10
Loading video...
By Khaleda Rahman
National Correspondent
0
Share
Newsweek is a Trust Project member
See more of our trusted coverage when you search.Prefer Newsweek on Googleto see more of our trusted coverage when you search.
Many notable figures were absent from Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's congressional address in Washington, D.C., last week, but one name in particular stood out: Vice President Kamala Harris.
Harris, the presumptive Democratic nominee in November's election, met with Netanyahu on July 25 and urged him to reach a ceasefire deal with Hamas and bring home the hostages being held by the group.
After the meeting, Harris issued a televised statement that attempted to tread a fine line between expressing support for Israel and sympathy for Palestinians—sympathy that was widely seen as going further than what President Joe Biden had previously expressed.
Read More on U.S.
"What has happened in Gaza over the past nine months is devastating—the images of dead children and desperate, hungry people fleeing for safety, sometimes displaced for the second, third or fourth time," Harris said, adding: "We cannot allow ourselves to become numb to the suffering. And I will not be silent."
Following the assassination of Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh in Iran on Wednesday, that fine line may only become harder for Harris to tread.
No one immediately claimed responsibility for killing Haniyeh, the head of Hamas' political bureau, but suspicion quickly fell on Israel, and Iran has said it will take revenge.
After Hamas attacked Israel on October 7, killing 1,200 people while taking some 250 others hostage, Israel vowed to kill Haniyeh and other Hamas leaders. In the nine months since, Israel's actions in Gaza have killed more than 39,360 Palestinians, while more than 90,900 have been wounded, the Associated Press reported, citing the Gaza Health Ministry.
...
The Biden administration, which has been pushing Hamas and Israel to agree to at least a temporary ceasefire and a deal to free the dozens of hostages still being held in Gaza, did not immediately react to the killing of Haniyeh.
The day before the assassination, Israel carried out a strike on Beirut, which it said had killed Fouad Shukur, a top Hezbollah military commander. Israel blamed Shukur for a weekend rocket attack that killed 12 young people in the Israeli-controlled Golan Heights, though Hezbollah has denied being behind that attack. The strike on Lebanon's capital also killed at least one woman and two children while wounding dozens, the Associated Press reported.
The targeting of adversaries on foreign soil is not unprecedented. In 2011, the U.S. killed Osama Bin Laden, the al-Qaeda leader who orchestrated the September 11, 2001, terror attacks, in a raid on his compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan. Iranian military general Qassem Soleimani was killed in a U.S. drone strike as he traveled from Baghdad's international airport in January 2020.
With the deaths likely to inflame the situation further and perhaps crush any hope of reaching a permanent ceasefire in Gaza, planned protests at the Democratic National Convention may escalate, fomenting a toxic environment as Harris attempts to solidify her position in the 2024 race.
Newsweek has contacted the White House and Harris' campaign for comment via email.
Kamala Harris' Israel Test
Harris is facing a pincer movement from critics of her Israel stance. On one side, Republicans say she has failed to give Israel the ironclad support it needs in its goal of destroying Hamas.
On the other side, supporters of the Palestinian cause—both within and outside the Democratic Party—say she has been as complicit in Israel's offensive as Biden.
Harris must win over voters angry at the Biden administration's handling of the war, as their turn out in November could be crucial, especially in battleground states. Earlier this year, voters expressed their outrage over the administration's position during the Democratic primaries. In the battleground state of Michigan, which has a large Arab American community, more than 100,000 people cast "uncommitted" ballots as a protest.
Many of the Democratic supporters angry at the Biden administration's handling of the war are from younger generations—the demographic that the Harris campaign has been courting. Earlier this month, the vice president launched a TikTok account, and her campaign has seemingly endorsed the view of pop star Charli XCX—who has 3.6 million followers on X, formerly Twitter—that "Kamala IS brat."
At the Democratic National Convention, which is scheduled to take place in Chicago between August 19 and 22, Harris is expected to come face-to-face with protesters who have accused her of being complicit in war crimes.
Act Now to Stop War and End Racism, also known as the ANSWER Coalition, previously told Newsweek that organizers were planning to demonstrate at the event, where Harris is expected to be named the 2024 Democratic presidential nominee.
"We plan on mobilizing to join protests during the DNC to demand an end to the genocide in Gaza," said Walter Smolarek, the media coordinator for the ANSWER Coalition. "We are joining with the coalition that has already been formed in Chicago to demonstrate. We believe it is just as important to protest now that Kamala Harris has replaced Joe Biden as the Democrats' nominee."
This pressure come at a pivotal moment for the Harris campaign. The controversy threatens to overshadow the vice president's confirmation as the Democratic nominee and further divide the party.
"On the immediate front, Harris is likely to call for calm given the escalation risks now in play," said Andrew Payne, a lecturer in foreign policy and security at City, University of London's School of Policy and Global Affairs.
"But in the longer term, these events are likely to increase pressure on Harris to break with Biden's position on the war," he told Newsweek. "She has already been one step ahead of Biden in her willingness to criticize Israel's conduct of the war. But the recent killings—and any escalation that follows—will increase the salience of the war and shine a light on fissures within the Democratic Party that could turn out to be electorally significant."
While the "uncommitted" campaign during the primaries illustrates the potential electoral significance of voters' discontent over Gaza in key swing states, Payne said that on a national level, there is "also a real risk of tacking too far left."
