Kamala Harris will be even more anti-Israel than Obama.
Kamala Harris will be even more anti-Israel than Obama.
The alliance between the “progressive” Left and Arab/Muslim antisemites is now a formidable portion of the Democratic Party — and electing Harris as the 47th U.S. president would make it even worse.
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U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris has apparently earned the support of enough delegates to secure the Democratic nomination, succeeding her current boss Joe Biden as the Democrats’ presidential nominee in time for the November election.
This is terrible news for Jews in America, especially those who consider themselves both Democrats and Zionists. Like Obama, Harris represents the growing “progressive” faction of the Democratic Party — and I am not talking about the textbook definition of “progressive” which includes noble aims like combating poverty, reduce inequality, and provide social safety nets.
Harris is close with “pro-Palestinian” progressives who have aligned with Earth’s most regressive, misogynistic, homophobic, antidemocratic, violent forces (Hamas). One of them, Rashida Tlaib, an American-Palestinian Congresswoman, held a black sign that said, “Guilty of Genocide,” as she watched Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s address to a joint session of Congress on Wednesday.
Harris was notably absent from Netanyahu’s speech. As vice president, Harris should have traditionally presided over a joint session involving a foreign leader’s address. But instead, she was on the road in Indiana — opting not to change her preexisting plans.
One notable Left-leaning media outlet described this move by Harris as an attempt to “further solidify support from young, minority and more progressive voters who polls show have been more sympathetic to the Palestinian cause.”1
And Congresswoman Pramila Jayapal, chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, recently said that Harris “has a deep empathy for the situation of Palestinian Americans” — adding that “it’s more natural to her.”
And let’s not naively use her husband and token Jew, Doug Emhoff, as a reason to believe she is “pro-Israel.” His daughter Ella (from a previous marriage) adjoined a fundraiser for “Gaza’s children” to her Instagram page which has 315,000 followers, even as it has been well-documented that Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad have charities posing as humanitarian organizations to circumvent international sanctions.
Then, in December, Doug Emhoff took to social media to tell a completely inaccurate, politically manufactured story about Chanukah, writing: “In the Hanukkah story, the Jewish people were forced into hiding. No one thought they would survive or that the few drops of oil they had would last. But they survived and the oil kept burning. In these dark times, I think of that story.”2
The actual story is that the Maccabees, a small band of Jewish fighters, liberated the Land of Israel from the Syrian Greeks who occupied it and sought to impose their Hellenistic culture, which many Jews found attractive.
Harris herself has a questionable record with Israel. Just three weeks after the Hamas-led massacres in Israel, she announced that the Biden administration would develop “the first ever U.S. National Strategy to Counter Islamophobia.” That was less than 24 hours after the head of the FBI warned Congress that the U.S. is experiencing record-high levels of antisemitism.
Then, last Thursday, just a few days before President Biden dropped out of the presidential race, Doug Emhoff chaired an interfaith roundtable where he discussed the administration’s plans to soon release new federal guidance — on combating Islamophobia.
All of this should be no surprise, though. In Egypt during 2009, Barack Obama (another “progressive”) gave a speech during his first year as president aimed at resetting U.S. relations with the “Muslim world.”
He insisted that members of the Muslim Brotherhood (of which Hamas is an offshoot) be provided seats at the event — even though the Brotherhood was a banned organization in Egypt at the time — prompting then-Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak to cancel his attendance (probably fearing for his life).
Only a few months earlier, the Holy Land Foundation (a quasi-nonprofit organization designed to launder more money to terrorist organizations like the Muslim Brotherhood) was found, via trial, to be behind a Muslim Brotherhood plot to sabotage the U.S. while promoting Hamas’ mission to destroy Israel.
Obama-administration officials went on to airbrush the Muslim Brotherhood, portraying fundamentalist radicals who seek to vanquish the West as “largely secular” “moderates” with whom the U.S. government should be working cooperatively.
What’s more, we should ask ourselves why Obama went out of his way to coddle and court Qatar, the funder of ISIS and Hamas — you know, modern nihilistic death cults dedicated to the killing of Christians, Gays, and Jews.
In 2014, Obama even got behind Hamas’ right to exist and keep its arsenal intact during another war that the terror group provoked with Israel back then.3 More curiously, he subsequently sent his Secretary of State, John Kerry, off to cavort with the Qatari and Turkish foreign ministers in Paris — which incensed Israeli ministers, the Egyptians, and the Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas at the time.
Then there was the 2015 Iranian nuclear deal, known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), which Obama viewed as a historic achievement that would prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons through diplomacy rather than military action. Recent reporting suggests Iran is just a few months away from developing nuclear weapons. What impeccable diplomacy.
The lifting of economic sanctions as part of the JCPOA provided Iran with significant financial resources. Rather than using this newfound economic freedom to improve the lives of its citizens, the Iranian regime has funneled funds to its regional proxies and allies, such as Hezbollah in Lebanon, the Assad regime in Syria, Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad in Gaza, and various militias in Iraq and Yemen — all of which are aggressively anti-Israel.
Iran’s increased financial capability has also enabled it to enhance its conventional military capabilities, further tilting the regional balance of power in its favor. For Israel, this means facing a more assertive and better-armed adversary on multiple fronts, just as we have seen in this Israel-Hamas-Hezbollah war.
