RUTHFULLY YOURS

The Biden administration’s hopelessly confused approach to navigating the domestic politics of Israel’s defensive war against Hamas was reflected in Vice President Kamala Harris’s equally confused remarks on the subject over the weekend. In a speech that touched on the ongoing conflict in the Gaza Strip, Harris tried to please all sides of the issue — and succeeded only in irritating all parties equally.

In calling for an “immediate ceasefire,” Harris first put the onus on Hamas. “There is a deal on the table,” she observed. “Hamas needs to agree to that deal.” That outcome would allow the reunification of “the hostages with their families” and “provide immediate relief to the people of Gaza,” Harris noted. Fair enough. But following this throat-clearing exercise, Harris devoted the remainder of her speech to castigating Israel over its conduct of the war that erupted with the October 7 massacre. In the process, the vice president strongly suggested the true obstacle to peace was not the terrorist entity that inaugurated this war but its victim.

“People in Gaza are starving. The conditions are inhumane, and our common humanity compels us to act,” Harris said of the horrors that prevail in Gaza today. “The Israeli government must do more to significantly increase the flow of aid. No excuses.” She went on to imply that the humanitarian disaster unfolding in formerly Hamas-controlled territory is an outgrowth of Israeli cruelty. To mitigate the disaster, Israel must “open new border crossings,” “restore basic services” to and “promote order in Gaza,” and avoid imposing any “unnecessary restrictions on the delivery of aid.”

To hear Harris tell it, you could be forgiven for believing (as, surely, most of her unwitting constituents do) that Israel has gone to great lengths to deprive Gazans of access to humanitarian relief. In fact, Israel negotiated an agreement with Egypt as early as October 18 to allow the transit of humanitarian-aid convoys through the Rafah crossing — and that agreement has been in effect since October 21. Additionally, Israel reopened the Karem Shalom crossing into Gaza directly from Israeli territory in mid December, and properly inspected aid has flown uninterrupted through that checkpoint since late last year, despite “threats of sniper fire, anti-tank missile shooting, among other threats to civilian life.” Since the outset of hostilities, the Israeli government maintains that 14,545 trucks have delivered 267,970 tons of humanitarian aid to Gazans.

That is insufficient — not just according to Kamala Harris but to the Biden administration, which began theatrically supplying Gazans with pallets of humanitarian aid from the air over the weekend in an effort designed to highlight Israel’s lockdown of the Strip. In her speech, Harris emphasized the difficulty experienced not just by foreign entities but by Israel in attempting to distribute assistance. “Just a few days ago, we saw hungry, desperate people approach aid trucks, simply trying to secure food for their families after weeks of nearly no aid reaching Northern Gaza,” Harris said. “And they were met with gunfire and chaos.” She did not go as far as some of her Democratic colleagues, who raced to accuse Israel of wantonly massacring Gazan aid-seekers, but she didn’t dispute that allegation, either.

The confusion Harris declined to clear up has proven useful to those who perpetuate the notion that Israel has failed to abide by the laws of armed conflict in prosecuting its campaign against Hamas. On February 29, a convoy of 38 trucks delivering aid to northern Gaza — that part of the Strip Israel supposedly closed off to the outside world — was set upon by a crowd of Palestinians. The images that the Israel Defense Forces captured from the air and released to the public confirm the heartrending nature of the scene that unfolded. In the ensuing chaos, dozens of Gazans were killed or injured amid a stampede. Some of the truck drivers, fearing for their safety, drove into the crowds.

That episode has been conflated with a contemporaneous event elsewhere in the Strip, where IDF soldiers were providing security for a humanitarian convoy with the aim of preventing Hamas from pilfering the aid for itself. According to a preliminary IDF investigation, those soldiers felt threatened by the crowd and discharged warning shots to disperse the “several individuals” menacing Israeli troops. When that failed, the soldiers reportedly fired at the extremities of the Palestinians who descended on them posing “an immediate threat,” causing several of the hundreds of casualties that occurred on February 29.

It is true that this is only preliminary information, and it comes exclusively from the Israeli government. But if Jerusalem were attempting to mislead the world about its complicity in this event, why would the IDF admit that its soldiers engaged the Gazans who threatened them with live fire at all? It is obvious and undeniable that the scale of the human tragedy in Gaza is abhorrent, but what does it serve Israel to confirm that by releasing unedited footage of desperate civilian raids on aid convoys? This may be a one-sided assessment — one Harris did not contradict, despite her access to what American intelligence concluded about the events of February 29 — but it’s more transparency than Israel’s enemy is capable of.

Harris might have used her speech to clear up some of the confusion that persists among Israel’s progressive critics, but she did not. Indeed, through omission and implication, she lent credence to the anti-Israel calumnies that have become currency on the American left. What the Biden administration needs is for Israel’s war to end in success with all due alacrity. Only then will the White House enjoy a return on the political capital it has invested in Israel’s effort neutralize Hamas. Only then will Israel and the international community be able to establish a post-Hamas social compact that provides Gazans with better prospects for the future and creates the conditions necessary to provide international aid organizations with less fettered access to the Strip.

But speeches like the one Harris gave over the weekend won’t bring that outcome closer, assuming the administration is even aware that’s the outcome it needs.