[Blog] Kamala Harris on Gaza: the campaign needs to change course to win the White House in November

The following piece was published on Teen Vogue's website on July 29. It discusses recent protests in the United States against the Biden administration's support for Israel's actions in Gaza, which have raised concerns among young voters disillusioned with the political system's handling of the situation. President Biden's decision to drop out of the presidential race in favor of Vice President Kamala Harris has been seen as a positive sign of Democratic leadership responding to public discontent. Harris, along with many Democratic lawmakers, notably skipped Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's speech to Congress, reflecting a growing frustration with U.S. complicity in Israel's actions. However...

We are reproducing the piece below as published on teenvogue.com.

In this op-ed, the cofounder of If Not Now and subject of the film Israelism urges the Kamala Harris campaign to listen to young people's concerns about the war in Gaza.

For the last nine and a half months, those of us protesting the United States government’s support for Israel’s disastrous actions in Gaza were consistently told that our protests of the Biden administration would hand the election to former President Donald Trump.

The cynical demand that was made of young voters — the demographic most supportive of a permanent ceasefire in Gaza and of halting weapons transfers to Israel — was to simply avert our gaze from Israel’s campaign of bombardment and what Save the Children described as the mass starvation of a million Palestinian children in Gaza, and ignore that President Biden had essentially endorsed sending police onto college campuses to disrupt anti-war student encampments this spring. This led many young people to conclude that our political system is so fundamentally corrupt and cruel that it isn’t worth it to engage.

But over the last week in Washington, DC, we’ve seen glimmers of hope. President Joe Biden’s announcement that he would drop out of the presidential race and pass the baton to Vice President Kamala Harris was a surprising and welcome signal that Democratic leadership is listening to voters. To win in November, Democrats should embrace that possibility of change.

Then, on Wednesday, Harris skipped Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s speech to Congress, along with about half of the Democratic caucus — more than double the number that skipped Netanyahu's 2015 speech that railed against the Obama administration’s Iran deal.

Meanwhile, inside the Capitol, Netanyahu — a corrupt, accused war criminal — received repeated rounds of standing ovations, which was a sickening reminder of the depth of US complicity in Israel’s crimes. Netanyahu is presiding over what has plausibly been called a genocide by the International Court of Justice (ICJ); he belongs in the Hague, not in Congress. A man who has essentially green-lit the killing of more than 38,000 Palestinians, according to the United Nation's estimate, repeatedly crossed our own government’s laws and stated red lines, cozied up to far right leaders and movements across the world, and is escalating tensions across the region deserves more than just a cold shoulder.
Harris’s speech, which followed her private meeting with Netanyahu, was markedly different than anything that Biden — who has barely spared a word of empathy for Palestinians — has said. But her vows not to “look away” or “be silent” about the suffering of millions are meaningless and hypocritical if she does not use her power to take action: to stop the bombs and secure a ceasefire and hostage exchange.

Without the endorsement of material consequences for Israel’s actions — such as the withholding of arms transfers, demanding the restoration of funding to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency, and ensuring that Israel allows humanitarian aid into Gaza — some voters will continue to see Democrats as abetting Israel’s horrific decimation of the Gaza Strip. A Democratic Party that is serious about inspiring hope would work to end the war both because it’s wrong and because it’s bad politics.

As if there were any doubts about where Netanyahu stands on US politics, look no further than his Twitter feed: To conclude his trip to DC, he posted a series of photos with Trump, including one in which Netanyahu is holding a hat he gifted to Trump emblazoned with the words “Total victory.” The double entendre of "total victory" here is obvious — victory for Trump and in Gaza. Netanyahu shared no photos of himself with Biden or Harris.

Of course, it’s not just about Gaza. The Knesset, Israel’s parliament, recently overwhelmingly passed a resolution that opposes a two state solution and continues to formalize its annexation of the West Bank. This runs counter to decades of US foreign policy, and to Harris’s own stated position. Meanwhile, the ICJ ruled that Israel is committing crimes of apartheid against Palestinians. The Democratic Party needs to catch up with its base, yes, but also with facts on the ground.