Analysis by the Brookings Institution found that only 2 percent of congressional candidates who won their Democratic primary races this year "held the most extreme position on Gaza shared by many protesters," Payne added. "This underscores the difficult balancing act on Gaza that Harris faces—and the latest developments in the Middle East only make that task more challenging."
Thomas Gift, an associate professor of political science and the director of the Centre on U.S. Politics at University College London, said the protests planned for the convention "only have political downsides for Harris."
He told Newsweek: "Even if they don't escalate to a fracas on the level of 1968, the chance of viral moments through the spread of social media makes any disturbance take on heightened salience.
"Any explicit antisemitism, anti-Americanism or other vulgar symbols threaten to exacerbate tensions over the issue within the Democratic Party and overwhelm and distract from what's happening inside the convention hall."
Last week, Harris forcefully condemned the actions of some protesters who demonstrated against Netanyahu's visit.
"Pro-Hamas graffiti and rhetoric is abhorrent and we must not tolerate it in our nation," she said. Harris added that she supported the right to peacefully protest but condemned "the burning of the American flag."
She continued: "That flag is a symbol of our highest ideals as a nation and represents the promise of America. It should never be desecrated in that way."
Before Haniyeh's death, Harris' campaign focused on criticizing Donald Trump and Ohio Senator JD Vance, the Republican presidential and vice presidential nominees, respectively, calling the candidates "weird."
In a news release last week, Harris issued a list of Trump's failures. The seventh of the nine entries said, "Trump is old and quite weird?"
Vance gave this line of attack added impetus when a 2021 Fox News interview resurfaced in which he said the country was run by "a bunch of childless cat ladies" who were "miserable at their own lives and the choices that they've made, and so they want to make the rest of the country miserable, too." He named Harris, who has two stepchildren, and other top Democrats as examples.
The Republican's remarks led to a storm of criticism from Democratic supporters.
The Harris campaign addressed Vance's comments directly in an email heralding World IVF Day, saying that Vance was "driving away voters in droves, insulting couples struggling with infertility who are sounding off on his disparaging comments about 'childless' women."
At a fundraising event in Massachusetts, Harris herself addressed the controversy, saying that what Vance had been saying about her was "just plain weird."
Maintaining this line of criticism may become harder for Harris as the war in Gaza once again moves to the fore.
That "could prompt a sharpening of the vice president's rhetoric as the campaign rolls on," Payne said. "It may even lead her to try to create more substantive daylight between her position and that of the administration in which she currently serves. For example, by advocating for more stringent humanitarian conditions on the provision of aid to Israel."
He added that Harris would "need to be the bridge between Biden's generation of Democratic leaders, who share a deep personal bond with the state of Israel, and a younger group of progressives, who are much more willing to criticize the policies of the Israeli government."
Grant Davis Reeher, a political science professor at Syracuse University, said that "any division within the Democratic Party is not helpful to its prospects in November."
"To have a chance in November, Vice President Harris needs the party to stay united," Reeher told Newsweek. "Given that Harris has already sent some verbal signals that she is to the left of Biden on Israel, and the fact that she ran to the left of Biden in 2020, there could be a lot of pressure on her to make a tangible break from Biden on Israel during the convention. That move would not help her in a general election."
...
1968: A Warning for Harris
It would not be the first time that a foreign war has overshadowed a Democratic National Convention in which a vice president hoped to win the White House.
The 1968 Democratic National Convention, held from August 26 to 29 in Chicago, was a pivotal moment in American political history that followed President Lyndon B. Johnson's decision not to seek reelection. On March 31, 1968, Johnson announced that he would neither seek nor accept the Democratic nomination, throwing the party into disarray and opening up the race for new candidates.
The convention took place against a backdrop of turmoil. The Vietnam War had become increasingly unpopular, and the assassinations of Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert F. Kennedy earlier that year had further inflamed tensions across the country.
Vice President Hubert Humphrey emerged as the front-runner for the nomination, largely inheriting Johnson's delegate support without competing in the primaries. However, he faced strong opposition from anti-war candidates Eugene McCarthy and George McGovern, who had gained significant support from the party's liberal wing.
The convention itself was marred by violent clashes between anti-war protesters and Chicago police, which played out on national television. Inside the convention hall, bitter debates raged over the party's platform, particularly regarding the Vietnam War. These scenes of chaos and division severely damaged Democrats' unity.
Humphrey secured the nomination, but the convention left him in a weakened position for the general election. The party's internal divisions, coupled with the negative publicity from the convention riots, made it difficult for Humphrey to unite the Democratic base and appeal to undecided voters.
As a result, Humphrey lost a close election to Republican candidate Richard Nixon. The narrow margin of defeat suggests that the damage done to Humphrey's campaign may have been a decisive factor in the outcome. The events of 1968 led to significant reforms in the Democratic Party's nominating process, with the goal of making it more democratic and representative of the party's grassroots.
"There are certainly parallels, but the analogy only goes so far. In 1968, the war in Vietnam was the issue," Payne said.
"Today, by contrast, the political significance of the war in Gaza is different. Biden had a Gaza problem, but it was not the reason why he stepped down," he continued, adding, "Gaza is a drag on 'Kamalamentum,' but it is not the political albatross that Vietnam was to Johnson."
Update 7/31/24, 10 a.m. ET: This article has been updated to add context about past instances where adversaries have been targeted on foreign soil.
Update 7/31/24, 10:40 a.m. ET: This article has been updated to add comment from Grant Davis Reeher.
View 0 Comments
Submit Correction
View Editorial & AI Guidelines