Harris Campaign Tries to Straddle the Fence on Israel-Hamas War But it’s obvious which way Kamala leans. by Joseph Klein
https://www.frontpagemag.com/harris-campaign-tries-to-straddle-the-fence-on-israel-hamas-war/
Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democrat Party’s nominee for president, is trying to walk a political tightrope on the war between Israel and Hamas in Gaza. On the one hand, to court as many moderate Jewish voters as possible, she repeats her canned statement of support for Israel’s right to defend itself, even going so far just recently to brand Hamas as “terrorists.” But at the same time, she is also currently entertaining the idea of an arms embargo against the Jewish state, according to pro-Palestinian advocates who spoke with her just before her campaign rally last week in Detroit, Michigan.
In which direction will Harris go if she is elected president? Her pattern of past actions and statements point to her leaning into the pro-Hamas wing of the Democrat Party.
For example, Harris has expressed support for the anti-Israel, anti-Semitic protestors on college campuses, declaring that they are “showing exactly what the human emotion should be, as a response to Gaza.” She chose to snub Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s address to a joint session of Congress, rather than attend in her capacity as president of the Senate.
In her first consequential decision as the Democrats’ presidential nominee, Harris pleased the Democrat Party’s left-wing, progressive base by skipping over Pennsylvania’s Governor Josh Shapiro to be her running mate. Instead, she selected left-wing radical Governor Tim Walz of Minnesota. Pro-Hamas agitators had conducted a “No Genocide Josh” campaign against Shapiro, a Jew who supports Israel. Not wanting to risk losing the votes of Arab and Muslim Americans, concentrated in such battleground states as Michigan, Harris gave the Jew-Hating “No Genocide Josh” crowd what they wanted.
“A man is known by the company he keeps,” as the saying goes, and Walz kept company with radical Muslim cleric Asad Zaman, who expressed solidarity with Palestinians on the very same day Hamas led the savage genocidal attack inside Israel. The Washington Examiner reported that as governor, Walz hosted Imam Zaman of the Muslim American Society of Minnesota at least five times. “Imam Zaman has a troubling history of playing into classic anti-Jewish themes and justifying violence against Israel,” an Anti-Defamation League spokesperson told the Examiner.
U.S. prosecutors pointed out in a court brief that the Muslim American Society “was founded as the overt arm of the Muslim Brotherhood in America.” Hamas too was founded as an arm of the Muslim Brotherhood, which has a violent history of supporting terrorism against “infidels” in the name of jihad. Nevertheless, according to state records reviewed by the Washington Examiner, Governor Walz’s administration awarded over $100,000 in funding to the Muslim American Society’s Minnesota branch.
On top of all that, Walz, the candidate of “joy,” revealed what makes him so happy at times: thinking about House “Squad” member Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn), who has a history of making anti-Semitic comments. “When I’m having a tough day …. and I’m feeling kinda down and the world is pressing on me, I think, ‘Ilhan Omar is a congresswoman,’ and it just brightens you up,” Walz said.
Picking the host of a Jew-hating Muslim cleric and a fan of Ilhan Omar as her running mate, rather than a Jew who supports Israel, Kamala clearly excited pro-Hamas activists, whose support she needs to win a close election. And that is only a fraction of her efforts to reach out to anti-Semites.
Before her campaign rally in Detroit on August 7th, Harris took time out to speak with Abbas Alawieh and Layla Elabed, who were waiting in an exclusive invitee line to take a photo with her. Alawieh and Elabed are the co-founders of the Uncommitted National Movement, which encouraged supporters to vote “uncommitted” in the Democrat Party presidential primaries but is very committed to advancing Hamas’ agenda. They demand a U.S. arms embargo against Israel and a so-called permanent “ceasefire,” which would enable the terrorists to rebuild in preparation for launching more October 7-style massacres, rapes, torture, and kidnappings of civilians within Israel.
Instead of immediately moving on to greet the other hundred or so people waiting in line at the Detroit rally for a photo, Harris paid special attention to what Alawieh and Elabed had to say. They told Harris that they wanted to support her candidacy in key battleground states that she needed to win, but in return they wanted her to consider their demand for the arms embargo.
The Democrats’ standard bearer in the 2024 presidential election did not miss a beat when Alawieh and Elabed asked for a sit-down meeting with Harris regarding their demand. Harris indicated she was open to having such a meeting and introduced them to members of her staff, according to a statement issued on behalf of the two Uncommitted National Movement leaders.
When pro-Hamas protesters later tried to interrupt her speech at the rally by chanting “Kamala, Kamala, you can’t hide, we won’t vote for genocide” and demanding that she support an arms embargo, Harris responded by focusing on the importance of defeating her opponent: “If you want Donald Trump to win, say that. Otherwise, I’m speaking.”
Kamala did not state her position one way or the other on the arms embargo when given an opportunity to do so during her speech at the Detroit rally. The next day, her security adviser tried to do damage control by posting on social media that Harris “will always ensure Israel is able to defend itself against Iran and Iran-backed terrorist groups” and that she “does not support an arms embargo on Israel.”
The Harris-Walz campaign puts out statements like this in Harris’s name to garner the support of as many Jewish voters and others who support Israel as possible. However, Harris remains mum herself on where she stands on the arms embargo issue to avoid offending Arab American and Muslim American voters who support the Palestinians’ so-called “resistance” (i.e., terrorist campaign) against Israel.
In her first press encounter of her presidential campaign on August 8th, Harris had a chance to clarify her stance on the arms embargo issue when she spoke with reporters briefly on an airport tarmac. She chose not to do so.
At a rally in Arizona on August 9th, Harris told Israel-hating agitators who were disrupting her campaign speech that “I respect your voices.” Her “respect” for their voices is reminiscent of the empathy she expressed towards the pro-Hamas mobs intimidating Jews on college campuses, whom she said were “showing exactly what the human emotion should be, as a response to Gaza.”
In another brief exchange with reporters on August 10th, Harris tried to have it both ways. She was asked to comment on an Israeli airstrike earlier that day aimed at terrorists operating in a Hamas command and control center, which was embedded inside a mosque in a school compound. According to the Hamas-controlled health authorities in Gaza, “more than 80” Gazans were killed.
Accepting these figures at face value, which do not distinguish between civilian and terrorist deaths, Harris said that “there are far too many civilians who have been killed” in Gaza. “I mean, Israel has a right to go after the terrorists that are Hamas. But as I have said many, many times, they also have, I believe, an important responsibility to avoid civilian casualties.”
When given another opportunity to state her position on the demand for an arms embargo against Israel, Harris avoided answering.
Kamala has also failed to acknowledge that Hamas is fully responsible for the civilian casualties in Gaza since the war started, not Israel. Israel is doing its best to minimize civilian casualties despite fighting a terrorist enemy who uses civilians as human shields and hides fighters, command centers, and weapons within or under mosques, schools, hospitals, and other civilian facilities.
As Mark Penn, a past adviser to Hillary Clinton and to former President Bill Clinton, put it:
Hamas makes wild claims and Harris immediately responds to them as facts. Any serious presidential candidate would have said they were getting the facts on the Israeli strike (which Israel is providing) and then condemned Iran for the attack on US troops in Syria and possibly even mentioned the mass drone attack by Hezbollah.
Kamala Harris is trying to play both ends against the middle, placating her left-wing radical base while also trying to keep moderate Jewish voters and other supporters of Israel in her camp by making empty promises to support Israel’s right of self-defense. But based on Harris’ troubling record, it is disturbingly evident that the Jewish state will get the short end of the stick if she becomes president.
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