No Change in Gaza Policy? Really?
Despite charges of genocide, mass starvation, thousands of dead children, and the near-entire destruction of Gaza, when Kamala Harris was asked if she would “do anything differently” on US policy toward Israel in its bloody war, she said no.
President Joe Biden embraces Vice President Kamala Harris as he speaks during a campaign rally at the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers (IBEW) Local 5 in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, on September 2, 2024. (Brendan Smialowski /AFP via Getty Images)
In her first major interview since accepting the Democratic Party’s nomination, Kamala Harris said on Friday that her Israel policy will be no different than Joe Biden’s.
After noting that Biden’s policy had failed to bring an end to Israel’s protracted assault on Gaza, CNN’s Dana Bash asked the vice president, “Would you do anything differently? For example, would you withhold some US weapons shipments to Israel?”
Harris responded that Israel has the right to defend itself, recounted the horrors of October 7, lamented that far too many innocent Palestinians had been killed since then, and stressed that “we have to get a deal done” that would end hostilities and bring the hostages home. Bash then repeated her question: “But no change in policy in terms of arms and so forth?”
“No.” Harris replied, before reiterating the need for a cease-fire and hostage release deal. All told, Harris said “we have to get a deal done” four times.
Such a deal remains elusive because the United States continues to send weapons to Israel. A historic amount of US military aid enables the Netanyahu government in Israel to reject hostage release deals and instead sabotage cease-fire negotiations, extend its war on Gaza, and expand the war regionally.
Without a torrent of US weapons, Israel’s war machine would sputter to a halt. To quote retired Israeli general Yitzhak Brik, “All of our missiles, the ammunition, the precision-guided bombs, all the airplanes and bombs, it’s all from the US. The minute they turn off the tap, you can’t keep fighting. You have no capability. . . . Everyone understands that we can’t fight this war without the United States. Period,” he said.
In other words, an arms embargo unlocks the cease-fire, but Harris just ruled out implementing one.
This sums up the Biden administration’s policy: reassure the public that it’s working around the clock for a cease-fire while playing spoiler by arming Israel unconditionally in the background. Biden, Harris, and most of the Democratic Party are trying to cast the United States as the hopeful, impartial, and ultimately powerless mediator and not the chief enabler of the genocide in Gaza. It’s diplomatic theater.
Harris’s commitment to unconditional military aid is a tacit endorsement of Israel’s genocidal policy in Gaza, land grab in the West Bank, and escalation with Iran. Worryingly, Harris released a statement over the weekend that appeared to echo Benjamin Netanyahu’s call to fight indefinitely until Hamas is defeated, a strategic aim that disqualifies the possibility of a cease-fire. “The threat Hamas poses to the people of Israel — and American citizens in Israel — must be eliminated,” Harris’s statement read.
US Voters Want an Arms Embargo, US Law Demands One
Harris’s anti-arms-embargo position isn’t politically savvy or democratic.
In June, more than six in ten voters said the United States should not send weapons to Israel, up 9 percentage points since the CBS News Poll asked the same question in October. This includes 62 percent of independents — up 7 percentage points since October — and 77 percent of Democrats, up 24 points since October. Most voters appear to want an arms embargo, but Harris doesn’t.
That said, what Harris or voters want should be besides the point. Why? Because US law is clear about prohibiting military aid to countries that chronically violate human rights, and Israel is a chronic human rights violator.
The Biden administration repeatedly claims that it doesn’t have enough evidence to link US-supplied weapons to specific Israeli war crimes that would justify cutting off military aid. But as I recently demonstrated, there’s more than enough evidence out there to warrant turning off the flow of arms to Israel.
In a recent article for Quincy Institute’s Responsible Statecraft, I listed twenty cases in which Israeli forces committed apparent war crimes with US-supplied weapons. For each case, there’s sufficient evidence that the attack violated international law and sufficient forensic evidence that a US-made weapon was used in the attack. Each attack occurred after October 7 with a US weapon among the types supplied by the Biden administration since October 7.
Considering the high threshold for an attack to be listed, the Biden administration’s policy of arming Israel largely in secret, and Israel’s restrictions and attacks on reporting from Gaza, twenty cases is both a staggering amount and nowhere near an exhaustive account.
Meanwhile, Harris is positioning herself as the candidate who will uphold the rule of law. This is breathtakingly hypocritical: continuing to arm Israel certainly or almost certainly violates plenty of domestic and international laws, including Section 620I of the Foreign Assistance Act, Section 620M of the Foreign Assistance Act, Section 502B of the Foreign Assistance Act, the War Crimes Act, parts of the Arms Export Control Act, Common Article 1 of the 1949 Geneva Conventions, Article 1 of the 1948 Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, and others.
On Friday, Harris implied on national television that she plans on breaking all of them.
A Nonnegotiable Genocide?
Air any of these concerns, and there’s a good chance you’ll hear some version of this typical partisan response: “Well, you realize Donald Trump wouldn’t be any better.” That response implies that, for the Democratic Party, enabling the genocide of Palestinians is nonnegotiable.
Harris’s recent interview with CNN appeared to confirm that.