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A Last Chance for Harris to Win Back Voters Opposed to Gaza Genocide
What voters opposed to the war on the people of Gaza want most is what U.S. law already requires: an arms embargo on the Israeli government that forces an end to the slaughter and starvation.
Sep 06, 2024
Before sparking outrage by refusing to let any Palestinian Americans speak at the Democratic National Convention last month, U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris was on her way to winning back at least some of the voters who had rejected President Joe Biden's candidacy over the war on Gaza.
The vice president had spent weeks taking several small but positive steps that gave hope to young people as well as American Muslims, Arabs, Palestinians, and other voters opposed to U.S. support for the war on Gaza.
She first refused to preside over Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's predictably dishonest and dangerous speech to Congress. She also gave him a cold reception when they met one-on-one: She avoided smiling or shaking his hand during the standard post-meeting photo op and spoke alone to the press afterward.
Kamala Harris still has a very narrow opening to win over some of the voters who abandoned Biden but do not want to see Trump return to the White House.
During her remarks that day and in multiple campaign speeches, she has explicitly called for a cease-fire as part of a hostage deal and acknowledged Palestinian suffering in an empathetic way that President Biden rarely used.
She appointed a well-known and respected American Muslim attorney to serve as her liaison to Arab and Muslim voters and then stood by that official when she faced predictable attacks from pro-Israel groups.
She met with some Palestinian-American and Muslim community members on the sidelines of campaign events and gave the clear impression that she was far more sympathetic to the plight of Palestinians than her public remarks would indicate.
She initially deflected questions about whether she would support an arms embargo on the Israeli government, which was itself actually a positive sign given that any Democratic presidential candidate in years past would have responded to that question by simply saying, "No, I do not and never will support conditioning or limiting arms to Israel."
When leaders of the Uncommitted Movement later revealed that Harris had privately expressed a willingness to discuss an arms embargo, her national security adviser's cleanup statement said that she "does not support" an arms embargo in the present tense without making any pronouncements about the future.
She picked Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz as vice president instead of Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro, who had repeatedly gone out of his way to demonize college student protesters, Ben & Jerry's, and other advocates for Palestinian human rights in ways that no other VP candidate had.
Most recently, Harris approved a first-ever panel at the DNC focused on Palestinian human rights, allowing mainstream Arab and Palestinian leaders to speak freely to a packed audience about the genocide in Gaza.
Of course, none of these steps were enough. What voters opposed to the war on the people of Gaza want most is what U.S. law already requires: an arms embargo on the Israeli government that forces an end to the slaughter and starvation.
Although Vice President Harris had not been willing to break with President Biden or spark a backlash from her pro-Israel supporters by supporting an arms embargo, she had sent signals that she would at least be more open to discussing the various demands of anti-genocide voters than Biden—or Trump, for that matter.
Until, that is, the Democratic National Convention.
First, the party platform regurgitated most of the same pro-Israel talking points that AIPAC and Democratic Majority for Israel demand of candidates in their position papers, including dishonest attacks on the South Africa-inspired Boycott, Divest, and Sanctions movement; saber-rattling against Iran; and clear commitments to billions in promised funding for the Israeli government.
Second, the DNC gave a prime-time speaking slot to Israeli-American parents of hostages held captive in Gaza but then refused to give any speaking slot at all to any Palestinian Americans while making plenty of room for Republican politicians.
Even when prominent members of Congress, activists, and major unions called for the DNC and the Harris campaign to reconsider their decision, they refused. This decision insulted and infuriated Palestinian Americans and their supporters.
It also raised a very real policy concern: If supporters of Palestinian human rights could not even convince the Harris campaign to give one measly three-minute speaking spot to a Palestinian-American Democrat who would have endorsed Harris, how can we expect a Harris White House to listen when we lobby for changes in government policy?
In the weeks since the DNC speaker fiasco, the campaign has not expressed any regret for what happened. In a CNN interview, Harris also seemed to explicitly rule out supporting an embargo on even "some" arms to the Israeli government. This is remarkable given that even President Biden belatedly suspended shipments of 2,000-pound bombs.
