Kamala changes tone on Gaza, but voters want more

Vice President Kamala Harris says she “will not be silent” in the face of Palestinian suffering as Israel’s war on Gaza continues. However, Palestinian rights advocates want to know exactly what this means for US foreign policy.

The vice president — and likely Democratic presidential nominee — emphasized the plight of Palestinians in Gaza after meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Thursday. However, she pledged continued support for Israel.

Activists say expressing sympathy for the Palestinians without seeking a significant shift in U.S. policy of unconditional military and diplomatic support will not help Harris win back voters alienated by President Joe Biden’s approach to the war.

“Without a real commitment to stop killing the children of Gaza, I don’t care about her empathy for them,” said Eman Abdelhadi, a sociologist at the University of Chicago. She stressed that the U.S. bears “responsibility” for the atrocities committed against Palestinians.

“Being empathetic to someone you’re shooting in the head isn’t exactly commendable. We don’t need empathy from these people. We need them to stop providing the guns and money that are actively killing the people they’re supposedly empathizing with.”

Additionally, while Harris’ comments have been characterized as a departure from Biden’s rhetoric, critics point out that the vice president has not articulated any new policy positions.

What did Harris say?

After holding talks with Netanyahu on Thursday, Harris made a televised statement on the conflict, where she reaffirmed her “unwavering commitment” to Israel and promised to always ensure the country can “defend itself.”

The vice president then went on to describe the horrific conditions in Gaza, without naming Israel as responsible for the humanitarian crisis there.

“I also expressed to the Prime Minister my serious concern about the scale of human suffering in Gaza, including the deaths of many innocent civilians,” Harris said, calling the war “devastating.”

“With images of dead children and desperate, hungry people fleeing for safety — sometimes displaced for the second, third or fourth time — we cannot turn a blind eye to these tragedies. We cannot allow ourselves to become numb to the suffering, and I will not remain silent.”

She also expressed support for Biden’s multi-phase ceasefire proposal to achieve an end to the war and free Israeli prisoners in Gaza. Israel and Hamas have been negotiating indirectly for months to finalize the deal, but a solution has remained elusive until now.

At least on the surface, Harris’s tone appeared to be a departure from Biden’s pro-Israel statements. “Harris distanced Biden on Gaza by emphasizing Palestinian suffering,” read a Washington Post headline following the vice president’s remarks.

However, Hazami Barmada, an Arab-American activist who has been organizing protests in the US capital to raise awareness about the situation in Gaza, said the vice president’s public declaration of sympathy “does not make a difference.”

Barmada noted that Secretary of State Antony Blinken has said he sees his own children in the faces of the children in Gaza. Yet Blinken’s department has continued to approve billions of dollars in weapons for Israel.

“So no, I don’t think empathy is enough,” Barmada told Al Jazeera. “We have had on our television screens genocide, ethnic cleansing, apartheid, illegal occupation, violence, all kinds of atrocities happening against Palestinians for 76 years. We need to move from empathy to a place of action before it’s too late.”

The Rise of Harris

Harris appears set to inherit the Democratic nomination from Biden, who dropped out of the presidential race on Sunday and endorsed the vice president.

Without any serious opposition, Biden had won an overwhelming majority of the vote in the Democratic primary. But hundreds of thousands of people across the country chose the “not committed” option on Democratic primary ballots to express opposition to the president’s Gaza policy.

The uncompromised movement articulated three main political demands: achieving a lasting ceasefire, imposing an arms embargo on Israel, and lifting the siege on Gaza.

Tariq Habash, a former Biden administration appointee, acknowledged Harris’s change in tone as “refreshing.” In January, he resigned from the Education Department in a show of public opposition to U.S. support for the war.

But Habash also said Harris should be prepared to follow up her rhetoric with action.

“What we really need, nine and a half months later, is a change in policy, a change in approach, so that we can end the unnecessary and indiscriminate violence that continues every day under President Biden,” Habash told Al Jazeera.

“It’s still early, so we don’t know exactly what her plan or approach will be, but based on what she said yesterday, I don’t think we’ve heard a substantial change or any real departure from what the president has already said or done.”

After all, Harris is a key member of the Biden administration, which has been an unwavering supporter of Israel.

On Thursday, White House spokesman John Kirby said the vice president has been a “full partner” in overseeing U.S. policy on the war.

Harris Register

Harris, a former senator, also has her own long pro-Israel record.

