Vice President Kamala Harris has emerged as the Democrats’ front-runner for president, and US Jews have been asking: what would a Harris premiership look like for the diaspora and for America's relationship with Israel?
The Democrat frontrunner has consistently backed Israel, but is perceived as more sympathetic to the Palestinian cause than President Joe Biden. Although some view her as more critical of Israel than Biden, she has demonstrated similar attitudes to foreign policy issues across the Middle East.
Defending Israel's right to self-defense after October 7, Harris said in December 2023: “Israel has a right to defend itself. And we will remain steadfast in that conviction” and “We support Israel’s legitimate military objectives to eliminate the threat of Hamas”.
If Harris takes the top job, it’s likely she will be more willing to criticise Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. At the same briefing in December, she said: “As Israel pursues its military objectives in Gaza, we believe Israel must do more to protect innocent civilians.”
She called for an immediate truce in Gaza on March 4 and implored Israel to improve the flow of humanitarian aid into the strip. Harris has argued in international conversations that it is time to start making “day after” plans for the war.
US Vice President Kamala Harris (R) shakes hands with Israeli President Isaac Herzog as they speak to the media prior to a meeting at the Eisenhower Executive Office Building in Washington, DC, July 19, 2023. (Photo by SAUL LOEB / AFP) (Photo by SAUL LOEB/AFP via Getty Images)
On social media, the day after Iran’s strike on Israel on April 14, she wrote: “Our support for Israel’s security is ironclad.”
Harris is also expected to maintain US sanctions against Iran. President Biden has shown little interest in returning to renegotiate the Iran deal, which Trump abandoned during his presidency, and Harris is expected to hold firm on the policy.
In June, Harris hosted an event about conflict-related sexual violence at the White House. highlighting Hamas’s use of sexual violence on October 7. The VP also met with the family members of American hostages held in Gaza.
Rachel Goldberg-Polin, whose son, Hersh, is still a hostage in Gaza, has met with Harris twice during her son’s captivity and described the VP as “Extremely supportive, extremely open, very patient and very generous with her time.”
Despite her support for Israel, Harris’s sympathy with the Palestinian cause and anti-Israel protesters is a marked shift from Democrats of President Biden’s generation.
In July, she told The Nation magazine that young Americans at anti-Israel protests are “showing exactly what the human emotion should be.” She noted, “There are things some of the protesters are saying that I absolutely reject, so I don’t mean to wholesale endorse their points. But we have to navigate it. I understand the emotion behind it.”
With a Jewish husband and stepchildren, Harris’s election will be seen as a win by many American Jews excited by the prospect of Doug Emhoff serving as First Gentleman.
While her stepdaughter, Ella Emhoff, raised eyebrows with a fundraising campaign for Unrwa on her Instagram page, as the first Second Gentleman, her husband has emerged as a vocal advocate against antisemitism. Since October 7, he has spoken about how American Jews feel isolated.
One of Harris’s first international trips as senator in 2017 was to Israel with Emhoff, where she met with Netanyahu. The trip was her first time in Israel and she visited the Western Wall, where she clipped a kippah onto her husband’s head.
Vice President Kamala Harris and Douglas Emhoff near the Western Wall, Jerusalem, 2017. (Halie Soifer via Jewish Telegraph Agency)
She has maintained close ties with influential lobby group, American Israel Public Affairs Committee (Aipac). Soon after her election to the Senate, she spoke at an Aipac conference and affirmed US aid to Israel.
“I support the United States’ commitment to provide Israel with $38 billion in military assistance over the next decade,” Harris told an Aipac in 2017. She also spoke glowingly of her trip to Israel that year.
“I believe the bonds between the United States and Israel are unbreakable, and we can never let anyone drive a wedge between us… As long as I’m a United States senator, I will do everything in my power to ensure broad and bipartisan support for Israel’s security and right to self-defence.”
Harris addressing the 2017 Aipac Policy Conference (YouTube)
At a private Aipac meeting in 2018, she was asked why she supported Israel and allegedly responded: “It is just something that has always been a part of me”.
In 2019, calls mounted from some in the Democratic Party to boycott Aipac. Harris joined Senator Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren in missing the conference, but met privately with Aipac leaders in California, and discussed “the need for a strong US-Israel alliance, the right of Israel to defend itself, and my commitment to combat antisemitism in our country and around the world.”
The Democrat supported the Abraham Accords, which she said were an “historic achievement.”
She has spoken out against the boycott, divestment and sanctions movement (BDS). In 2016, she said: “The boycott, divestment and sanctions movement is based on the mistaken assumption that Israel is solely to blame for the Israeli-Palestinian conflict… the BDS movement seeks to weaken Israel, but it will only isolate the nation and steer Israelis against prerequisite compromises for peace.”
Kamala Harris hosted by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in his Jerusalem office during her visit to Israel as senator in 2017 (Amos Ben Gershom/GPO)
During her first phone call with Netanyahu after being elected VP in 2021, the pair noted “their respective governments’ opposition to the International Criminal Court’s attempts to exercise its jurisdiction over Israeli personnel,” according to a White House readout of the call.
With Netanyahu in Washington this week, Harris will not attend the Israeli PM’s speech, but an aide noted that this “should not be interpreted as a change in her position with regard to Israel,” as the VP had a previously planned trip to Indianapolis.
Later this week, Harris will have a one-on-one meeting with Netanyahu at the White House. Jewish Insider reported that the VP “will convey her view that it is time for the war to end in a way where Israel is secure, all hostages are released, the suffering of Palestinian civilians in Gaza ends and the Palestinian people can enjoy their right to dignity, freedom and self-determination and they will discuss efforts to reach agreement on the ceasefire deal.”