Long story short, the Harris campaign has squandered much of the goodwill it initially built up with voters concerned about Gaza. For example, a new poll of American Muslim registered voters conducted from August 25 to 27 showed Harris winning only 29% of the vote. Jill Stein received identical support while 17% were undecided.
Despite these bleak numbers, all is not lost for Harris—yet.
Donald Trump is going out of his way to antagonize Americans who support Palestinian human rights: using Palestinian as a racist slur, promising to let Netanyahu finish the job in Gaza, speculating about ways to make Israel even larger and pledging to weaponize the federal government against college students and others who stand up for Palestine. Trump even implied that he might attack Gaza himself if the American hostages have not been released by the time he takes office.
That means Kamala Harris still has a very narrow opening to win over some of the voters who abandoned Biden but do not want to see Trump return to the White House.
What, if anything, can her campaign do now?
First, apologize for not including a Palestinian-American speaker at the convention and feature Palestinian-American speakers at a prominent campaign event.
Second, sit down with and listen to representatives of the Muslim, Palestinian, Arab, Jewish, Black, and other organizations that oppose the genocide in Gaza and use the upcoming presidential debate as an opportunity to clearly reject anti-Palestinian racism and Islamophobia here at home.
Third, pledge to enforce U.S. laws that already forbid arms sales and transfers to any foreign human rights violators, including the Israeli government.
Perhaps most importantly, Vice President Harris must convince President Biden to force Netanyahu to agree to the cease-fire deal that he keeps sabotaging. Harris says that she and President Biden are working around the clock to secure a cease-fire deal, but the truth is that the main barrier to a deal is Netanyahu's opposition to a permanent cease-fire and his insistence on partially occupying Gaza.
With nothing left to lose politically, Biden should leverage U.S. military aid to force Netanyahu to accept a permanent cease-fire deal that frees all hostages and political prisoners.
Taking these steps might allow the Harris-Walz campaign to win back some of the disillusioned voters in Michigan, Pennsylvania, Georgia, and other swing states where every vote counts.
Time is running out, the path is narrow, and the missteps of recent weeks have made her journey all the more difficult. If Vice President Harris is going to do the right thing, the time to act is now.
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If She Truly Holds the Rule of Law ‘Sacred,’ Harris Must Back an Arms Embargo on Israel
No other policy step would have as much of an impact in generating a permanent cease-fire and advancing Palestinian freedom.
Sep 05, 2024
In her recent speech to the Democratic National Convention accepting the party’s nomination for president, U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris drew one of her most thunderous applause lines when she called for an end to the violence and suffering Israel is inflicting in Gaza and for the long-denied fulfillment of Palestinian rights to dignity, security, freedom, and self-determination.
This enthusiastic reception, evinced by tens of thousands of die-hard Democrats at Chicago’s United Center, was a faithful reflection of where the base of the party stands on Palestinian-Israeli issues.
A May 2024 public opinion poll conducted by Data for Progress and Zeteo found that 83% of Democrats support the U.S. brokering a permanent cease-fire. A March 2024 Gallup poll found more Democrats sympathetic toward Palestinians than toward Israelis by a 10-point margin (43% to 35%) as Israel continues killing Palestinians in Gaza.
The U.S. is profoundly complicit in Israel’s mass killing of Palestinians.
While Harris’s rhetorical commitment to Palestinian freedom and self-determination is noteworthy, these will be yet more empty words unless they are accompanied by a commitment to tangible policy change. Most importantly, this means following U.S. law and ending weapons transfers to Israel. No other policy step would have as much of an impact in generating a permanent cease-fire and advancing Palestinian freedom.
For decades, Israel has denied Palestinians their freedom under a brutal system of apartheid and military rule, backed by the munificent support of U.S. taxpayers, who have provided Israel with more than $100 billion in weapons.
As Israel’s violence against Palestinians over the past 10 months has increased, so too has the amount of weaponry the U.S. is providing to Israel. The Biden administration has circumvented congressional oversight to rush to Israel the delivery of more than $6 billion in weapons, and the Pentagon recently notified Congress of $20 billion in potential new sales, which will undoubtedly be financed by U.S. taxpayers.
