Kamala Harris won't stand up to Netanyahu in Washington

President Joe Biden speaks in the State Dining Room of the White House with Vice President Kamala Harris and Secretary of State Tony Blinken behind him — Vice President Kamala Harris may soon be overseeing the American side of the Gaza genocide.
SIPA USA

President Joe Biden, the principal supplier of weapons to Israel for the Gaza genocide, will not be president beyond January 2025.

He announced Sunday he will not contest the November 2024 election with former President Donald Trump.

It’s now almost certain that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will outlast the American president who did so much to assist Israeli war crimes even as support from the progressive base of the Democratic Party cratered.

Due to Biden’s illness with COVID-19, whether the two men meet this week when Netanyahu visits Washington remains to be seen. Harris, for her part, is expected to meet with the Israeli prime minister.

There may be a shift in rhetoric from her, but the substance of rock-solid US support for Israel and its actions is not expected to change.

Netanyahu, who heads an apartheid state, will be in Washington to address a joint session of the US Congress on Wednesday. Israel’s apartheid and occupation practices did not nix the bipartisan invite.

This will mark Netanyahu’s fourth such speech, surpassing fellow Palestinian hater Winston “barbaric hordes who ate little but camel dung” Churchill.

The International Court of Justice on Friday spelled out Israel’s apartheid status and “illegal presence” in the occupied West Bank and Gaza.

The vast majority of Washington politicians don’t care enough to stop the US weapons flowing to Israel. Democrats who eventually denounced apartheid South Africa, largely want no part of doing the same with apartheid Israel.

Washington visit

Some Democrats, however, have just enough courage to skip Netanyahu’s speech. Republicans have vilified even this minimal step.

Mike Johnson, speaker in the House of Representatives, has threatened to arrest Democrats who don’t comport themselves as he would like before Netanyahu, even as International Criminal Court prosecutor Karim Khan seeks an arrest warrant for Netanyahu.

“There’s a number of Democrats in the House who have said they are going to boycott the event, and then some others are gonna protest,” Johnson maintained on Thursday.

“We’re gonna have extra sergeants at arms on the floor, and if anybody gets out of hand the speaker of the House will bang the gavel. We’re gonna arrest people if we have to do it. We’re gonna get the message out.”

He’s not going to arrest the widely recognized war criminal Netanyahu, but rather threaten to arrest Democrats who may speak their minds to a foreign leader using US weapons to carry out war crimes and genocide in Gaza. Republicans expect free speech for themselves but quickly threaten it for those advocating anything that smacks of Palestinian rights.

But Democrats themselves contributed to the ugly spectacle of Netanyahu’s visit to Washington. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries joined Johnson in extending the invitation – as did Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell.

Now more than ever, our political leaders should impose an offensive arms embargo on the Israeli military instead of welcoming Prime Minister Netanyahu — a war criminal whom the ICC is seeking an arrest warrant for — to Congress with open arms.

(3/3)
— IfNotNow🔥✡️ (@IfNotNowOrg) July 19, 2024

Reality check

Joe Biden richly deserves his ignominious departure as just days earlier he reached a new low in an interview with Speedy Morman when he claimed, “I’m the guy that did more for the Palestinian community than anybody.”

As I wrote in April, “Genocide Joe thinks you’re stupid.”

Genocide is obviously not helping the Palestinian “community” in Gaza.

Mouin Rabbani, a non-resident fellow at the Center for Conflict and Humanitarian Studies, noted to Rania Khalek last week that Biden uses the term “community” because he doesn’t recognize Palestinians “as a people, let alone a people with a cause, let alone a people with legitimate grievances against his favorite state.”

If Biden’s comments were intended to turn off potential voters disgusted by his arming of Israel for war crimes and genocide in Gaza then his remarks were spot on. It’s as if he wanted to lose support from voters furious over US policy on Gaza.

And by Sunday afternoon he was out of the race.

Genocide deputy

There is no evidence, however, that his genocide deputy Kamala Harris will do anything different.

As I wrote of her and Biden in August 2020: “The worst possible candidate for the top of the ticket will now be joined by perhaps the most anti-Palestinian of the vice presidential candidates.”

Responding to a 2016 Jewish News of Northern California questionnaire, Harris whitewashed the anti-Palestinian discriminatory nature of the Israeli judicial system.

She claimed: “Israel’s supreme court is a beautiful monument to a government founded on the highest of human ideals. The beauty of the architecture and spirit of design left a lasting impression – the straight lines in the building represent the immutable nature of truth, while the curved glass and walls were built to represent the fluid nature of finding justice.”

This is nonsense devoid of any understanding of the discriminatory reality Palestinians face in Israel’s high court. It’s akin to looking at Jim Crow segregationist courts in the American South and extolling their commitment to justice.

At a 2018 talk to AIPAC, Harris compared her love of apartheid Israel to her love of family – “it just was always there.”

A year earlier, in 2017, Harris spoke to AIPAC and fondly recalled the Jewish National Fund (JNF) boxes she used while growing up to collect money for planting trees in Israel. She celebrated seeing such trees years later when she visited.

Harris failed to cite any concern about the JNF’s anti-Palestinian racism or that these trees were planted over the ruins of Palestinian homes and villages demolished by Israel during and after the Nakba of 1948. Instead, she simply repeated propaganda about Israel making the desert bloom.

Now, the Israeli Knesset, or parliament, is trying to entrench an apartheid reality on the Biden-Harris watch.

That right-wing Knesset sent Netanyahu off to Washington with a clear message – as indicated by a 68-9 vote – that it opposes a Palestinian state.

Knesset members want one apartheid state from the river to the sea as Netanyahu’s map at the UN last September clearly indicated by including the West Bank, Gaza Strip and Golan Heights as part of Israel.

Nothing in Harris’ history of downplaying or disregarding Palestinian rights suggests she will stand up to Netanyahu during his visit and say the US has had enough of Israeli apartheid and war crimes.

On the contrary, there’s much that signals she – like Biden and Trump – would continue to coddle the apartheid state committing war crimes in Gaza.

She has repeatedly expressed support for Israel’s “right to defend itself,” while voicing what are clearly meaningless professions of concern for Palestinian civilians. The words on civilians are belied by the actions of the administration.

Israel has a right to defend itself. As Israel does so, it matters how.

Too many innocent Palestinians have been killed. As Israel pursues its military objectives in Gaza, we believe Israel must do more to protect innocent civilians. pic.twitter.com/2LRNGESU8N
— Vice President Kamala Harris (@VP) December 3, 2023

Palestinians remain “lesser than” for Harris, Democrats, Trump and Republicans. Voters sickened by Israeli apartheid and the Gaza genocide have no good presidential choices from the two major parties.

This might have been a powerful moment with the first woman of color on the cusp of the presidency after centuries of racial discrimination and misogyny. Instead, it’s shrouded in sadness and rage as she has abetted Biden and much of the Democratic Party in their waging of genocide against the Palestinian people in Gaza.