In addition, Democrats have mishandled the domestic ripple effects of this war by helping fuel the Republican-generated moral panic about antisemitism on college campuses. Democratic congresspeople were active participants in GOP-led show-trials of university administrators and professors. During those hearings, Republican members of Congress used talking points that, The Guardian reported, were likely supplied by organizations affiliated with Israel’s extremist government. They smeared the entire anti-war movement as antisemitic and railed against courses on racism and colonialism.

This union between the pro-Israel movement and the pro-school censorship campaign culminated in a speech at the Republican National Convention by Shabbos Kestenbaum, a Jewish Harvard student who campaigned to oust Harvard president Claudine Gay and is now suing the university for antisemitism and a supposed failure to protect its students. Kestenbaum’s lawsuit alleges that a campus screening of the film Israelism, made by Jewish filmmakers chronicling the shifting views on Israel among young American Jews, caused him “anxiety and gross discomfort.” (Full disclosure, I am a protagonist in the film.) Kestenbaum was met with standing ovations as he endorsed Trump’s calls to “expel foreign students who violate our laws, harass our Jewish classmates, and desecrate our freedoms,” clearly in reference to anti-war campus protests.
Kestenbaum’s performance at the convention underscores how concerns about antisemitism on college campuses have become a cornerstone of the GOP's campaign to dismantle the teaching of critical history and theory in schools, to criminalize anti-racist protests by students and professors, and to use increased policing to silence dissent, another tool to scapegoat and deport immigrants.

Politicians looking to inspire the trust of young people should not dismiss the fact that college students across the country experienced this draconian crackdown at their schools — more than 3,000 students were arrested on dozens of campuses — and some see Democrats as the face of this effort. These young people include thousands of Jews who were central participants in Gaza solidarity encampments, who had to endure the same repression and surveillance as their non-Jewish peers and the erasure and demonization of their Jewish identities.

This is also why someone like Governor Josh Shapiro of Pennsylvania is the wrong choice for Harris's vice president. Over the past nine months, he’s staked out particularly divisive positions on the war in Gaza and campus free speech, claiming that peaceful pro-Palestine protesters threatened the safety of Jewish students and endorsing the use of police to break up the encampments. In a time when the Democratic Party must come together to win the presidency, a polarizing VP pick would be a disaster. Inspiring youth turnout means taking young people seriously as essential stakeholders in the future of this country.

In a statement, Harris made the all-too-predictable misstep of condemning a fringe group of protesters demonstrating against Netanyahu’s visit, focusing on the actions of a small group at Union Station when the Capitol was filled with thousands of Americans of all backgrounds — including families of Israeli hostages — expressing their opposition.

Months after the Uncommitted campaign inspired more than half a million Democratic primary voters to voice their discontent with President Biden’s Gaza policy, it is far past time to listen. Over the past few weeks, young people, progressives, and voters of color in France and the United Kingdom have shown that their frustration with the war in Gaza can have significant electoral impacts. We’d be foolish to ignore the writing on the wall here at home: If Democrats don't take seriously the movement for Palestinian freedom, holding Israel accountable for its war crimes, and reversing course on the criminalization of protest, Vice President Harris will struggle to inspire important segments of her base to turn out.

On Wednesday, surrounded by those who cheered for the man presiding over the slaughter of her people, Rashida Tlaib, the only Palestinian American in Congress, stood holding a sign that read, “Guilty of genocide.” Behind her, Congressman Jerry Nadler stood holding a book, a critical biography of Netanyahu, who, earlier in the day, Nadler had called “the worst leader in Jewish history.” Nadler could have joined the estimated 136 other Democrats — including Sara Jacobs, the youngest Jewish member of Congress — in skipping the speech in protest. He could have used his presence in the room to actually stand up to Netanyahu, as Tlaib and the families of some Israeli hostages did. Nadler’s act of trolling represents the Democratic Party’s past; Tlaib’s clarity and courage is the future.

Along with the fun memes and impressive fundraising hauls, the Harris team has an opportunity to inspire and build trust with an important constituency that has long felt insulted and ignored. The Democrats would be wise not to throw it away.

BY SIMONE ZIMMERMAN