Kamala Harris is walking a fine line on the Gaza conflict
livemint.comPro-Palestinian organizers have vowed to flood the streets of Chicago with thousands of protesters during the Democratic National Convention, which [began Monday]. If successful, they will make headlines, but they also will almost certainly alienate allies as they attempt to box in Vice President Kamala Harris on Gaza. Harris has already taken a firmer stand than President Joe Biden in demanding Israel focus its attacks on Hamas rather than the Palestinian people.
She made a point of skipping Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s July address to a joint session of Congress. Later, after she met with him privately at the White House, she used tougher language than Biden had ever used when talking about the Israeli leader. “We cannot allow ourselves to be numb to the suffering, and I will not be silent," Harris said.
While Israel has a right to defend itself, “how it does so matters." Elianne Farhat, a senior adviser to the Uncommitted National Movement, told me she was encouraged by Harris’ words. “I’m hearing a real shift in tone, a renewed commitment to a cease-fire in Gaza since she took over," Farhat said. The uncommitted movement has evolved rapidly since I travelled to Detroit in February, where its forerunner, Listen to Michigan, was just starting to organize.
Now active in nine states, Uncommitted will send 30 delegates to the convention. While that’s a fraction of the nearly 5,000 convention delegates who will be in Chicago, it represents more than 650,000 voters nationwide. About half of those primary votes came from key swing states.
In 2020, Biden beat Trump by just over 20,000 votes. Since those heady days, little has happened to alter Biden administration policy or the trajectory of the war. On 10 August,
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