This week, Harris was forced to address a similar question following her widely reported speech Sunday in Selma, Ala., calling for an immediate cease-fire in Gaza. NBC News reported that administration officials had watered down her original draft’s criticism of Israel, and she was asked about any distance between her position and President Biden’s at a D.C. news conference Monday. She responded: “The president and I have been aligned and consistent from the beginning: Israel has the right to defend itself. Far too many Palestinian civilians, innocent civilians, have been killed.” A senior administration official said, “She’s on the same page as the president.”
It would be surprising if it were otherwise. Harris and Biden have seen the same reports from Gaza all of us have — families eating leaves or animal feed, women giving birth prematurely to babies they cannot nurse. A humanitarian catastrophe is unfolding before our leaders’ eyes.
It’s sad but appropriate that the United States is having to air-drop humanitarian assistance and that nations are lining up behind America to support a sea route and port for aid to Gaza. These are necessities caused by problems at Israeli-monitored land crossings.
Just as the Hamas threat must be eliminated, so, too, Gazans’ suffering must end. The United States, supportive of Israel’s effort to achieve the former, cannot be complicit in the horrific tragedy afflicting Gaza’s innocent victims.
Harris’s call for an immediate cease-fire echoes cries heard across the country. Biden himself said this week, “There’s got to be a cease-fire.” The administration has ways — credible ways — to get Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s undivided attention.
A cease-fire with release of hostages and flow of aid is a first step, as Harris declared, both toward building a more secure Israel and providing dignity and self-determination for the Palestinian people. It only gets harder after that.
Mobilizing an international donor community and Arab regional partners to reconstruct a devastated Gaza and beleaguered West Bank is formidable. Creating a Palestinian state without any semblance of Israeli colonial governance is a herculean task. Both require unswerving U.S. leadership.
This is where Harris and Biden being on the same page comes in. Both know their way around the United States’ historical support for Israel as well as the lengthy catalogue of violent Arab-Israeli and Israeli-Palestinian conflicts over many decades. And both know these realities simply cannot go on for another 10 years or 10 months or 10 days — even if there are die-hards on each side who believe their cause is more just and their opponents more deserving of annihilation.
Nothing less than lasting peace and independent self-rule in Israel and a Palestinian state will do.
As Biden and Harris surely know, this peace must be achieved for America, too.
It would be a serious mistake — and misreading of the situation — to conclude that what appears to be a sterner administration stance toward — or softening of support for — Israel is simply a matter of keeping Democrats in the party.
The Israel-Gaza war is straining relationships in this country, particularly between Black and Jewish Americans, but also within each group. The “Grand Alliance” they forged decades ago in the fight for civil rights is on life support, said Terrence Johnson, professor of African American religious studies at Harvard Divinity School, during a discussion last month of relations between Black and Jewish communities on NPR’s “Morning Edition.” Growing numbers of Black spiritual leaders and activists are speaking up in support of Palestinian rights and against Israel’s punishing military campaign in Gaza, observed show host Leila Fadel. Black Americans constitute a key Democratic constituency, I might add, but party registration isn’t the driving force; relentless military strikes on Gaza and starving Palestinian women and children are what get the blood going.
Jacques Berlinerblau, professor of Jewish civilization at Georgetown University and Johnson’s co-author of “Blacks and Jews in America: An Invitation to Dialogue,” also spoke on the program, acknowledging tensions between Black and Jewish Americans and pointing out, among Jews, tensions between filial concern for the longevity and safety of Israel and authentic concern for Palestinian rights and dignity.
Add to that the unprecedented rise in antisemitic incidents in this country since Oct. 7, and it’s plain to see that Biden, Harris and public leaders of all stripes have a stake in bringing healing to the tortured Holy Land. In doing so, we also help heal ourselves.
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