Just days after taking office in the Senate in 2017, Harris co-authored a measure to condemn a United Nations Security Council resolution denouncing Israel’s illegal settlements in the occupied West Bank.

She also addressed the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) later that year, at a time when many left-wing politicians were distancing themselves from the pro-Israel lobby group.

“Having grown up in the Bay Area [de São Francisco]I fondly remember the Jewish National Fund boxes we used to collect donations to plant trees for Israel,” Harris said at an AIPAC conference in 2017.

For years, Palestinian historians and activists have accused the Jewish National Fund of using tree planting to cover ethnically cleansed Palestinian villages in what is now Israel.

Harris, however, was one of the first US officials to use the word “ceasefire” when calling for a truce in Gaza in May.

With the outbreak of war last year, she showed compassion for the Palestinians killed by Israel in the conflict.

“It is absolutely tragic when there is, anywhere, any loss of innocent life, of innocent civilians, of children,” she said in November.

But when asked specifically about an Israeli strike that killed dozens of people in Jabalia, she said: “We are not telling Israel how it should conduct this war. And so I am not going to talk about that.”

“I am willing to be conquered”

US-made and supplied bombs have continued to fall on people in Gaza ever since, with a suffocating Israeli blockade deepening the humanitarian crisis in the region.

On Thursday, dozens of US medical professionals working in Gaza wrote a letter to Harris, Biden and his wife, Jill Biden, outlining the deteriorating situation in the territory.

“With only marginal exceptions, everyone in Gaza is sick, injured, or both,” they wrote.

Doctors and nurses shared harrowing details of the impact of Israel’s war, including widespread malnutrition, disease and children shot in the head and chest arriving regularly for treatment.

For many Palestinian rights advocates, ending this nightmare takes precedence over other issues. They say they are willing to vote for the vice president if she reconsiders America’s unconditional support for Israel.

“While pretty words will not bring back our dead, actions now can save the living,” YL Al-Sheikh, a Palestinian-American writer and organizer active in the Democratic Socialist Party of America, told Al Jazeera.

“And so it’s not too late to save the rest of Gaza, and it’s not too late to turn the tide for Palestine because we’re not going anywhere. They’re going to have to deal with us. So I think there’s certainly a degree to which we will be receptive to change, and that we should demand it.”

Abdelhadi, the sociologist, also expressed a willingness to vote for Harris if she changes the U.S. approach toward Israel.

“I am willing to be conquered. However, she has not conquered me yet, and only material changes can conquer me,” Abdelhadi told Al Jazeera.

For his part, Habash asked Harris to urgently resolve the issue.

“There are a lot of people who want to find a way to support the eventual Democratic nominee, but it is the vice president’s responsibility to win those votes at this point,” he told Al Jazeera.

Condemning the protesters

Hours before meeting with Netanyahu, Harris released a statement condemning protesters who gathered in Washington, D.C., to protest the Israeli prime minister’s address to Congress.

Some protesters lowered the American flag at Union Station near the Capitol and spray-painted graffiti on the area. But the overwhelming majority of protesters were peaceful.

Harris denounced what she called “despicable acts by unpatriotic protesters and dangerous rhetoric fueled by hate” at the anti-Netanyahu rally.

“I support the right to peacefully protest, but let’s be clear: anti-Semitism, hate, and violence of any kind have no place in our nation,” the vice president said in a statement.

Activists accused Harris’ statement of lacking nuance and failing to acknowledge what protesters had gathered to reject: a rhetoric full of falsehoods from a leader accused of war crimes.

Prosecutors at the International Criminal Court are currently seeking an arrest warrant for Netanyahu for what they describe as “crimes against humanity.”

Given that context, Barmada, the Washington-based organizer, called Harris’s statement about protesters “disturbing.”

She said Harris used the actions of a few individuals to “tarnish the credibility of legitimate protesters who have legitimate concerns about the use of our tax dollars for things that violate American constitutional law, like funding genocide.”

Before condemning the protesters and calling them “pro-Hamas,” Harris’s group took another pro-Israel stance.

Earlier this week, her husband Doug Emhoff told Jewish Democratic groups: “Vice President Harris has been and will be a strong supporter of Israel as a safe, democratic, Jewish state, and she will always ensure that Israel can defend itself — period. That’s who Kamala Harris is.”

Samra’a Luqman, an Arab-American activist in the key state of Michigan, told Al Jazeera that Harris represents the status quo.

“It will continue to effectively arm Israel, even as they act with impunity while paying lip service to trying to win the election,” Luqman said.

Source: Al Jazeera