CNN
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4 days into essentially the most consequential week of Kamala Harris’ political life, she has to confront essentially the most fraught overseas coverage difficulty dealing with the nation by wanting immediately into the eyes of an Israeli prime minister who determined to not even give her a passing title test in his deal with to Congress Wednesday afternoon.
Up till now, Harris has been outlined by working for President Joe Biden, arguably essentially the most explicitly pro-Israel American president, though his relationship with Benjamin Netanyahu has frayed.
However now that she’s the presumptive Democratic nominee, Harris has to outline what sort of president she needs to be — on this and each different difficulty, whereas Biden stays on the White Home making an attempt to nail down a Israel-Hamas ceasefire deal and with some round him pondering that restarting the normalization of relations with Saudi Arabia may very well be a prime legacy undertaking for the rest of his time period.
Harris didn’t preside over Netanyahu’s speech to Congress on Wednesday, as an alternative selecting to stay with a pre-scheduled journey to a sorority occasion in Indiana, as antisemitic protests erupted close to the US Capitol the place fences had been put up like within the days following the January 6, 2021, riot. On Thursday, she’s set to welcome Netanyahu to her ceremonial workplace within the Previous Government Workplace Constructing. However articulating a transparent place on Israel will take greater than that, in line with CNN’s conversations with two dozen former and present aides, members of Congress and different political gamers.
Video exhibits pro-Hamas graffiti from protesters in DC
“We don’t have sufficient proof,” mentioned Richard Haass, the previous president of the Council on Overseas Relations and official in George W. Bush’s State Division, when requested to judge Harris’ place on Israel vis-à-vis Biden. “Anybody who says they will reply will not be very useful. You’ll be able to’t choose an individual after they’re vice chairman.”
Even a number of individuals who have talked with Harris in depth about Israeli coverage responded to CNN’s questions — on whether or not, for instance, she would have finished the identical as Biden in sending some and halting different weapons to Israel — with a collection of prolonged pauses and insistences that it’s unattainable to guage hypotheticals.
Aides say she is going to make her emotions clearer on Thursday after her assembly with Netanyahu.
Harris goes to attempt to emphasize her independence from Biden with out breaking with him, individuals who know her say, and goes to attempt to present the similar readability she’s displayed when going after Donald Trump as an alternative of getting caught up in a garbled try to please everybody by not saying something.
The uncertainty about the place she stands is excessive sufficient that second gentleman Doug Emhoff made a shock look on a rapidly organized Zoom name Wednesday afternoon hosted by the Jewish Democratic Council of America and Jewish Girls for Kamala.
“Let me simply make this clear: The vice chairman has been and will probably be a robust supporter of Israel as a safe democratic and Jewish state, and she is going to at all times make sure that Israel can defend itself, interval. As a result of that’s who Kamala Harris is,” Emhoff mentioned.
However change is coming, predicted Connecticut Sen. Chris Murphy, a member of the Overseas Relations Committee who has been important of Israel on this interval and noticed Harris’ overseas coverage pondering when they served on the Senate Intelligence Committee collectively.
“President Biden dropped at the White Home a lifelong relationship with Bibi Netanyahu and a really mature historical past on the US-Israel relationship,” Murphy mentioned. “This actually appears to be a second for a reconsideration of the connection and for some recent pondering on method an Israeli political panorama that’s lurching additional to the correct than we may have ever imagined.”
Murphy added, “I believe we’d all profit from getting a recent set of eyes on this battle and the way in which that america may attempt to create a viable Palestinian state.”
Jeremy Diamond fact-checks Netanyahu’s claims about civilian casualties and support in Gaza
However Harris has so many alternative pulls on her that an aide didn’t give a direct reply when requested if the vice chairman considers herself a Zionist — a time period Biden once more proudly embraced simply weeks in the past.
That’s a mirrored image of how a lot Zionism, which for a century meant believing in the correct of a Jewish homeland to exist, has been co-opted by anti-Israel forces, who argue it has come to represent colonialism and the killing of Palestinians.
It’s additionally a mirrored image of the distinction in pondering and rhetoric between the Democratic Occasion’s new commonplace bearer and a president who has made allegiance with Israel considered one of his defining positions for 50 years in nationwide politics.
“The vice chairman has been a robust and longstanding supporter of Israel as a safe, democratic homeland for the Jewish folks. She is going to at all times guarantee Israel can defend itself from threats, together with from Iran and Iran-backed militias corresponding to Hamas and Hezbollah,” mentioned Harris’ deputy nationwide safety adviser Dean Lieberman when requested if she considers herself a Zionist. “One can criticize particular insurance policies of the federal government of Israel whereas nonetheless strongly supporting the state of Israel and the folks of Israel. And that help for Israel on no account conflicts with the vice chairman’s sturdy view that the Palestinian folks deserve freedom, dignity, and self-determination.”
Many shut observers see an indication of the place Harris’ inclinations are in her alternative of Phil Gordon to be her nationwide safety adviser. A former Obama administration official, Gordon in 2016 co-authored a report for the Council on Overseas Relations, which, seven years earlier than the October 7 assaults, begins: “The U.S. relationship with Israel is in hassle.” The foundation of the issue, the authors wrote, is that whereas America and Israel used to agree on the threats to Israeli safety and what to do about them, now these threats have change into broader and extra sophisticated, and the opinions about deal with them have too.
