Kamala Harris's speech killed any hope she would end the Gaza genocide
Any hope that Kamala Harris would condition or suspend arms and funding for Israel’s ongoing genocide in Gaza was killed by her speech at the Democratic National Convention (DNC) on Thursday.
In front of an excitable crowd chanting “USA, USA, USA”, Harris deployed familiar language: “I will always stand up for Israel’s right to defend itself, and I will always ensure Israel has the ability to defend itself. Because the people of Israel must never again face the horror that a terrorist organisation called Hamas caused on October 7, including unspeakable sexual violence and the massacre of young people at a music festival.”
The references to sexual violence and the festival massacre have long been deployed as a way to legitimise Israel’s war on the whole of Gaza, which has continued for nearly a year now.
Meanwhile, Palestinians are raped in Israeli prisons, and Israeli politicians openly say this is justified. Harris, like most US leaders, had nothing to say about it.
She described what has happened in Gaza over the past 11 months as “devastating”, “desperate” and “heartbreaking”. In the lexicon of pro-war liberal politicians, these words are an empty, meaningless facsimile of empathy.
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The words that peace campaigners were looking for were wholly absent: nothing about Israel’s vast catalogue of war crimes - not even a swipe at war-criminal-in-chief Benjamin Netanyahu, who, after all, wants Donald Trump back in the White House. Whichever pro-war candidate is victorious in November, the Israeli leader wins.
Palestinian voices excluded
When Joe Biden announced last month that he would not be standing for re-election as a Democratic candidate, there was a sigh of relief among those who had watched the avowedly Zionist president supply Israel with billions of dollars in lethal aid from day one of the war. Could a new candidate potentially bring an end to Israel’s campaign, which has killed at least 40,000 Palestinians?
The hope was that Harris, despite her history as a pro-Israel centrist Democrat and loyal vice president to Biden, would change the tenor of US policy on Gaza and put some kind of pressure on Netanyahu to come to a ceasefire deal.
The Democratic convention in Chicago has been the scene of many pro-Palestine protests, with participants saying they could not vote for Harris as long as the Biden-Harris administration continued to supply weapons for Israel’s genocide.
On Monday, progressive Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez was given the job of rallying the left of the Democratic Party to support Harris. In her DNC speech, she said Harris was “working tirelessly to secure a ceasefire in Gaza and bringing the hostages home”. It left many wondering what had happened to the fearless critic of the Democratic establishment elected in 2018.
Later, she FaceTimed into a protest by the Uncommitted movement outside the convention hall, pledging her support.
Other progressive Congress members, such as Ilhan Omar, had the courage to join in solidarity with pro-Palestine delegates. She said this week: “If you really wanted a ceasefire, you’d just stop sending the weapons. It is that simple.”
The Uncommitted movement had modestly called for the DNC to include a Palestinian speaker on the main stage, but the DNC refused. The movement ended its sit-in on Thursday as the convention wrapped up.
A day earlier, the parents of American-Israeli hostage Hersh Goldberg-Polin, who was seized during the 7 October Hamas-led attack on southern Israel, spoke on the DNC stage, pleading for the release of those held captive in Gaza. No Palestinian speaker was invited.
“The least they could do is allow a Palestinian American, or somebody who is directly affected by this war, to speak from the main stage of the DNC,” Rhode Island delegate June Rose said, according to a report from ABC.
At the same time, some activists and voters have raised issues with the fact that the Uncommitted movement has demanded a ceasefire and arms embargo, but continues to wed itself unconditionally to the Democratic Party and Harris in this election. As a result, it is argued, they are conceding all leverage that could be used to show the party that it can’t rely on the 730,000 Uncommitted votes come November.
“It doesn’t give people another alternative, something … beyond the two parties that would actually lead to real change in Gaza,” union worker Jared Houston told Middle East Eye outside the convention, adding that the pro-Palestine movement should “pressure those delegates who have these beliefs to leave the Democratic Party”.
War footing
Harris’s speech, meanwhile, offered bromides to the American “middle class” - that imprecise category that signals to aspirational and hardworking voters that she is one of them.
“The middle class is where I come from,” she said. “My mother kept a strict budget. We lived within our means. Yet, we wanted for little.”
Signal to the markets: no generous spending for social programmes. No self-respecting neoliberal Democrat ever mentions the unmentionable: the working-class Americans living paycheque to paycheque.
Harris reserved her fire in the speech for threatening Washington’s enemies - Iran, Russia, China - and the delegates loved it.
“As commander-in-chief, I will ensure America always has the strongest, most lethal fighting force in the world,” she thundered, later adding: “I will never hesitate to take whatever action is necessary to defend our forces and our interests against Iran and Iran-backed terrorists.”
That is the threat behind the mass of US forces deployed to the Mediterranean in preparation for an Iranian-Hezbollah response to the recent twin Israeli assassinations in Beirut and Tehran.
Harris had little to say about Palestine, other than the usual warm words that Palestinians have long ago thrown into the dustbin of false promises from US diplomats. She and Biden were working to ensure that “Israel is secure, the hostages are released, the suffering in Gaza ends, and the Palestinian people can realise their right to dignity, security, freedom and self-determination”.
To use the word “freedom” in relation to Palestine may be daring in US political terms, with the watchful eye of the Israel lobby close at hand. But it is a cast-iron rule of US policy that the first clause in such sentences will always be “Israel is secure”, which means only one thing for Palestinians: further occupation, ethnic cleansing and endless war.
Harris has made it as clear as she can that her presidency, if she wins, will be a continuation of Biden’s: war, war and war.
Azad Essa contributed reporting from the DNC in Chicago.
The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Eye.