The foreign policy section of Kamala Harris’ acceptance speech was predictably brief, and there wasn’t much to it. Anyone still holding out hope that she might signal a change in direction on U.S. policy in Gaza was completely disappointed. Harris said:
With respect to the war in Gaza, President Biden and I are working around the clock, because now is the time to get a hostage deal and a cease-fire deal done.
And let me be clear. And let me be clear. 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 organization called Hamas caused on Oct. 7, including unspeakable sexual violence and the massacre of young people at a music festival.
At the same time, what has happened in Gaza over the past 10 months is devastating. So many innocent lives lost. Desperate, hungry people fleeing for safety, over and over again. The scale of suffering is heartbreaking.
President Biden and I are working to end this war, such that Israel is secure, the hostages are released, the suffering in Gaza ends and the Palestinian people can realize their right to dignity, security, freedom and self-determination.
Maybe it was too much to expect the sitting vice president to break with administration policy, but Harris’ remarks were underwhelming by any standard. Her account of the catastrophe in Gaza carefully avoids identifying who is responsible for causing that catastrophe. Innocent lives haven’t just been lost. They have been brutally taken by Israeli forces using U.S.-made weapons. The Israeli government is the one that has been slaughtering innocent people in massacre after massacre and driving them from place to place. The people are desperate and hungry because they have been deliberately starved by the Israeli government for the better part of a year. If Harris can’t acknowledge who is responsible for the devastation, she isn’t going to be able to make the policy changes required to end it.
Our own laws dictate that the U.S. must halt weapons transfers to a government committing these crimes. The Biden administration has been breaking for the law for ten months. As a candidate pledging to respect the rule of law, Harris should at a minimum be urging that our government follow the law and she should promise that she will do that if elected. That is what Peter Beinart advised Harris to do last week, but Harris chose not to do it. The best Harris could do was repeat hollow words about ending the suffering without committing to do any of the things that have a chance of ending it.
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Daniel Larison is a contributing editor for Antiwar.com and maintains his own site at Eunomia. He is former senior editor at The American Conservative. He has been published in the New York Times Book Review, Dallas Morning News, World Politics Review, Politico Magazine, Orthodox Life, Front Porch Republic, The American Scene, and Culture11, and was a columnist for The Week. He holds a PhD in history from the University of Chicago, and resides in Lancaster, PA. Follow him on Twitter.