Harris’s behavior will weaken both the US and Israel if she wins the November election

Photo: AP Images

Sometimes, being in the right place at the right time pays off. At other times, not being where you’re supposed to be generates measurable results.

Let’s plug that into Binyamin Netanyahu’s speech to a joint session of Congress and how he, Kamala Harris, and J.D. Vance fared in the short run.

Netanyahu’s uncomplicated message that the US and Israel have common interests, face the same enemies, and are stronger when they stand together boosted his popularity in Israel. A Channel 12 survey after Bibi’s address showed for the first time since Hamas attacked Israel on October 7 that more Israelis prefer Netanyahu as prime minister than they do Benny Gantz, Yair Lapid, or Naftali Bennett.

J.D. Vance, whose decision to skip Bibi’s address was accepted without question, raked in more than $1 million that day at a fundraiser in Fort Wayne, Indiana, that donors scheduled right after Donald Trump selected him to be his running mate.

The gains for Kamala Harris, who breached vice-presidential diplomatic protocol by not presiding at a joint session of Congress, were not directly measurable. However, her progressive base applauded her decision to address a black sorority in Indianapolis instead of sitting in Bibi’s Congressional cheering section.

Short-term, Bibi, Kamala, and J.D. all came out ahead.

In the long run — if you accept Bibi’s premise that the US and Israel are stronger together — Harris’s behavior will weaken both countries if she wins the November election.

Harris tried to make up for her absence by condemning the anti-Israel, pro-Hamas demonstrators who burned the American flag and defaced monuments in Washington, D.C., and by meeting Netanyahu privately the next day.

Except Harris poured fuel on the fire with her post-meeting comments expressing horror over the plight of Gaza’s civilians, with the implication that the only solution is to end the war now, which means Israel must capitulate to Hamas’s cease-fire terms, which would reverse every gain Israel made during nine months of warfare. Netanyahu’s entourage in Washington reportedly expressed dismay in a closed-door press briefing at the tone and the content of Harris’s remarks.

What’s remarkable about her approach, which reaffirms the international community’s party line, is that no one uttered a peep during the last 17 years as Hamas systematically diverted foreign aid to build a network of tunnels beneath Gaza mosques, hospitals, schools, playgrounds, and residences.

None of that sparked an outcry. But as soon as Israel began destroying that military infrastructure in response to Hamas’s brutal October 7 invasion, we suddenly have a humanitarian crisis of unprecedented proportion, for which Israel is to blame.

Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX) is not surprised, telling me during a brief interview at the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee that a “significant slice of the Democratic Party has decided to abandon Israel.”

“Under Joe Biden, we’ve seen the Democrat Party really be radicalized on this front,” Cruz said. “Any sound, sane, and sensible American administration would stand alongside Israel. Joe Biden and the Democrats have not been willing to do that.”

Replaying a Broken Record

No one should be surprised that Kamala Harris belongs to the “blame Israel first” club. If pundits have nicknamed the Biden administration “Obama’s third term,” a Harris administration would be Obama’s fourth term, with holdovers who adhere to stale, failed ideas continuing to serve in key foreign policy positions.

Her current national security advisor is Philip Gordon, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) who served in both Obama administrations, first as assistant secretary of state for European and Eurasian affairs and then as Obama’s Middle East policy coordinator.

Gordon coauthored a CFR special report in November 2016 titled “Repairing the US-Israel Relationship.” Gordon contended that the relationship was seriously broken and “at risk,” imperiled by a growing strategic divergence on how to deal with regional threats such as Iran, the Palestinians, settlements, and personality conflicts between US and Israeli leaders (namely Obama and Netanyahu) that worsened with “the formation of the most right-wing coalition in Israel’s history.”

Gordon wrote this after Israel’s 2015 election that gave Netanyahu a 67-seat coalition with Avigdor Lieberman and the ultra-Orthodox parties. We can only imagine what Gordon would say now with Bezalel Smotrich and Itamar Ben-Gvir in place of the comparatively moderate Lieberman.

Gordon does give a nod to Israeli military and security contributions to the US, which include expertise in tactical radars, robotics, airport screening techniques, armored vehicle protection, unmanned aerial systems, missile defense, and joint intelligence collection and operations against common adversaries.

These ties bind the US and Israel and would continue under a Harris administration, even if the tone gets harsher. But the Gordon-Harris solution for mending the US-Israel relationship, in essence, would require Israel to bend to a paternalistic American outlook that presumes to know better than Israel what’s best for Israel. Worst of all, their worldview seriously underestimates the readiness of Israel’s enemies to exploit any real or perceived signs of weakness, or rifts in the US-Israeli relationship, to achieve their long-term goal of wiping Israel off the map.

As a new week got underway, Democrats were preparing to take a roll call vote of convention delegates to formally nominate Harris, who would then choose a running mate from a short list of relatively high-quality candidates, at least from the Democrats’ perspective.

Republicans are not so secretly hoping that the Democratic National Convention in Chicago from August 19 to 22 will be a momentum breaker amid the throngs of rabble-rousers and demonstrators who will crash the party. If violence ensues, or even if it becomes a circus, undecided and independent voters might conclude that voting for Trump-Vance is, at the very least, the lesser of two evils.

Less than 100 days remain until Election Day. The Harris honeymoon that shows her running even with Trump may gain momentum as the mainstream media hypes her candidacy. Pollster Mark Penn told Fox News that he doesn’t expect the media to ask Harris the tough questions that could force her on the defensive. Seasoned political commentators such as Sean Trende of Real Clear Politics and former Republican House Speaker Newt Gingrich have warned Republicans not to underestimate Harris’s chances in a short campaign.

Republicans say that ultimately, they are running against the Biden-Harris administration track record; however, the personal attacks that Trump and Vance have leveled so far such as calling Harris a “DEI hire” have either been ineffective or backfired. In today’s America where people are hypersensitive to microaggression, personally insulting a black female presidential candidate will not make a winning strategy.

(Originally featured in Mishpacha, Issue 1022)