Harris dampens hopes of break with Biden on Gaza

Pro-Palestinian activists are growing increasingly frustrated with Vice President Harris as she remains in public lockstep with President Biden on the Israel-Hamas war in Gaza, but some are holding out hope she could take a harder line on Israel if elected as president. 

Harris has not indicated that she would waver in weapons sales to Israel and has not shown breaks with Biden’s handling of the war, aside from slight changes in rhetoric when addressing the human suffering in Gaza.

Activists who initially expressed some optimism about Harris are ready to treat her candidacy the same as Biden’s — with protests at campaign stops and, for some, efforts to get progressives to vote against her in November.

“To many of the activists, Harris’s talking points about maintaining more or less unconditional military support for Israel just sound like a continuation of the Biden policy and approach,” said Khaled Elgindy, a senior fellow at the Middle East Institute.

“Admittedly, it’s hard for her as a sitting vice president to stray too far from the Biden line, but even with that there is still room for her to go further than she has.”

Anger from the left was stoked during the Democratic National Convention last month, when the party refused to feature a Palestinian American speaker. The Uncommitted National Movement and progressive lawmakers including Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.) slammed the decision.

“I think there was an excitement at the beginning, I think some of that has been dampened,” James Zogby, founder of the Arab American Institute, said of Harris’s candidacy. 

“Despite my efforts to see the convention as a success, and I do believe that it was … the campaign made an unforced error. I call it a boneheaded move that ended up casting a pall over everything — the refusal to allow a speaker.”

Israel’s brutal war on Hamas, which has left some 40,000 Palestinians dead, has divided the Democratic Party and showed it’s potential electoral impact with some 700,000 protest votes against Biden in the primary, before he exited the race and endorsed Harris.

Biden appeared to be in serious danger of losing Michigan, which has a large Arab American population, to former President Trump after his handling of the war led thousands in the Democratic primary to vote “uncommitted.” Harris faces the same risks, activists warn.

“There’s still a significant group who are not going to vote for her, are not going to vote for Trump, are going to vote for third-party candidates because they feel this hurt. I would not want to leave those votes behind,” said Zogby. “There’s still an important component in the community who feels this hurt and is not budging, and she can move them.”

Harris campaigned Sunday in Detroit and was met with one protester, a few blocks away from the school she visited, holding a large sign that read “cease-fire.” There was also someone on a megaphone shouting “Democrats you can’t hide” and “Harris isn’t welcome here,” while a few Palestinian flags were on display outside the school.

While Biden was greeted at events with chants of “Genocide Joe” when he was on the top of the ticket, those chants have now turned into “Killer Kamala,” which was heard in Chicago during the convention.

Activists said they were hopeful that Harris would approach relations with Israel differently after she didn’t attend Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s address to Congress in July and met with him privately instead. 

“There were a lot of high hopes and expectations for Harris after Biden dropped out, particularly after the Netanyahu visit when Harris’s tone really stood out from that of the president’s — she hinted at taking a tougher line with Netanyahu and above all was able to empathize with Palestinians and acknowledge Palestinian humanity in ways that Biden never could,” said Elgindy of the Middle East Institute.

“A lot of that hope and excitement around Harris has since dissipated, however.”

The vice president’s rhetoric is subtly different on the situation, though, bolstering hopes that she could break with Biden’s support for Israel if she wins the election. Harris could be open to imposing conditions on aid to Israel if elected in November, after she conducts an analysis of the U.S.-Israel relationship, according to The Washington Post, citing several people familiar with her thinking.

She has told protesters at rallies that she is pushing for an end to the war in Gaza, but she has also argued the stakes of the election in November against Trump are too high for pro-Palestinian Americans to oppose her.

Zogby also suggested that he is hopeful she could change gears if elected, citing conversations he had with her early into the conflict, before she was running for president.

“I have spoken with her and I know how she feels. This is one of those let Kamala be Kamala situations; the consultant deciders are not the people to be making these kinds of personal, and also strategic, decisions,” he said. “If she were to do something to recognize the Palestinian suffering in a personal way, there are no voters to be lost. But there are votes to be lost by not doing it.”

While some activists are protesting her candidacy, the Biden administration is focused on brokering a cease-fire deal. Biden said Monday that Netanyahu is not doing enough to secure a hostage deal, adding pressure to the Israeli leader after six hostages were found dead, including Israeli American Hersh Goldberg-Polin, whose parents spoke at the convention.  

Harris, in her remarks at the convention, vowed to always defend Israel while also expressing her concern about the toll in Gaza, saying “the scale of suffering is heartbreaking.”

In an interview with CNN a week later, she indicated that she would not take a different policy approach to the war from Biden, but repeatedly stressed that a cease-fire deal has to get done.

Some activists see these statements as an indication that Harris is too far apart from them on the issue and vow to vote against her in November. 

The Abandon Harris campaign, formerly Abandon Biden, is doubling down on its efforts to ensure Harris loses in November.

“Kamala Harris’s active complicity in supporting Israel's genocide in Gaza has made her unfit to lead, and we will not stand by as she tries to normalize these atrocities,” the group said in a statement Tuesday.

“Make no mistake, the Harris-Walz campaign is not a campaign of joy; it is a campaign that, for the first time in modern history, is seeking to normalize genocide and ethnic cleansing,” it added. 

Brad Dress contributed reporting