Donald Trump, during his time in the White House, got rid of the Iran nuclear deal and separately achieved the Abraham Accords, while the Biden-Harris administration reinstated JCPOA and pushed so hard for Israel-Saudi Arabia normalization that it, at least in part, led to the Hamas-led October 7th massacres (which were planned with Iranian generals).
Now the Middle East is on the verge of a regional war.
On Tuesday, Kamala Harris said that her presidential campaign is focused on two visions: the future of the nation and its past.
We know what “progressives” mean when they talk about America’s past: a vicious, subversive agenda that includes intersectionality, critical race theory, and the notorious “oppressor-oppressed” framework, in which “The Jews” are considered part of the “White oppressor colonialist racist” class that must be lectured and punished.
Thus, it is no surprise that the U.S. State Department (America’s version of a Foreign Ministry) under Obama and continuing into Biden’s first presidential term, is increasingly anti-Israel — not because the Jewish state is some rogue pariah nation that must be forcefully dealt with, but because Israel is considered a “White oppressor colonialist racist” entity by many folks who work in the State Department.
This might also explain why roughly 70 Democrats from the House of Representatives and Senate boycotted Netanyahu’s speech on Wednesday.
“I agree with both the prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (ICC) and the United Nations independent commission that both Benjamin Netanyahu and Yahya Sinwar are war criminals,” said one of these Democrats, Bernie Sanders, equating the democratically elected Israeli premier with an autocratic mega-terrorist.
American Jewish Congress President Daniel Rosen said that those who are skipping the speech to protest Netanyahu are in effect boycotting Israel. That sounds about right to me — unless these Democrats are only willing to support allies at a time of immense need when these allies are politically aligned with them.
What great foreign relations.
I grew up in a Democratic home in Los Angeles and still hold many quintessential Democratic (liberal) values.
But this is not the same Democratic Party that once was. It is quickly becoming a populist juggernaut that courts “people of color” and commingles their historical narratives into a single thread — pitting them, the “oppressed” peoples, against “White” people, the so-called “oppressors” which includes Jews.
What makes this trend even more worrisome is that it is not easily detectable, but it has surely made its way into American institutions such as education systems, academia, media, government, and NGOs.
It is also why some of the most Democratic-run cities in America are the ones that tolerate overt antisemitism by “pro-Palestinian” mobsters who disguise their Jew-hatred with so-called “advocacy” for (Hamas-run) “Palestine.”
A Kamala Harris presidency would amplify these trends on the national level, making Jews in American feel even less safe than they already do.
(Side note: I am sure there are plenty of pieces from Harris’ agenda that would benefit the United States, but this platform is called “Future of Jewish” and not “Future of America.”)
This week, CNN anchor John King stated that Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro may not become Harris’ running mate purely because Shapiro is Jewish, creating considerable consternation in some Jewish circles.
During a discussion of possible vice-presidential nominees with Anderson Cooper, King said of Shapiro: “He’s Jewish, there could be some risks in putting him on the ticket.”
Both King and CNN were criticized for this comment, but the criticism overlooked a very dark and disturbing fact: King was absolutely right.
In other words, there is a great deal of risk for Harris to put a Jew on the Democratic presidential ticket. What King did not note was the reason why: The Democratic Party is now badly compromised by antisemitism.
The Red-Green Alliance between the “progressive” Left and Arab and Muslim antisemites is now a formidable portion of the Democratic Party — and electing Harris as the 47th U.S. president would make it even worse.
“Harris skipping Netanyahu address shows daylight with Biden on Israeli leader.” The Hill.
Doug Emhoff on X
“Obama: Intervening to Save Hamas?” Commentary.
Josh, most liberal Jews in the US and Canada have not educated themselves on what liberalism has become. They have no idea how it's been co-opted by Jew-hating cultural Marxist influence which led to "woke" dogma that considers Jews the bad guys. They look at you with a blank face when you mention the Red/Green alliance (a.k.a. Islamo/Leftist alliance) which has existed in some form since the Russian revolution; is responsible for the creation of the tyrannical Iranian regime - and created the playbook for Palestinian propaganda - a playbook based on lies. I wish that "crash courses" could be given about this in liberal Jewish circles before the November US election. Otherwise - yet again - too many Jews will vote Democrat.
While it's true that Trump seemed to have been more supportive of Israel, I felt less safe as a Jew in America during his term than I did under Obama. Not because I think Obama was pro-Israel, but because Trump made it acceptable for people to openly express their derision towards those they deemed inferior to them.
Obviously, I haven't felt especially safe since 10/8/24. But I don't believe in single issue voting, and the Trump strategy of fomenting hatred toward other ethnic groups does not make me safer. Or safe at all.
I wish there were stronger official actions to fight antisemitism, but I can't really object to fighting Islamophobia. I remember the post-9/11 vigilantism that resulted in people who looked like they might be Middle Eastern being beaten and sometimes killed. Random violence that made me afraid for my Guatemalan husband and my teenaged son.
We're still not really over the trauma of 9/11, or the pandemic, and now we have young Americans threatening all American lives and burning the American flag because of perceived injustice in a place they have never been. It's terrifying.
I would like to see the return of a functioning Congress in 2025. If we can get ourselves in order, we'll be able to fight terrorism and antisemitism here and in Israel.