Gordon has traveled to the area since October 7, holding conferences separate from those that Secretary of State Antony Blinken, Biden nationwide safety adviser Jake Sullivan and others have been having.
One official who has been deeply concerned with Biden administration coverage on Israel mentioned that Harris’ variations will really be key to holding the general relationship from getting worse.
“She’ll have the ability to talk with one other era. She has the flexibility, due to who she is, to be enormously useful to us who care deeply about Israel and the way we’re going to get by means of this catastrophe,” mentioned the official. “She is the way forward for the connection between us and Israel.”
Aides and allies who’ve talked with Harris – from her Senate days up by means of her being on the road for practically each dialog Biden has had with Netanyahu – insist that substantively there’s little daylight between her and the president.
The distinction is rhetorical, however that distinction, they are saying, is essential. She has been involved since proper after October 7 each about expressing empathy for the Palestinians and about pondering of what the political reverberations may very well be again residence from the way in which Biden hugged Netanyahu shut, figuratively after which actually on his journey to Israel two weeks after the assaults.
It’s the reason, aides concerned inform CNN, for the fury that erupted from the West Wing in March about the way in which Harris punctuated ready textual content that each decried the “humanitarian disaster” in Gaza and completely condemned Hamas. She constructed as much as her studying of “there should be an instantaneous ceasefire,” taking an extended pause, then including the remainder of the authorized sentence: “for a minimum of the following six weeks, which is what’s at the moment on the desk.”
Many Democrats outdoors the White Home are making optimistic guesses that she aligns with them.
“Like most People, the vice chairman falls throughout the pro-Israel mainstream—someplace between the ‘Higher Israel’ far proper and the ‘Free Palestine’ far left,” mentioned Rep. Ritchie Torres, a New York Democrat who has positioned himself as probably the most stalwart defenders of Israel. He added that he expects that place to translate into being for a two-state resolution, maintaining safety support and Iron Dome funding for Israel and supporting the Trump administration-negotiated Abraham Accords.
Sophisticated politics stay
For all of the Biden speeches that needed to be paused as protesters had been faraway from the rooms, Harris’ first week successfully on the highest of the ticket hasn’t seen such an interruption to date. That doesn’t imply the politics of this are settled.
Abbas Alawieh – a delegate who received a spot on the Democratic conference as a result of he represents a number of the 730,000 individuals who voted “uncommitted” in Michigan’s Democratic main – advised CNN on Wednesday that he stays “very curious how she is going to differentiate a Gaza coverage.”
Alawieh mentioned he’s hopeful. On the very least, he thinks that the get together beneath Harris’ management will not make him and others aligned with him really feel “uncared for, ignored—and in some instances maligned,” as occurred on a Tuesday evening name of state delegates when one other individual advised him to close up when he tried to talk.
The Michigan Democratic Occasion chair condemned that conduct in an e-mail to delegates.
In the meantime, the Republican Jewish Coalition launched an internet advert on Wednesday repeatedly referring to Harris by a mispronounced model of her first title and falsely claimed that she “sided with the pro-Hamas demonstrators” and snubbed Israel by not attending Netanyahu’s speech to Congress.
Trump additionally accused her of this, saying at a rally in North Carolina that “she’s operating away from Israel” and “completely towards the Jewish folks” for not going. Neither the advert nor the candidate talked about that Ohio Sen. JD Vance additionally skipped the speech, although he had no different public schedule, with marketing campaign spokesman Jason Miller telling CNN he “has duties to meet because the Republican nominee for vice chairman.”
Harris’ connection to those points is greater than coverage. It touches Emhoff’s daughter, who has been noticeably lively on pro-Palestinian causes since October 7. It has come up at Seder dinners on the Naval Observatory. And greater than something, it’s rooted within the second gentleman.
Emhoff has talked at size about feeling a way of obligation, not simply when he grew to become the primary Jewish partner of a vice chairman or president, and channeling that into serving to develop the administration’s technique to fight antisemitism. He’s additionally talked about how a lot ache he felt personally after October 7.
Halie Soifer, the CEO of the Jewish Democratic Council of America, recalled a visit to Jerusalem she took with Harris and Emhoff in 2017, when she was working in the California Democrat’s new Senate workplace. She nonetheless has images of Harris taking out a standard kippah head protecting for Emhoff after they visited the Western Wall.
Soifer mentioned she is happy that Harris stays dedicated to Israel — even after being learn the oblique reply about whether or not the vice chairman considers herself a Zionist.
And Emhoff has careworn that at the same time as this marketing campaign picks up, he’s going to maintain speaking about Judaism and Israel, as he has all through this administration along with his spouse’s encouragement.
On the Zoom name on Wednesday, he advised the story of not being along with his spouse on Sunday when the information broke about Biden exiting the race, dropping a bit Yiddish by blaming “this flight mishigas” that had him caught in Los Angeles.
Then he made a promise to the 1,700 folks listening: “I’m going to maintain dwelling brazenly like a Jew and perhaps there will probably be a mezuzah on the White Home, like there’s on the vice chairman’s residence.”