By Daniel J. Samet, JNS
A Harris administration would do more than offer woke platitudes; it would implement anti-Israel policies.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu addresses Congress Wednesday at a bad time in U.S.-Israel relations. Making it even worse is the likely anointing of Kamala Harris as the Democratic presidential nominee.
Harris, who tellingly won’t attend Netanyahu’s speech, has a very anti-Israel record. If she becomes president, there will be daylight between her administration and the Jewish state that will come at the expense of American security.
Consider her conduct throughout Israel’s war against Hamas. Instead of giving strong rhetorical support to Israel—as she has notably done to Ukraine—Harris has berated the Israelis for fighting back against genocidal terrorists. It’s almost as if she doesn’t want Israel to win the war.
Harris has consistently reprimanded Israel over the humanitarian situation in Gaza without laying blame at the feet of Hamas, the real culprit.
At the Munich Security Conference in February, just four months after Israel suffered one of the most gruesome terror attacks the world has ever seen, Harris pledged to reward the perpetrators with a state of their own.
“There cannot be, in my opinion, peace and security for that region—for the people of Israel or the Palestinians and the people of Gaza—without a two-state solution,” she said.
The next month, Harris called for “an immediate ceasefire” in Gaza that would have thrown a lifeline to Hamas.
Also in March, she warned the Israelis not to invade Hamas’s last stronghold in Rafah. “I have studied the maps,” she said with more than a trace of self-satisfaction. Forgive Israel for not following her tactical advice.
Closer to home, Harris has praised pro-Hamas protesters on campus, saying, “They are showing exactly what the human emotion should be.”
A Harris administration would do more than offer woke platitudes: It would implement anti-Israel policies.
Harris has surrounded herself with people hostile to the Jewish state. Her closest foreign policy aide, the vice president's National Security Advisor Philip Gordon, is a fierce critic of the Netanyahu government and was one of the architects of Barack Obama’s nuclear deal with Iran that handed billions of dollars to the mullahs. He would be a leading candidate for a top national security post in her administration.
Then there are the many young anti-Zionist progressives who would be the rank and file in a Harris administration. To them, Israel is an imperialist, white supremacist state rivaled in its wickedness only by the United States itself.
These are not the makings of an administration that would rightly back Israel to the hilt.
Harris shares none of the reflexive Zionism that President Joe Biden acquired over his half-century in public life. Rather she’s the harbinger of an anti-Israel consensus that has taken over the Democratic Party grassroots and is taking over the Democratic establishment.
Past Democratic presidents skeptical of Israel—namely, Barack Obama and Jimmy Carter—at least were tempered by Democratic lawmakers and administration officials who understood that a strong Israel was in America's interest. That wouldn’t be the case during a Harris presidency. Congressional Democrats are increasingly turning on Israel, as are those who would staff a Harris administration. There would be few checks on Harris’s anti-Israel instincts.
Israel’s trials aren’t going away anytime soon. Once the war against Hamas ends, Israelis face an even greater threat to their north in the form of Hezbollah. The greatest threat of all is that of the Iranian theocrats racing for a nuke who would love nothing more than to wipe Israel off the map. This is not the time to cast doubt on America’s commitment to Israel.
The United States needs a commander-in-chief who will stand with our strongest ally in the Middle East. Harris promises to do the opposite.
