposing this genocide is certainly the right thing.
