In her first week officially running for president as the de facto Democratic nominee, there’s been a lot of confusion over Vice President Kamala Harris’ position on Gaza. After the moral and electoral nightmare that was President Joe Biden’s 9.5 months of lockstep support for Israel’s campaign of destruction and mass killing, many are looking for a sign—any signal—that a Harris White House would change course. This desire for good news is understandable, but in the rush to turn the page on the horrific Biden record, one must be sober and honest about what Harris is actually saying—and, more importantly, not saying—on the fact of genocide in Gaza.
Thus far, we’ve seen no evidence she would break from the White House’s current position, and in key ways she appears to be latching on to the same obfuscating tactics of her 81-year-old predecessor.
In a time of ever-shifting focus, sophisticated social media narratives, and the genuine fear of a second Trump term, it’s easy to simply vibe one’s way into thinking Harris is breaking from Biden on Gaza.
Now, this isn’t to say Harris won’t eventually change—or that her position is cemented—but it’s essential to be clear-eyed and know what meaningful change would look like in the event she actually does go beyond the superficial tweaks.
First, what we do know and where we currently are: As I laid out last week for In These Times, Palestine solidarity activists, the National Uncommitted Movement, and mainstream labor unions have shifted their demands of the White House from simply calling for a “ceasefire” to ending military aid to israel. The reason for this, as I’ve been documenting for months, is that the White House PR machine has successfully warped the commonly understood definition of ceasefire to mean something else entirely. The term, based on its usage in half a dozen other Gaza bombings over the past 17 years, was broadly understood to mean a demand was for the US to use its dispositive leverage to compel Israel to withdraw from Gaza and end the bombing. But the White House—after initially banning everyone in their administration from using the word—began to embrace the label “ceasefire” on the eve of the Michigan primary in February, but shifted its definition to mean only a “temporary pause.” Basically, the White House supports a brief pause in fighting followed by continued, indefinite support for Israel waging war in Gaza under the unachievable auspices of “eliminating Hamas.” As such, they can continue to appeal to open-ended, bad-faith “ceasefire negotiations” that must be “pushed”—while painting themselves as a neutral, powerless third party.
Evidence of Israel’s bad faith “negotiations” was made undeniable early Wednesday morning when they apparently killed the head of the Hamas ceasefire delegation, Ismail Haniyeh, while he visited Iran for their presidential swearing-in ceremony. This is not consistent with a party seeking to “end the war,” but it is consistent with a party that has pledged––as they have dozens of times, including in front of Congress last week––to achieve “total victory.” US officials and pundits simply ignoring this reality and projecting peaceful intentions onto them won’t make it so.
But this fictitious support by the White House for a “ceasefire”—which we will call NuCeasefire—has worked to perfection, confusing liberals and leftists alike and lowering the temperature on the protests. The US is no longer seen as the sole patron of a country leveling Gaza that could stop backing genocidal acts whenever they choose. It can now be seen as a force of peace, brokering a mysterious “ceasefire negotiation” process that simply never gets anywhere as deaths in Gaza continue mounting.
If anything, savvy and convincing use of Empathy-Speak while still rubber-stamping shipments of weapons and munitions could be less of a “step in the right direction” and more a harbinger of an increasingly sophisticated bullshitting media apparatus.
From what we’ve seen of Harris’ comments on Gaza since Biden withdrew from the race, this appears to also be her position, with modest changes in tone. Harris’ public comments made before and after meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu the day after his July 23 speech before Congress indicate that she has settled on a combination of bleeding-heart empathy-speak and vague appeals to NuCeasefire.
Many have noted a shift in “tone,” but this is true only if one limits the Biden administration to Biden. While it’s true President Biden hasn’t really bothered even acknowledging Palestinians exists, much less are human—and Harris rhetorically doing so is a change—Secretary of State Antony Blinken has trafficked in similar crocodile tears, so it’s not clear what Harris’s use of Empathy-Speak really counts for. If anything, savvy and convincing use of Empathy-Speak while still rubber-stamping shipments of weapons and munitions could be less of a “step in the right direction” and more a harbinger of an increasingly sophisticated bullshitting media apparatus.
Part of this media curation process aimed at low-information liberals is the specter of meaningful disagreement between Harris and Netanyahu. Biden aides have been feeding these stories to the press for months in a trope so stale I wrote about it for The Real News back in December. The most egregious laundromat for these self-serving non-events, as I’ve noted many times before, is Barak Ravid at Axios. So it’s entirely predictable that the first outlet to run an “Increased Tensions Between Harris and Netanyahu” story was Ravid, a White House stenographer whose primary beat is creating the illusion of anger and dissent from an administration that keeps, mysteriously, signing off on every single weapons and munitions shipments to Israel.
A common rejoinder to the left’s criticism of Harris not shifting policy on Gaza is that she simply cannot. She’s running for office while at the same serving in an administration, and she can’t openly break from the president. While it seems morally stunted to not act as if there aren’t more important things in life than loyalty to one’s boss (say, for example, ending a genocide), this evasion misses the obvious solution to this problem: Harris can have conversations with—and make assurances to—independent groups who could very easily vouch for her. There is no shortage of independent Palestinian groups or individuals (not tasked with simply electing Democrats) who would be more than happy to take her phone call, listen to her pitch, and endorse her candidacy in exchange for an actual end to the mass killing of Palestinians. Alas, these phone calls have not been forthcoming and, as the vice president of the United States, we have little reason to believe it’s because she doesn’t have their contact information.
Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-MI), the sole Palestinian American in Congress, has said she is withholding her endorsement of Harris until she hears a credible plan to end US backing of Israel’s “war.” Thus far she has not mentioned seeing any such changes.
So, will a meaningful shift in policy come? It’s still possible, and one should not stop pressuring. Indeed, this is the aim of the mass protests planned for the DNC in late August. But one should not let rose-tinted campaigning get in the way of what is actually said and what policies are actually being laid out. In a time of ever-shifting focus, sophisticated social media narratives, and the genuine fear of a second Trump term, it’s easy to simply vibe one’s way into thinking Harris is breaking from Biden on Gaza. But one must stay focused and keep in mind three central questions: (1) Are kids still being bombed? (2) Are US bombs still being shipped? (3) Is the person in question refusing to commit to stopping the shipment of said bombs? If the answer to all three questions is yes, then bleeding-heart box checking and vague appeals to “ceasefire negotiations” don’t matter much at all.
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