From fighter jets to missiles, bombs, tank shells, and mortars, U.S. weapons to Israel make us complicit in the war crimes and potential crimes against humanity Israel is inflicting on Palestinians in Gaza, as the death toll eclipses 40,000 people, including more than 16,500 children.
In her acceptance speech, Harris committed to “hold sacred” the principle of the rule of law. If elected president, her most immediate test of fidelity to this principle will emerge from her decision on whether to send additional weapons to Israel.
U.S. law is clear: No country can receive U.S. weapons to commit human rights abuses. The Foreign Assistance Act prevents the U.S. from furnishing any support to a country with a “consistent pattern of gross violations of internationally recognized human rights.” The Arms Export Control Act mandates that U.S. weapons be used “solely for internal security, for legitimate self-defense,” and for a few other scenarios not relevant to Israel’s attacks on Palestinians in Gaza. No sales or deliveries of any weapons are permitted to a country in “substantial violation” of these limitations.
In addition, current White House guidelines, embodied in its Conventional Arms Transfer policy, prohibit weapons deliveries to a country when it is “more likely than not that the arms to be transferred will be used by the recipient to commit, facilitate the recipients’ commission of, or to aggravate risks that the recipient will commit: genocide; crimes against humanity; grave breaches of the Geneva Conventions of 1949, including attacks intentionally directed against civilian objects or civilians protected as such; or other serious violations of international humanitarian or human rights law, including serious acts of gender‑based violence or serious acts of violence against children.”
As attested to by myriad Palestinian and international human rights organizations, as well as United Nations agencies and judicial bodies, Israel is brazenly violating every single clause of the Conventional Arms Transfer policy, which is supposed to prevent U.S. complicity in atrocities.
Not only should Harris commit to ending weapons transfers to Israel because U.S. law and policy mandate she do so if elected president, stopping weapons to Israel is also a smart electoral strategy to adopt. A March 2024 public opinion poll conducted by the Center for Economic and Policy Research found that 62% of Biden 2020 voters support halting weapons shipments to Israel, whereas only 14% oppose.
In addition, an August 2024 public opinion poll of voters in the critical swing states of Pennsylvania, Arizona, and Georgia, conducted by the IMEU Policy Project, found that Democratic and independent voters would be more likely to cast their ballot for Harris if she were to support an arms embargo on Israel. Thirty-nine percent of Georgians would be more likely to vote for Harris in this scenario, whereas only 5% of voters would be less likely to vote for her, with similar results obtained in Arizona (35% to 5%) and in Pennsylvania (34% to 7%).
Unfortunately, Harris appears wedded to Biden’s failed strategy of providing Israel with weapons. As she put it in an interview with CNN, she would not withhold weapons.
More than 75 years ago, in November 1947, as the U.N. debated partitioning Palestine against the wishes of its majority Indigenous inhabitants, the Truman administration imposed an arms embargo on all sides in Palestine for the commonsense reason, in the subsequent words of Secretary of State George Marshall, that to “permit American arms to go to Palestine and neighboring states would facilitate acts of violence and the further shedding of blood and thus render still more difficult the task of maintaining law and order.”
The Truman administration maintained its arms embargo against Israel after its establishment in May 1948, despite fierce lobbying from members of Congress, Zionist organizations in the U.S., and the Israeli government. Israel engaged in massive ethnic cleansing, driving more than 80% of Palestinians from their homes in what became Israel and turning them into refugees. But at least U.S. weapons did not contribute to this atrocity.
Today, as Israel continues its horrendous violence against Palestinians, which is in some respects even more deadly than the catastrophe of 1948, the obverse is true. The U.S. is profoundly complicit in Israel’s mass killing of Palestinians.
Because of her stated commitment to the rule of law, a permanent cease-fire, and Palestinian freedom, Harris must now end U.S. complicity by backing a renewed arms embargo against Israel.
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Who Is Kamala Harris? Aggressive Foreign and Military Policies
As she accepted the Democratic nomination, Harris promised to maintain the world’s “most lethal” military and ensure that “America—not China—wins the competition for the 21st century.”
