Kamala Harris shifts tone on Gaza, but advocates say US voters want more

Washington, DC – Vice President Kamala Harris says she will “not be silent” in the face of Palestinian suffering, as Israel’s war in Gaza rages on.

But Palestinian rights advocates want to know exactly what that means for United States foreign policy.

The vice president — and the Democrats’ likely nominee for the presidency — emphasised the plight of Palestinians in Gaza after meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Thursday. Nevertheless, she pledged ongoing support for Israel.

Activists say expressing sympathy for Palestinians without pursuing a meaningful shift away from the US’s policy of unconditional military and diplomatic support will not help Harris win back voters alienated by President Joe Biden’s approach to the war.

“Without an actual commitment to stop killing the children of Gaza, I don’t care about her empathy for them,” said Eman Abdelhadi, a sociologist at the University of Chicago. She stressed that the US bears “responsibility” for the atrocities committed against Palestinians.

“To be empathetic to someone that you’re shooting in the head is not exactly laudable. We don’t need empathy from these people. We need them to stop providing the weapons and the money that is actively killing the people that they’re supposedly empathising with.”

Moreover, while Harris’s comments have been characterised as a shift away from Biden’s rhetoric, critics point out the vice president did not articulate any new policy positions.

What did Harris say?

After holding talks with Netanyahu on Thursday, Harris delivered a televised statement on the conflict where she reasserted her “unwavering commitment” to Israel and promised to always ensure that the country can “defend itself”.

The vice president then pivoted to describing the horrific conditions in Gaza without naming Israel as the party responsible for the humanitarian crisis there.

“I also expressed with the prime minister my serious concern about the scale of human suffering in Gaza, including the death of far too many innocent civilians,” Harris said, calling the war “devastating”.

“The images of dead children and desperate, hungry people fleeing for safety — sometimes displaced for the second, third or fourth time — we cannot look away in the face of these tragedies. We cannot allow ourselves to become numb to the suffering, and I will not be silent.”

She also voiced support for Biden’s multi-phased ceasefire proposal to achieve an end to the war and release Israeli captives in Gaza. Israel and Hamas have been negotiating indirectly for months to finalise the agreement, but a solution has remained elusive so far.

At least on the surface, Harris’s tone appeared like a departure from Biden’s pro-Israel statements. “Harris created distance from Biden on Gaza by emphasizing Palestinian suffering,” a Washington Post headline read after the vice president’s comments.

However, Hazami Barmada, an Arab American activist who has been organising protests in the US capital to bring awareness to the situation in Gaza, said that the vice president’s public statement of sympathy “does not make a difference”.

Barmada pointed out that Secretary of State Antony Blinken has said he sees his own kids in the faces of the children in Gaza. Still, Blinken’s department has continued to approve billions of dollars in weapons for Israel.

“So no, I don’t think empathy is enough,” Barmada told Al Jazeera. “We have had on our television screens genocide, ethnic cleansing, apartheid, illegal occupation, violence, all types of atrocities happening against Palestinians for 76 years. We need to move past empathy into a place of action before it’s too late.”

Harris’s rise

Harris appears set to inherit the Democratic nomination from Biden, who stepped out of the presidential race on Sunday and instead endorsed the vice president.

With no serious opposition, Biden had won the overwhelming majority of votes in the Democratic primaries. But hundreds of thousands of people across the country chose the “uncommitted” option on Democratic primary ballots to express opposition to the president’s Gaza policy.

The uncommitted movement has articulated three main policy demands: achieving an enduring ceasefire, imposing an arms embargo on Israel and lifting the siege on Gaza.

Tariq Habash, a former Biden administration appointee, acknowledged the change of tone from Harris and called it “refreshing”. In January, he resigned from the Department of Education in a display of public opposition to US support for the war.

But Habash likewise said that Harris should be prepared to follow her rhetoric with action.

“What we really need, nine and a half months in, is a change in policy, a change in approach, so that we can end the unnecessary and indiscriminate violence that has continued every single day under President Biden,” Habash told Al Jazeera.

“It’s still early, so we don’t know exactly what her plan or approach will be, but based on what she said yesterday, I don’t think substantively we heard a shift or any real departure from what the president has already said or done.”

After all, Harris is a key member of the Biden administration, which has been unflinchingly supportive of Israel.

On Thursday, White House spokesperson John Kirby said the vice president has been a “full partner” in overseeing US policy on the war.

Harris’s record

Harris, a former senator, also has her own long pro-Israel record.

Days into her Senate tenure in 2017, Harris co-sponsored a measure to condemn a United Nations Security Council resolution that denounced Israel’s illegal settlements in the occupied West Bank.

She also addressed the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) later that year, at a time when many left-wing politicians were distancing themselves from the pro-Israel lobby group.