Sep 01, 2024
It wasn’t until the final night of the 2024 Democratic National Convention that pandering to military power took the stage. Until then, conventioneers were insulated from possible second thoughts they might have had about the party’s role in the constructing, maintaining, and expanding of what is in truth an Empire.
The run up to U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris’ acceptance speech included tough talk from former CIA Director and Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta, who celebrated America’s “warriors,” and by a parade of members of Congress who have served in the military: Vietnam, Afghanistan, and Iraq. With the exception of celebrating the assassination of Osama Bin Laden, there were no references to those wars, nor to the president’s role as “nuclear monarch” with the sole authority to launch an omnicidal nuclear war. References to what former President Dwight D. Eisenhower initially termed the military-industrial-congressional complex and the party’s integration with it were missing in action. So too were any references to the deployment of a new generation of nuclear weapons in Europe or President Joe Biden’s recent insistence that Chancellor Olaf Sholtz accept deployment of U.S. dual capable tomahawk intermediate range missiles in Germany capable of reaching western Russia.
But, as the conservative journalist David Brooks observed, Harris concluded her rousing acceptance speech with “an aggressive picture of America in the world.” She built on her commitment to maintain the world’s “most lethal” military, with the promise to lead in the space and artificial intelligence arms races, and promised that “America—not China—wins the competition for the 21st century,” a euphemistic reference to the struggle for hegemony. Echoing the Biden paradigm and the commitment to new Cold Wars, and omitting embarrassing references to Saudi Arabia, Israel, and more than a few other U.S. allies, she told her audiences that she knew where she and the country stand in the “enduring struggle between democracy and tyranny.”
Seeking to prevent an election shattering of the Democratic Party’s coalition, Kamala Harris has attempted to have it both ways on the Gaza genocide.
Harris came to the Senate in 2017 with little foreign policy knowledge or experience, but contrary to former President Donald Trump’s accusations, she is anything but a foreign and military policy ingenue. The Biden White House downplayed her foreign and military policy roles, but once she emerged as the Democrats’ presidential nominee, it was reported that she participated in nearly every Biden-era National Security Council meeting, where U.S. foreign and military policies are made. Similarly, she has been involved in almost every one of the President’s Daily Briefs, the intelligence community’s daily super-secret briefings about threats, developments, and opportunities around the world. Ron Klain, Biden’s first chief of staff, said that Harris came to the intelligence briefings as the “best prepared, ready with questions, having already reviewed the written intelligence and ready to help ask hard questions.” The journalist Fred Kaplan put it differently: her presence in these briefings “exposed her to more information… than any newly elected president has ever had, coming into office, in more than a century.” As vice president, she visited 21 nations on 17 foreign trips and met with more than 150 foreign leaders. In three of the past four years, she led the U.S delegation to the Munich Security Conference.
We should expect Harris to hew to the trajectory of Biden’s foreign and military policies. Along her way, she has recruited a cadre of traditional national security advisers. As vice president, her first national security adviser was Nancy McEldowney, a career U.S. diplomat and former director of the Foreign Service Institute. McEldowney was succeeded by Philip Gordon, Harris’ current and very influential foreign policy adviser, who served on former President Bill Clinton’s National Security Council staff and as an Obama European and Middle East specialist. Gordon’s deputy has been Rebecca Lissner, formerly of the Naval War College and the woman who oversaw the development of the Biden National Security Strategy. Recall that the strategy declares that the post-Cold War era is over, that the struggle with China—Washington’s only peer competitor—to shape what follows is under way. And it reiterated the United States’ commitment to its first-strike nuclear arsenal and warfighting doctrine.
According to a Wall Street Journal report that Harris blames National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan along with Secretary of State Antony Blinken for failing to contain Israel in Gaza, Gordon will likely be appointed to succeed Sullivan. Gordon was a career diplomat who is seen as a “pragmatic internationalist” rather than a progressive. He served as former President Barack Obama’s first assistant secretary of state for European and Eurasian affairs and later as his special assistant to the president and White House coordinator for the Middle East, North Africa, and the Persian Gulf Region.
Gordon’s decisive worldview reorientation reportedly came in response to former President George W. Bush’s regime change war in Iraq, which led him to understand that the U.S. is not always a force for good or on the right side of history. Bush’s wars, he understood, left that country shattered and squandered the United States’ reputation and legitimacy. As a review of the books written by Gordon explains, he believes that “the institutions of U.S. power are not in themselves wrong; it is the people who run them who make them fall short of their promise.” Staff them with better leaders he argues, and the U.S. can play its historical role as a “catalyst for democracy.” Recognizing that regime change doesn’t work, the U.S. he argues must act judiciously with the means consistent with the ends.
Gordon is seen as a Europeanist and as the E.U.’s man in Washington. Norbert Rottgen, a Christian Democratic German parliamentarian, has commented that Gordon believes that “European security is the cornerstone of U.S. global power,” and he is probably correct. Gordon has been a hardliner opposing Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and criticized Sholz for resisting pressure to send German long-range Taurus cruise missiles to Ukraine. But Gordon can be a subtle strategist, as demonstrated in his not being threatened by calls for a more autonomous Europe and his belief that a strong Europe is in the United States’ interest.
“Europeanist” though he may be, Camille Grand, the former NATO assistant secretary general, tells us that Gordon recognizes that Europe is “no longer the alpha and omega of American’s foreign policy.” There is of course China, the new “alpha and omega” of U.S. foreign, military, and economic policies, and with the exception of his deputy Linsser’s China containment work on the Biden National Security Strategy, Gordon’s fingerprints on Harris’ approach are hard to find.
Consistent with Biden, Trump, and the etiquette of U.S. political discourse, in Harris’ acceptance speech there were no references to U.S. imperial wars, coups, or provocative shows of force with which Washington won its Indo-Pacific Empir
Seeking to prevent an election shattering of the Democratic Party’s coalition, Kamala Harris has attempted to have it both ways on the Gaza genocide. In her acceptance speech, she honored the growing Democratic majority who have been outraged by Israel’s indiscriminate and devastating destruction of Gaza and its people. Possibly speaking from her heart, Harris reiterated the call for a cease-fire and stated that “what has happened in Gaza over the past 10 months is devastating…The scale of suffering is heartbreaking.” She then stated her ostensible commitment to the Palestinians’ ability to “realize their right to dignity, security, freedom, and self-determination” and to the long disregarded and fading possibility of a two-state solution.
But, like Biden, the leverage she pledged to exercise was to enhance Israel’s military power, not to achieve a cease-fire. As she said, “Let me be clear, I will always stand up for Israel’s right to defend itself, and I will always ensure Israel has the ability to defend itself.” Like Biden, her campaign has been clear in refusing to pressure Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu and his extremist partners by withholding shipment of bombs and other weapons to Israel. And, as the Israeli leader’s campaign of assassinations in Iran and Lebanon have taken us to the brink of regional war, Harris pledged “to defend our forces,” who for reasons she didn’t dare to state find themselves deployed across southwest Asia, “and our interests against Iran and Iran-backed terrorists.”
Harris has been a hawk on Ukraine in its war of resistance against Russia, providing Kyiv “full-throated support.” We should expect her to continue unwavering support for NATO and U.S. dominion over Europe. In introducing herself in Chicago, she boasted that “Five days before Russia attacked Ukraine, I met with President Zelensky to warn him about Russia’s plan to invade. I helped mobilize a global response—over 50 countries—to defend against Putin’s aggression. And as president, I will stand strong with Ukraine and our NATO allies.”
Largely unknown prior to the convention was that in February 2022, when the U.S. intelligence community first reported that Russia’s illegal and brutal invasion of Ukraine was imminent, Harris pressed for the super-secret intelligence to be shared with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. It was Harris who was then dispatched to meet with Zelensky in Kyiv to share the detailed intelligence and Washington’s perceptions of his options. She has since met Zelensky five times.