“Having grown up in the [San Francisco] Bay Area, I fondly remember those Jewish National Fund boxes that we would use to collect donations to plant trees for Israel,” Harris told an AIPAC conference in 2017.

For years, Palestinian historians and activists have accused the Jewish National Fund of using tree-planting to cover ethnically cleansed Palestinian villages in what is today Israel.

Harris, however, was one of the first US officials to use the word “ceasefire” while calling for a truce in Gaza in May.

With the outbreak of the war last year, she showed compassion for Palestinians killed by Israel in the conflict.

“It is absolutely tragic when there is ever, anywhere, any loss of innocent life, of innocent civilians, of children,” she said in November.

But when asked specifically about an Israeli attack that killed dozens of people in Jabalia, she said: “We are not telling Israel how it should conduct this war. And so, I’m not going to speak to that.”

‘I’m willing to be won over’

US-manufactured and supplied bombs have continued to fall on people across Gaza since then, with a suffocating Israeli blockade deepening the humanitarian crisis there.

On Thursday, dozens of US medical professionals who worked in Gaza penned a letter to Harris, Biden and his wife, Jill Biden, describing the deteriorating situation in the territory.

“With only marginal exceptions, everyone in Gaza is sick, injured or both,” they wrote.

The doctors and nurses shared harrowing details of the impact of Israel’s war, including widespread malnourishment, ailments and children shot in the head and chest regularly arriving for treatment.

For many Palestinian rights advocates, ending this nightmare takes precedence over other issues. They say they are willing to vote for the vice president if she reconsiders the US’s unconditional support for Israel.

“While nice words don’t bring back our dead, actions now can save the living,” YL Al-Sheikh, a Palestinian American writer and organiser active with the Democratic Socialists of America, told Al Jazeera.

“And so it is not too late to save the rest of Gaza, and it’s not too late to turn the tide for Palestine because we’re not going to go anywhere. They’re going to have to contend with us. So, I think that there’s certainly a degree to which we are going to be receptive to change, and that we should demand that.”

Abdelhadi, the sociologist, also expressed readiness to vote for Harris if she changes the US approach to Israel.

“I’m willing to be won over. However, she hasn’t won me over yet, and only material changes can win me over,” Abdelhadi told Al Jazeera.

For his part, Habash called for urgency from Harris to address the issue.

“There are a lot of people who want to find a way to support the eventual Democratic nominee, but it’s the vice president’s responsibility to earn those votes at this moment,” he told Al Jazeera.

Condemning protesters

Hours before meeting Netanyahu, Harris released a statement condemning demonstrators who had rallied in Washington, DC, to protest against the Israeli prime minister’s speech to Congress.

A few protesters had brought down the American flag at Union Station, near the Capitol, and sprayed graffiti in the area. But the overwhelming majority of demonstrators were peaceful.

Harris denounced what she called “despicable acts by unpatriotic protesters and dangerous hate-fuelled rhetoric” at the anti-Netanyahu demonstration.

“I support the right to peacefully protest, but let’s be clear: Anti-Semitism, hate and violence of any kind have no place in our nation,” the vice president said in a statement.

Activists accused Harris’s statement of lacking nuance and failing to acknowledge what the demonstrators had gathered to reject: the falsehood-filled speech of a leader accused of war crimes.

Prosecutors at the International Criminal Court are currently seeking a warrant for Netanyahu’s arrest over what they describe as “crimes against humanity”.

The @VP is *clear* about the pro-Hamas protestors:

“I condemn any individuals associating with the brutal terrorist organization Hamas, which has vowed to annihilate the State of Israel and kill Jews.”

“…Antisemitism, hate and violence of any kind have no place in our nation.” pic.twitter.com/wl2Ph1ZXjS

— Shelley Greenspan (@ShelleyGspan) July 25, 2024

Given that context, Barmada, the Washington-based organiser, called Harris’s statement about the protesters “disturbing”.

She said Harris used the actions of a few individuals to “smear the credibility of legitimate protesters who have legitimate concerns with our tax dollars being used for things that violate American constitutional law, like funding a genocide”.

Before condemning the protesters and calling them “pro-Hamas”, Harris’s camp hit another familiar pro-Israel note.

Earlier this week, her husband Doug Emhoff told Jewish Democratic groups: “Vice President Harris has been and will be a strong supporter of Israel as a secure democratic and Jewish state, and she will always ensure that Israel can defend itself — period. That’s who Kamala Harris is.”

Samra’a Luqman, an Arab American activist in the key swing state of Michigan, told Al Jazeera that Harris represents the status quo.

“She will effectively continue arming Israel even as they act with impunity while paying lip service to try to win the election,” Luqman said.