There has been no daylight between Harris and Biden in their support for Zelensky’s “peace diplomacy” that unrealistically demands return to Ukraine’s pre-2014 borders. (Worth noting is the Ukrainian sociologist Volodymyr Ishchenko’s assertion that, before Russian President Vladimir Putin’s invasion, most Ukrainians were willing to be done with turmoil in the eastern 20% of Ukraine and accept its succession to Russia.) There has been no indication that in future negotiations Harris would accept a neutral Ukraine with credible security guarantees or to putting the questions of Crimean, Donetsk, and Luhansk sovereignty to fair referenda or onto the diplomatic shelf for later resolution.
And, like Biden, at Munich Security Conferences Harris has preached that the “backbone” of preservation of Western principles and security is NATO—“the greatest military alliance the world has ever seen.”
Amid growing international demands to cut military spending by at least 10%, there has been no hint of Harris objecting to Biden’s massive military spending increases.
Consistent with Biden, Trump, and the etiquette of U.S. political discourse, in Harris’ acceptance speech there were no references to U.S. imperial wars, coups, or provocative shows of force with which Washington won its Indo-Pacific Empire, nor to the region spanning Biden-Harris lattice-like network of tripartite and bilateral U.S alliances, nor to global NATO’s new roles in the campaign to contain China.
In her acceptance speech, Harris mentioned China only once, and then only in relationship to the contest for supremacy in space and AI. These, not incidentally, are at the defining edges of 21st-century military power. Elsewhere Harris has been critical of Beijing’s repression of human rights and warned about the Chinese “threat” to U.S. interests and to Washington’s allies in the Asia-Pacific. Following China’s simulated blockade of Taiwan in response to Rep. Nancy Pelosi’s (D-Calif.) counterproductive and unwanted 2022 trip to Taiwan, Harris also traveled to Asia. There, in meetings with allies and some of the 55,000 U.S. troops based in Japan, she reaffirmed the U.S. commitment to deter China. She has not been shy in condemning China’s aggressive actions in the South China Sea where it seeks to challenge the Seventh Fleet’s dominance in what has been an America Lake since the end of the Pacific War. And as Beijing has encroached on what are obviously Philippine territorial waters, she has played a key role in facilitating Ferdinand Marcos Jr.’s (the former dictator’s son) reaffirmation and deepening of the U.S.-Philippines alliance after his predecessor’s flirtations with China.
Assuming that her audiences either don’t know or disregard the past and present practice of U.S. imperialism, Harris asserts that she is committed to the misnamed “rules-based order” and to a “free and open Indo-Pacific” to ensure stability and commerce. She warns that Beijing is unique as it “continues to coerce, to intimidate, and to make claims to the vast majority of the South China Sea.” Rather than pursue common security solutions to the dilemmas presented by Taiwan, she repeats Washington’s unofficial commitment to defend Taiwan, including the Pentagon’s first-strike doctrine which serves as the foundation of that commitment.
In these regards we have to hope that Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz will be more than wallpaper as vice president and that he finds ways to influence a Harris administration with his understanding that the storied China threat is “hyperbole” and the need to build on the two powers’ shared interests.
Amid growing international demands to cut military spending by at least 10%, there has been no hint of Harris objecting to Biden’s massive military spending increases. That said, if she is elected, we should not expect her to match Trump’s call for gargantuan increases in Pentagon spending.
What else might we expect from Kamala Harris if she prevails between now and November 5? Given that Africa is projected to have a quarter of the world’s population by 2050, and the markets for goods and services that go with that, as well as its stores of commercially essential natural resources, a Harris administration will likely pay greater attention to U.S. relations with the African continent than we have seen in recent years. Similarly, given her Caribbean roots, its resources, markets, and most of all its Monroe Doctrine geopolitical relationship to the United States, greater attention will likely also be paid to Latin America.
All of which brings us back to where we began. Harris remains the uncertain bastion in the struggle to defend constitutional democracy. The outcome of the election cannot be accurately predicted, and we have been sobered by the reminder that only once has a sitting vice president prevailed in an election. Between now and then Harris will be pressed to become more forthcoming about her policy commitments and how they can be achieved. Unless the Democrats win control of one or both houses of Congress, and with right-wing extremist control of the Supreme Court, only minimal progress will be made on the Harris-Walz domestic agenda. And as Harris or Trump aggressively challenge the world, each in her or his unique ways, our work to end and prevent catastrophe remains ahead of us.
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